Robotic Palletizing Solutions by Pearson Packaging Systems

Operational efficiencies are all about cutting costs and increasing production throughput. In the ongoing struggle to combat supply chain pressures and maintain healthy margins, automation plays a vital role and robotic palletizers are a key component.

• Increased speed: Being at the end of the packaging line, the palletization can become a bottleneck if it cannot keep up with the product flow upstream. Automating this process will enable your operation to keep up with the throughput demands.
• Reduce injuries: Palletizing is a notorious source for injuries from constant lifting and bending. An automatic palletizer will protect your workers and your company from unnecessary L&I claims.
• Reduced labor costs: Our robotic palletizer can work around the clock. It does not require breaks, stacks pallets faster than most people can, and won’t get tired or sick. And instead of rising wages, your per hour cost will only go down.

Whether you're stacking full layers or handling individual boxes, bags, pails, or drums, Pearson's robotic palletizing solutions deliver fast, consistent, and reliable performance. With a wide range of models and decades of experience, we offer flexible options to meet your needs for cell size, payload capacity, cycle speed, flexibility, and most importantly, gentle product handling.

Robotic vs Traditional Palletizing

Robotic palletization offers distinct advantages over conventional methods. Smaller footprint, multi-tasking ability, flexibility to accommodate changes in product or pallet patterns and automatic tool changeovers are just a few. In addition, the cost of robots and cobots has significantly decreased over the past decade making robotic palletizers not only a viable option but often a preferred one. While mechanical palletizers are very useful in extremely fast and low variability applications, they also require more energy and maintenance.

Robotic Palletizers Configured to Your Needs

Automating your palletizing operation can have big pay-offs but to ensure that the end result provides you with all the benefits you hoped for, we need to understand your unique palletization requirements, challenges and limitations. With your Pearson sales manager and application engineer, we will gather detailed information to quote and design an optimal palletizing solution for your packaging operation. The following list is not exhaustive but provides a good overview of some of the details we like to understand.

• Case/Product information: We will need to know what type of case or product you are running such as RSC, HSC, Bags or trays. How many different SKU’s do you want the machine to handle? Per SKU, we will need dimensions, weight, type of seal and case rate. In addition, we will ask you about how the product enters the robotic palletizer.
• Pallet information: To build your desired pallet patterns, we need to understand what they look like, how many you have, if you require pallet sheets or layer sheets, what type of pallets you use (GMA, ChEP or HT), their weight and dimension.
• Production environment: Important aspects for us to know are your ambient temperature to evaluate if the robotic palletizer will need heat or cooling support, if there are any physical obstructions, your ceiling heights, and what your concrete thickness is; to adequately support the robot and production flow and discharge heights.
• Built-in capabilities: Do you need automatic pallet dispensing, stretch wrapping or any other extended capability?
• Specification requirements:  Does your company have specific technical requirements for guarding, electrical or air?

Standard Palletizers for Space and Cost-Savings

Generally, robotic projects are highly customized to the application taking product type, size and weight, infeed and discharge requirements, amount of SKUs and other project requirements into account. However, in working with many of our customers over the past thirty years of robotic integration, we were able to identify commonalities that allowed us to develop a standardized product offering. Our portfolio features four different models that are all highly cost-effective, space-conscious and user-friendly. As a standardized product, our standard robotic palletizers also have a short lead time. They are built on a common base, which can be loaded onto a truck with a forklift and allows for quick start-up and portability within your manufacturing facility.

• Compact Palletizer: Our RPC-C is our smallest unit at just over 10x7 ft. The robotic cell offers a single pallet build station with manual load/unload function
• Dual Floor Palletizer: Our RPC-DF doubles your build stations to provide continuous operation but maintains a manual load/unload function.
• Over/Under Palletizer: Our RPC-OU has a dual pallet conveyor. Empty pallets are supplied on the bottom level while full pallets are discharged on the upper level providing continuous operations without manual interference.
• Pallet Handling Palletizer: Our RPC-PH automates not only the pallet load and discharge function but it also provides automatic slip sheet handling.

Simple Operation with Intuitive HMI

Despite the proliferation of robots in the packaging automation industry, some customers are still hesitant because they expect that they need specialized knowledge to operate and maintain the robotic cell. Pearson’s Human-Machine-Interface or short HMI is designed to be intuitive for new users. In addition to fault alerts and instructions on how to clear a fault, a simple-to-use pallet configuration tool allows you to quickly create, modify, copy or clear new pallet pattern recipes or adjust parameters such as case or pallet height, number of layers, pick/drop speeds or delays during production.