FANUC Relieves the Heat for In-store Bakeries

In recent years, the company has been pushing an agenda of greater automation, which not only brings competitive differentiation, but delivers significant value to customers seeking higher productivity.

“We had already achieved partial automation of the baking process with our TrayMotion system, which loads and unloads trays of goods to and from the oven automatically,” explains Maike Strecker, Product Management, WIESHEU. “It was clear that the next steps would be automating the preceding and subsequent processes: loading baking trays, transporting loaded trays to the TrayMotion loading system, and transferring finished baked goods to customer-facing shelves ready for purchase.”

Turning to system integrator ASA Automation, which in turn engaged support from FANUC and additive manufacturing specialist LMD (for the grippers), the project team took shape.

Wolfram Lange, Sales & Engineering, ASA Automation GmbH, says: “It was clear that we would use FANUC because the CRX cobot series has a very easy user interface. Initially, there was some reluctance in the bakery industry to work with robots due to their perceived complexity, but FANUC has done a great deal to overcome this misapprehension.”

FANUC CRX cobots are ideally suited to bakery applications as they meets the sector’s demanding requirements. In this case, a CRX-10𝑖A/L 6-axis cobot offering 10 kg load capacity works without guards in close co-operation with human workers. An intelligent FANUC 𝑖RVision system and 3DV/600 3D vision sensor allows the CRX cobot to detect randomly positioned baked goods in a crate and pick them up. The system transmits information digitally to the cobot control. Using a product-specific, 3D-printed gripper, the cobot carefully picks up goods and fills the tray provided in the correct number, spacing each item accordingly to ensure even baking. The gripper gently but securely grips each baked product without compromising product integrity, a vital prerequisite for in-store bakeries. An auto-change gripper system facilitates system flexibility to suit different products.

The automated system provides an effective way to increase productivity and reduce costs in repetitive product handling applications.

“Here, we have an automated solution for the handling of baked goods, where we see the cobot as a helping hand,” says Wolfram Lange, Sales & Engineering, ASA Automation GmbH. “The CRX is ideal for these types of applications, especially for bakeries.”

By taking advantage of FANUC CRX series cobots, the harmonious interaction between bakery worker and machine becomes apparent. Without any protective devices or danger to the employee (in accordance with ISO 10218-1 safety standards), human and cobot work ‘hand-in-hand’.