Cobot Palletizers at a Coffee Packer Pay Back in Nine Months

A role that would not hold its people

At the end of a coffee packing line, the palletizing role is where finished output gets stacked and staged for shipment. The work is repetitive and physically demanding, and at this co-packer it rarely kept the same people for long.

Turnover in that role ran above 60 percent. The operation carried an ongoing cycle of recruiting, training and reliance on temporary labor, and each new person had to learn the stacking work before the line could run as it should.

• Ongoing recruiting for the same end of line position
• Training repeated each time the role changed hands
• Reliance on temporary labor to cover the gap

Cobot palletizers added at the end of the packing lines

The co-packer added cobot palletizers to its end of line work. Cobots are collaborative robot arms built to share floor space with people, which suits a line where staff still tend equipment and move product nearby.

The project was framed around speed and safety, and its return was judged against the payback the company had projected before the install. Holding the result to that original plan kept the investment accountable and made the gap between projection and outcome easy to read.

A nine month return, and a staffing problem that stayed

The cobot palletizers returned their cost in nine months. The original plan had projected two years, so the return arrived in less than half the time the company had expected.

Turnover in the palletizing role still ran above 60 percent. A strong return on the equipment did not by itself steady the shift roster, which is a useful reminder that a palletizing investment and a palletizing crew are two separate planning problems.

What this means for end of line automation

This case shows what a palletizing investment can do, and what it leaves alone. The equipment case can close quickly, while the people problem in the same role needs its own plan.

Service Robot Co. is a commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We are not tied to one manufacturer, so we select the robot that fits the line, arrange a three year lease with one fixed robot lease payment quoted after a site assessment, deploy and integrate the unit, train the crew and service it through our nationwide US engineer network. Planning the robot and the crew together from that first assessment is the approach we take.