BAXTER LABORATORIES

The first customer to take advantage of ADDE’s innovative ZFP solution is Baxter Laboratories, a Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) licensed manufacturer based in Victoria.

ADDE has created a collaborative case-packing and palletising system for the company, which uses a Universal Robots’ UR5 robotic arm to assist in packing 12 insect repellent spray bottles into a semi-automatic carton assembler. An ADDE’s ZFP, which integrates a UR10 robotic arm, then packs the boxes onto a pallet, ready to be distributed.

The ZFP can be configured for single pallets for minimum footprint or in a double pallet configuration for automatic pallet changing. Baxter Laboratories operations manager Ian Tilley says prior to installation, the company employed three staff members working along the production line – two responsible for packing the sprays and a third person to load pallets. “The whole process has become safer and more efficient,” he says. “We now have one employee who erects the box, waits for it to be filled by the UR5, then pushes the box to the tape sealer before it is then passed along to the ZFP, which picks up the finished box and places it onto a pallet for distribution.

The other employees formerly performing the palletising and packing have been redirected to safer, more value adding tasks that are less monotonous.  One of our most monotonous and difficult jobs is actually stacking pallets, so we looked at the market and couldn’t find anything in the traditional space without big robots and big cages – we needed something safe and space efficient. Having the minimal factory floor footprint that we required, we selected and thoroughly risk assessed the ZFP before deciding it could be safely operated without guarding.” Baxter Laboratories has plans to implement four more ADDE-designed palletisers which are already on order and soon to be installed.