Neubauplan Automation Machines Pvt. Ltd. of Pune has designed and tested a unique end-of-line automation that can be used by FMCG factories for economical high-speed packing of products into shipping cartons that does away with dependence on large numbers of skilled labour.

By Huned Contractor

It would seem rather improbable that a company turning out huge volumes of products, for instance, would invest many crores in their production line machines but would manually handle the final part of the process - the packing the consumer products into shipping cartons for dispatch to warehouses and wholesalers, and then further on to the retailers. That's what took Pune-based design engineer Harshwardhan Gupta by surprise too when he began to visit companies making fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs). This was about three years ago. A mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Bombay with 100 major design-to-prototype-proving projects and sustained hands-on experience of design, detailing, assembly and troubleshooting to his credit, Gupta soon applied his mind and experience to tie up this loose end.

Now, Gupta has designed, built and patented a unique machine that solves this major bottleneck witnessed across all FMCG manufacturing units in India. With the first machine successfully running under trials at his factory in Pune, Gupta says his invention is the first-of-its-kind economical automated solution that has the capability of packing large quantities of soaps, shampoos, biscuit packets, round cans or any such product at the rate of about 500 per minute into the ordinary cartons that are used for delivery.

"All large-volume FMCG goods 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 time-consuming and laborious task that depends on a large workforce. My machine solves that problem," Gupta explains. One might argue that labour is cheap in India, so it is not worth automating something that can be done by hand.

After all, how difficult can it be to fill a box? However, it's a different story on the ground and as Gupta elaborates, "Good workers are scarce and have to be well-trained to do these kinds of repetitive machine-paced tasks. The production managers of such lines have to routinely deal with absenteeism, attrition, 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 they detect the short-fill only after the mistake has been made and secondly, even the best in-line check-weigher with 1 per cent accuracy cannot detect a shortfall of one product if the case contains, say, 150 of them."

Taking all such factors into consideration, Gupta, under the aegis of his new company, Neubauplan Automation Machines Private Ltd, has devised a product collating-filling machine coupled with a unique carton erector. His first machine has been designed for a high-speed toilet-soap production line of up to 480 SKU/minute. "This machine's design is essentially modular, and can easily be adapted to a variety of products types and lines, each with several variants of products and carton sizes running on them," he points out.

The system comprises two coordinated machines - a collating-filling machine, Boxfil, in tandem with a carton erector, Cartonup. Boxfil accepts the product directly from the upstream packaging machines via conveyors, 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," says Gupta.

Boxfil can either be installed as a stand-alone machine, or in tandem with Cartonup, which is the world's first machine to consistently erect any quality of cartons, even really low-grammage, low-strength ones generally used for low-value FMCGs. Patents have been filed for both these machines. "The system we have designed has several distinct advantages. 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 2-3 years at best. Such a high-speed machine runs entirely on innovative pneumatics - no servomotors!" Gupta points out.

Coming back to why a manual packing regimen is no longer feasible, Gupta says, "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 unskilled labourers to pick up the products from the incoming conveyor and place them in the shipping case. So today's high-speed lines of 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."

However, it is not as if such machines are unheard of. These are usually made in Europe and custom-built machines imported have always been prohibitively expensive as a rule. Imported designs 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. The use of high-quality cartons also carries a heavy environmental cost as paper for higher-strength cartons is made from wood fibre, and that for low-quality cartons is made from recycled paper and agricultural waste.

About Boxfil+Cartonup, Gupta says, "Our machine consumes minimal energy - a total of 6 kW! It is low-maintenance, lubrication-free, contaminant-free and easy to change over without requiring skilled technicians. It is also economical, reliable and compact. My design philosophy is to combine simplicity with high performance, and no compromising on design, materials or workmanship."

In this new venture, Gupta was 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 employees. NAMPL's precursor Neubauplan Machine Design Studio began in August 1981 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 blisterpacking machines to modular conveyors, coconut pith dewaterers to balloon-folding machines, automated crack-detecting machines for con-cast billets to yarn-testing machines, etc. Some are so small that they fit in the palm of your hand, while others are as large as a house. In spite of being a virtual 'one man show', Neubauplan MDS's client and user list is impressive: JK Files, Messung, Swedish Match, Pidilite, Milindia, Patel Aluminium, Hindustan Pencils, Electronica, Pharmalab, Raychem RPG, Raman Boards, NEI Bearings, Bilcare, Century Enka, IMA-PG, Streamline Innovations in USA, SmithKline Beecham in UK, Mukand, Cipla, and many others.

(For details, e-mail Harshwardhan Gupta at harsh@neubauplan.com or call on 020-26851159. Website: www.neubauplan.com)