When a major sleep aid appliance manufacturer in Pennsylvania determined they had outgrown their overcrowded manufacturing facility (they had NO breathing space!) and had no room to expand the existing space, they determined that the best course of action was to build a new state-of-the-art facility. The company had 2 options, either move the operation overseas to reduce labor costs, or stay with what they knew would work. The desire was to stay put and the company went to work with state and local governments to obtain much-needed incentives for personnel training and tax abatement. A nearby location was acquired and construction began on a new multi-million dollar facility. A new facility means you can use new technologies and the company was ready for a change – things were going to be different around this facility and smooth operations were going to be the goal!

The key was creating a new facility design team to plan and create a new manufacturing conveying system for the facility. The manufacturing floor would ultimately consist of up to eleven (11) manufacturing lines, two (2) final packaging areas, and fully automated palletizing of finished products at a design rate in excess of 20,000 units per day – kind of takes your breath away! The facility would consist of an extensive conveyor system for transport of the products, packaging, final inspection, sorting, and palletizing. The material handling system utilizes almost exclusively MDR accumulation conveyor for transport of the boxed medical appliance through the process final packaging, adding accessory devices, and final confirmation. The control system incorporates 24 volt motorized drive roller (MDR) conveyor controls, routing control, and sortation management controls. All controls interface with the client SAP Manufacturing & Business System

A scanner reads the serial number label on the bottom of the appliance in the carton. This serial number is transmitted to SAP and an identifier label is printed and applied to the side of the carton. The box is also identified in the system and basically the information travels along with the box through the final pack-out area. When the box arrives at a workstation where material needs to be added it “tells” the workstation operator what needs to be added to the carton. This process is repeated through the final assembly area until the carton has all the necessary contents.

Once the final packaging is finished the package passes over a weight check scale to mechanically verify expected package weight against the manifest. Yes, we’re sure!

Next the boxes proceed to the pallet load accumulation area consisting of 12 accumulation lanes, which feed the automatic palletizer. A unique problem that occurred in the design of the pallet load accumulation area was the requirement that periodically throughout the manufacturing day, test products may be injected into the build cycle. These test products (sometimes as few as 5 a day) need to be sorted out of the mixed accumulation lane. Because each product and box has a unique ID label and the information travels with it through the system, the packages can easily be identified, released, and re-routed by means of a reversible MDR conveyor back to the beginning of the sorting area where the targeted packages are pulled out and routed to the palletizing area.

Diagnostic aids were also created for the maintenance staff including Graphic User Interface (GUI) screens for the entire conveyor layout. Roll-On configuration and diagnostics tools are provided for the MDR conveyor controls, and the entire control system is accessible remotely via VPN Internet access.

Thanks to a well-orchestrated integration team –the new facility is humming right along and manufacturing is indeed Breathing Easier in Pennsylvania!
A Perfect Fit!
The resulting success that was achieved by adding this automated receiving process can be measured by an 80% increase in throughput (think output but nothing goes “out” - it moves “through” the receiving system). Also quality control achieved a huge reduction in mistakes – down to a fraction of what they were before the process was in place. Success!!
The solution proved to be a “perfect fit”!