Blog

Palletising is a simple, highly repetitive, labour intensive task which many industries are still performing by hand. Each year, fewer people are applying for palletising related positions, undoubtedly due to the strenuous and mundane nature of the tasks. Without question, palletising is a poor use of a worker’s time, particularly when palletising is a task perfectly suited to automation.  

Palletising can be done much more efficiently with collaborative robots such as CoboTend and CoboTower. With boxes accurately picked up by EOAT grippers and stacked onto pallets, palletising with cobots is one of the many possible ways SMEs can secure a competitive advantage and take a leap ahead into the fifth industrial revolution. 

Bringing a revolutionary approach to optimising end-of-line palletising, cobots provide a safe, flexible and compact solution to increasing productivity and getting stock ready for transport.

What is Palletising? 

Palletising involves strategically placing products on pallets for transportation, storage, or distribution. This is a key process in any production facility, with consideration to weight distribution, stability and spatial efficiency playing an important role. The end goal is to maximise the amount of products in the load while being stacked in a way that ensures it is stable enough to withstand any stresses during the shipping process. 

Having a reliable and efficient palletising system is crucial to business continuity. However, it can quickly become a bottleneck without the appropriate resources. Manual palletising is a time-consuming and monotonous task that requires little initiative, creativity, or problem-solving skills. This has led to a significant labour shortage as people look for more challenging and rewarding roles. And those that do carry out palletising tasks are at risk of long-term health problems due to the repetitive and strenuous nature of the job.

Palletising with Collaborative Robots

Palletising naturally lends itself to cobots, and they are being leveraged in numerous industries to improve fulfilment processes. Meeting strict packing standards, palletising cobots offer a highly effective, error-free solution to meet the demands of ergonomically unfavourable, repetitive work. Facilitating the lifting of heaving loads, cobots can stack products in a specific pattern to maximise the load and reduce the chance of items falling in transit. Provided there is a constant feed of goods and pallets, automated palletising can continue 24 hours a day to significantly reduce cycle time and get products to the market faster. With cobots performing monotonous palletising tasks, workers can focus on tasks which are more challenging and have a greater impact to the business. 

The flexibility and ease of programming cobots compared to robots is a key decision for SMEs when choosing an automation solution. For many manufacturers and production facilities, cobots are capable of handling a host of variables in palletising scenarios, such as the weight of the products, how high it needs to palletise, and how fast the conveyor is churning out products. The space space size of a cobot, like CoboTower, also facilitates a quick integration period and enhanced safety in the working environment. 

Palletising is a broad term and is used for a wide range of tasks. From handling delicate items like glass, cumbersome boxes and unusual shapes which are difficult to grab, to products that can be damaged by the human touch or even hazardous materials, cobots are capable of handling it all with the right end of arm tooling. Tooling such as grippers allow cobots to have virtually every type of palletising task. Magnetic grippers are primed to move metal objects, vacuum grippers use suction to move objects which are hard to hand or easy to damage, while pneumatic grippers can hold items with great precision. Integrating the correct EOAT can make the possibilities of cobots endless. 

Advantages of Automated Palletising

Cobots execute tasks with unparalleled accuracy and a work ethic that only machines can possess. By integrating cobots to carry out palletising tasks, SMEs can benefits from: 

Increased productivity: Capable of running with no downtime, cobots increase the overall productivity and efficiency of palletising operations. In addition, with production capacity maximised by collaborative robots, they provide space for employees to be of greater value elsewhere in the production process. 

Compact design: Space requirements, particularly during end-of-line processes, are a pressing challenge when adopting automation. A cobots compact design and small footprint, like that of CoboTower’s, make them easy to integrate into existing production environments and quickly take advantage of automated palletising technology. 

Flexibility: The adaptability and short deployment time of cobots make them highly suitable for dynamic manufacturing environments. They can be quickly reprogrammed and trained to handle different products and palletising patterns. This flexibility is incredibly valuable where production lines frequently change or there is the need to handle various sizes and shapes.

Enhanced safety: While it may seem simple, palletising brings with it a host of health and safety issues. With the ability to repeatedly lift items up to 35kg (when using UR30), cobots protect workers from physically demanding tasks and improve the ergonomics of the working environment.

Improved job satisfaction and decreased turnover: When jobs are made safer and more engaging, job satisfaction undoubtedly increases. This in turn also means workers are less likely to leave their job and you are able to create a loyal workforce by integrating new technologies. 

Palletising Simplified with Cobots Online

Choosing the right palletising cobot solution can have a significant impact on productivity, safety, and operational efficiency.

From project inception to the cobot loading products onto pallets, Cobots Online provides expert advice and knowledge to help create an automation solution that enhances your palletising operations. 

With our range of cobots, your chosen cobot palletising cell will be running quickly and producing results in no time. Contact our automation experts to embrace the benefits of palletising with collaborative robots.