Neubauplan Automation Machines P Ltd of Pune has just designed, prototyped and patented a unique machine that solves a major bottleneck experienced across all FMCG manufacturing units

The Need

All large-volume FMCG goods such as soaps, shampoos, biscuits, etc., are typically manufactured on completely automated and high-speed lines. However, the finished and packaged products are put into shipping cases (usually corrugated cartons) by hand. This last process has always been a bottleneck in all FMCG industries, wherein a large workforce is employed to manually pack the products into shipping cartons. No economical automated solution existed for the Indian market, until today.

Why Automate?

One might argue that labour is cheap in India, so it is not worth automating something that can be done by hand - how difficult can it be to fill a box? However, it's a different story on the ground - good workers are scarce and have to be well-trained to do repetitive machine-paced tasks. The production managers of such lines have to routinely deal with absenteeism, attrition, IR issues, etc., and the management has to cope with ever-increasing wages and other emoluments.

Also, manually filled cases are at times short-filled, which leads to loss of brand-image amongst wholesalers and retailers, and leads to other losses like time spent in constantly receiving and filing short-fill reports. Check-weighers do not help as firstly, they detect the short-fill only after the mistake has been made; and secondly, even the best in-line check-weigher with 1% accuracy cannot detect a shortfall of one product if the case contains (say) 150 of them.

Today, the upstream machines that manufacture various FMCG products are getting faster and faster every day. Many of them run at speeds that make it increasingly difficult for semi-skilled labourers to pick up the products from the incoming conveyor and place them in the shipping case. So today's high-speed lines (above 150-200 packs a minute) need more than one "packer" and another dedicated person for "erecting" the carton, maybe yet another to fold the carton top and push it into the taping machine.

As almost all FMCG industries work 24x7, they necessarily employ this size of team for three shifts, thus multiplying the labour force and associated problems. Add overages to take care of weekly holidays and leaves. Any operations manager will tell you that contracting this out only transforms the headache into a different kind of pain, but does not solve any underlying problems.

"If two or three of the "regular packers" do not show up for their shift, we are forced to slow down or even shut down the production line!" laments the production chief of a large FMCG plant. These unscheduled slowdowns and stoppages cost the company several millions of rupees annually in terms of lost business, and added in-process material wastage in an otherwise continuous process. To curb this uncertainty and to increase the reliability of the system, automation is the only answer.

The Solution!

Machines to fill shipping cases are not new in the industry. They are however, designed around a very specific type of product, and are usually custom-built. Such machines are usually made in Europe; and custom-built machines from Europe have always been prohibitively expensive as a rule.

Machines also exist to erect shipping cartons from their as-supplied flat form, but none of them works well with the low-quality cartons used in the Indian FMCG scenario. One could switch over to a higher quality carton, but the huge volumes needed would push up the expenses by several crore rupees a year. Use of high-quality cartons also carries a heavy environmental cost - as paper for higher-strength cartons is made from wood fiber, and that for low-quality cartons is made from recycled paper and agricultural waste!

Now Neubauplan Automation Machines P Ltd (NAMPL) of Pune (a wholly Indian enterprise), has come up with an economical solution to solve this major problem. The company has designed, prototyped and patented, and is testing this unique product collating-filling machine coupled with a unique carton erector. The first machine is designed for a high-speed toilet-soap production line (up to 480 SKU/minute). This machine's design is essentially modular, and can easily be adapted to a variety of product types and lines, each with several variants of products and carton sizes running on them.

Special Features

Neubauplan's system comprises of two coordinated machines - a box-filling machine Boxfil in tandem with a carton erector Cartonup. Boxfil accepts the product directly from the upstream packaging machine via a conveyor, collates a single-layer matrix of the products, and nimbly places the matrix one at a time into an empty carton at very high speeds. The machine then top-closes the filled box and pushes it into a conventional taping machine. Placing a bottom board or a separator between layers is optional. Each Boxfil is tailored to a given production line and can accommodate a range of product-sizes with very few adjustments requiring no tools.

Boxfil can either be installed as a stand-alone machine, or in tandem with Cartonup, which is the world's first machine to erect any quality of cartons, even really low-grammage ones generally used for low-value FMCGs. Patents have been filed for both these machines.

"The system we have designed has several distinct advantages," says Harshwardhan Gupta - the designer of these machines, "Indeed, the modular design allows significantly shorter design, manufacturing, assembly and delivery time, lower costs, and quick repair if any is required. The machine's capital cost can typically be recovered in a couple of years at best. Such a high-speed machine runs entirely on innovative pneumatics - no servomotors!" he proudly says.

The Designer and his Team

NAMPL's precursor Neubauplan Machine Design Studio began in August '81 with an assignment for designing India's first wire-erosion machine for what is now Electronica Machine Tools Ltd. Since then, the little firm has designed over 100 different original machines - from packaging machines to modular conveyors to coconut pith dewaterers to balloon-folding machines to automated crack-detecting machines for con-cast billets to yarn-testing machines to pencil manufacturing machines. Some are so small that they fit in the palm of your hand, while others are as large as a house.

About Boxfil+Cartonup, Gupta says, "Our machine consumes minimal energy - a total of 5 kW! It is low-maintenance, lubrication-free, and easy to change over without requiring skilled technicians. It is economical, reliable and compact. My design philosophy is to combine simplicity with high performance, and no compromising on design, materials or workmanship."

In spite of being a virtual 'one-man show', Neubauplan MDS's client- and user-list is impressive: Messung, Swedish Match, Pidilite, Milindia, Patel Aluminium, Hindustan Pencils, Michigan Engineers, Electronica, Pharmalab, Raychem RPG, Raman Boards, NEI Bearings, Bilcare, Century Enka, IMA-PG, Streamline Innovations in USA, SmithKline Beecham in UK, Boots, Burroughs Wellcome, Mukand, Cipla, Core Parenterals, Hoechst, Johnson & Johnson, Ranbaxy...

In this new venture, Gupta is ably assisted by his daughter Maitreyi, MS & Dipl?me d'Ing?nieur, Arts et M?tiers ParisTech, France, and his son Mihir, BE Instrumentation & Controls, along with three dedicated employees. This team has built the first Boxfil+Cartonup machine; and is now busy conducting trials and debugging the design. The machine will shortly be installed on the first customer's line, and will be offered in the market soon afterwards.

For more details, kindly e-mail Mr Harshwardhan Gupta at harsh@neubauplan.com, or call him at 020-2685-1159. Website of the parent firm can be visited at www.neubauplan.com