Skillful conveying with turntable

Durable has specialized in quality products for office supplies for more than 80 years. Whether tablet accessories or desk lamps, the office supplies specialist has a wide range of products. This ranges from classic office supplies to ultra-modern products that support the combination of analog and digital work. Durable secures its strong market position by constantly developing innovative products. For example, the company has launched the Luctra lighting range onto the market. This is a biologically effective LED lighting system for the workplace.

Expansion of the product range requires larger cartons

With Luctra and other products, increasingly larger cardboard boxes have found their way into the dispatch area at the Iserlohn site. For efficient logistics processes in parcel loading, it was therefore essential that the conveyor lines could transport cardboard boxes from A4 format up to the size of a Euro pallet flexibly and efficiently. At the same time, physical strain on the employees needed to be reduced. For this reason, those responsible at Durable decided to expand the existing conveyor system and connect the large-volume packing station.

The manufacturer of office supplies has been using conveyor technology from AMI since 1994. The existing system already came from AMI Förder- und Lagertechnik GmbH, which offered ideal conditions for expanding the PLC program, among other things. At the beginning of January 2016, the expansion of the existing solution was therefore carried out in collaboration with this long-standing partner.

New packing station for large parcels

Due to the increasingly larger parcels, Durable decided to build another large-volume packing station. In the course of this, a connection was created and the defective scissor roller conveyor was replaced. With the previous solution, the large-volume packing station was not connected and manual loading onto the scissor roller conveyors was necessary.

On the one hand, the expansion is intended to ensure more efficient processes and, at the same time, relieve the employees of their daily tasks. As part of this, AMI developed and connected a telescopic conveyor that can be moved on rails and a turntable connected to it to the existing system. In addition, a connection of two feeders was created - feeder 2 is capable of transporting a maximum package size of 1,200 × 800 mm. At the same time, those responsible attached great importance to having as few interfaces as possible in order to avoid communication errors.

In total, a belt conveyor, a driven roller curve, two roller turntables and associated roller segments, two roller conveyors, a telescope, a driven transition (motorized roller) and two sword locks were integrated as part of the new conveyor technology solution.

Implementation over the weekend

"The implementation of the conveyor technology by the AMI team and the telescopic belt conveyor by Budde took place over a weekend and was then ready for use during ongoing operations," explains AMI project manager Mark Rudhart. "In the first step, however, the conveyor speed was too high for the different package sizes, so that clean positioning on the turntable could not be achieved. After replacing the drive motors of the turntables, it was possible to transport at a lower conveying speed and thus achieve an optimum result. For Durable, the focus in parcel loading is particularly on the safe, gentle and flexible transportation of the parcels. The aim is to transport and load the various cartons into the truck undamaged within the specified time window. This smooth process is guaranteed with the new solution," adds Marc Rudhart.

Performance increased by 30 percent

"In the area of transporting large volume packages, we were able to achieve a performance gain of around 30 percent after just a short time," explains Thomas Koch, project engineer at Durable. "At the same time, this solution supports and relieves employees in their lifting processes. They used to have to pick up the parcels twice, now they only have to do it once. The part of the system that supports the employee when packing the parcels is also height-adjustable and can therefore be adapted to different body sizes. Every employee can now work ergonomically," adds Thomas Koch.

The system is also designed to be future-proof and expandable. For example, additional packing stations can be connected. "No specific expansion is currently planned, but further expansion stages are conceivable in the future as the product range expands and demand continues to rise. With the AMI system, we are able to react flexibly to new circumstances at any time," concludes Thomas Koch.

Ulrike Peter