At Advanced Drainage Solutions (ADS), the company’s 10-foot-long septic
stack pipes, made of corrugated plastic, were proving hard to handle on a
line that operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Not only were
personnel facing ergonomic challenges that impeded upon the company’s safety
focus, labor was becoming increasingly difficult to find for this cumbersome
role.
To prioritize higher-value work for ADS employees, the company sought out
FANUC’s Authorized System Integrator, JR Automation, to fully automate this
pipe extrusion process and reduce the risk to employees.
Kicking off the project with a full on-site tour of ADS allowed JR
Automation a thorough understanding of the upstream process, floor space
requirements and overall atmosphere in order to develop the best solution.
In this case, a custom hopper was developed, optimizing the strapping and
palletizing of the plastic pipes. Using three vertical magazines, the
machine can hold up to 18 pipes, controlled through the whole process
without ever losing hold, and therefore minimizing the required touchpoints
for ADS. The advanced robotic solution helps keep employees safer, improves quality and contributes to increased production throughput. Each of these benefits play
a role in contributing to the success of ADS and have also helped the
company realize the valuable role that automation can play in future growth
plans.