Danish brewery Carlsberg said it has “significantly improved” staff safety and taken steps towards achieving zero accidents since integrating collaborative robots (cobots) into its Fredericia factory.
According to Thomas Kern Ruby, senior project manager at Carlsberg Fredericia, incidents were “a common occurrence” on the factory floor prior to the installation of two UR3 and UR10 cobots from Danish manufacturer Universal Robots.
“Although our production line was highly automated, it still required some degree of human input,” said Ruby.
“This was mainly during the packaging process, which saw our workforce manually carrying packaging cartons from the pallet to the magazine.
“This was a monotonous and strenuous task and often staff endured repetitive strain or sustained severe cuts while removing the packaging cable.”
With a 10kg payload, the UR10 is used by Carlsberg to pick up a stack of 10 cartons tied together with packaging cable.
The UR3 is used to cut and dispose of the cable and the UR10 then places the stack in the magazine.
Working in tandem, the cobots handle up to 500 packaging cartons per hour, enabling Carlsberg Fredericia’s human workforce to focus on “high-priority tasks”, such as quality control and line maintenance.
Ruby added: “This process previously accounted for 60% of one employee’s workload.
“Today, this stage only requires one operator to drive a pallet of cardboard boxes onto the line and oversee the process.”
Following the integration of the UR10 and UR3, Carlsberg has since purchased four additional cobots to further automate its production lines, including handling lids during the bottling process.
