Industrial equipment supplier Robotic Automation hosted the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for a factory tour on the last day of campaigning before the election.
Based in Newington, Sydney, the company welcomed the PM, Craig Laundy (MP and now Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science) and Senator Marise Payne (Minister for defence), along with the PM’s wife Lucy Turnbull and daughter Daisy for a tour around a robotic packaging and palletising cell, which was recently completed by the robotic automation team.
This high-density cell handles 26 different product and packaging configurations of bottled vitamins within a cell space of less than 5m x 5m.
Robotic Automation is currently installing such cells at two different pharmaceutical manufacturers in NSW and QLD.
These clients decided to automate due to health and safety concerns for their staff.
The repetitive nature of packaging processes can be very damaging to body joints and muscles, according to owner and director Colin Wells.
Automation also provided the supplier with productivity and efficiency benefits which allow local manufacturing to compete globally.
In his speech on the day, Turnbull praised Wells and his team for leading the way in Australian innovation.
“His system covers Australian design, Australian programming, and Australian systems integration, and he does this across many industries and businesses,” he said.
“We are just looking at one here as an example, which will mean an Australian manufacturer of pharmaceuticals will be able to continue doing so in Australia.”
The robotic cell receives nine different types of bottled vitamins from an infeed line and, using two Yaskawa Motoman robots, outputs a neat and stable pallet of cartoned product through such functions as multi-pack wrapping; wrapping and heat-shrink securement of multi-packs; and robotic handling and tending of multi-packs to an automatic barcode labelling machine.
