Two years ago, Schubert began to reconfigure Henkel’s Viersen-Dülken, Germany factory to enable it to specialise in hair colouring products. The factory now has one of the most modern production lines in the world. As Henkel is considered the technology leader in hair dye products in Europe, if not the rest of the world, the brief was to create the packaging line that would mirror its forward thinking positioning. So Schubert installed two TLM robotic packaging machines that Henkel factory director, Rolf Müller-Grünow, has described as the way to the future.
“These lines don’t just produce up to 50% faster than all conventional packaging lines. Format changes are easier and more efficient. Thanks to Schubert, we can now switch between the different national versions of hair colouring products much faster,” stated head of technology in the Beauty Care business area, Hans-Jürgen Kopp.
“We now have enormous freedom when it comes to design,” Kropp continued.
“We can make folding boxes with angled corners or process any other conceivable shape. We have now set a milestone in technology and can give our marketing department lots more elbow room in packaging design,” Müller-Grünow added.
Here is a description of Henkel's robototic “packaging line of the future” shown in the video below:
The individual components of the hair colouring products are supplied from magazines partly online and partly offline. IPS, Schubert’s own line engineering company, provides the corresponding feed systems for this purpose. With the exception of the packaging materials in magazines, the components are detected by Schubert scanners and then inserted into the package with millimeter precision by the TLM-F44 robots, but only after a positive quality assessment.
In the case of the carton with attached lid, it is erected from a flat lying blank and glued in the first two sub-machines and then transferred to the Transmodule in two rows. After the size change, the same sub-machines are used to de-stack the alternative packaging variant, the shaker. Another sub-machine closes the cartons and transfers them from the Transmodule to the discharge belt. After a size change, this sub-machine can be used to lid shakers.
