The Right Material Handling Equipment Maximizes Line Productivity

“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” True with chains. True with production lines.

Classic examples abound where processing equipment in a line is mismatched with inferior material handling equipment, causing the production rate to drop below its potential. This often creates more waste and hinders both throughput and profitability. However, the disparity is even more noticeable for some plants, where manual labor is still a part of the system.

Human or Machine

For one Creative Automation customer, the time had come to upgrade from labor-intensive manual feeding and stacking to automated feeding and stacking systems that fully capitalize on their existing edgebanders’ capabilities. In other words, the demand for throughput had become more significant than the line in its current configuration could deliver.

Besides the need for more production, two primary considerations led this customer—a major laminate casework manufacturer—to install fully automated material handling equipment for their panel line:

  1. Labor Costs. When labor is reduced, profit almost always increases, which was the case with this line automation.
  2. Because the automated material handling would create more throughput, their edgebanders could be kept full of panels, thus fully achieving the potential of their edgebander investment.

Why Creative Automation

“One reason we decided upon Creative Automation as our partner in this project is their reputation for quality compared to European equipment and the ready availability of parts and technical support in the U.S. whenever we are in need,” explained the customer’s Maintenance Manager. “Despite its two-shift operation for over ten years, our Creative Automation machinery has been as close to trouble-free as I could ever expect.”

The Equipment and Installation

Creative Automation equipment installations included the following.

Feeding System:

  • Powered load conveyors for incoming stacks of panels.
  • Powered load conveyor for cull boards stacked by the feeder.
  • Servo-driven panel feeder, which provides a high cycle rate without the need for scissors lifts or pits.
  • Zoned edgebander infeed conveyor with 90-degree turner and squaring devices to ensure panels correctly enter the 1st edgebander.

Stacking System:

  • Zoned edgebander outfeed conveyor with 90-degree turner.
  • Servo-driven panel stacker–again, no scissors lifts or pits required.
  • Powered load conveyors for stacked loads.
  • Powered load conveyor for cull boards that the stacker places.

System Integration:

  • As is typical with Creative Automation projects, our customer requested all system integration be coordinated through us.
  • Creative Automation worked with the European edgebander manufacturer to coordinate passing setup information from the edgebanders to the feeding and stacking systems.

By identifying the untapped potential of their edgebanders, this company was able to fully achieve that potential with automated material handling while at the same time reducing labor costs. These results are typical for Creative Automation projects and have been realized in various production line applications in the woodworking and related industries.

If you have a manufacturing line with untapped potential, contact Creative Automation at 715-223-6321 to begin discussing how Creative Automation’s innovative processing ideas can improve your production costs and produce finished goods that are better quality and more profitable.