Page 18 - Industrial Technology magazine February 2021 issue

Small batch sizes and a competitive market France. With this project for L’Oréal, the collect and move pucks between systems
characterise the cosmetics industry. To survive world’s largest cosmetics company, SECAD when they have moved through an individual
in this market, producers must strive for was faced with the task of merging six station. These machines must also be serviced
maximum efficiency, capitalising on flexible separate production lines including the and maintained, adding to the maintenance
production methods. Top class engineering unstacking, filling and labelling of cosmetic costs. In the case of L’Oréal, several
and the most modern drive and control bottles in one single production line. An accumulation vessels were required to
methods play a major role in achieving this. additional task was that of significantly
reducing the throughput time. Handling small,
light and fragile products, for example in the
Position of the system Horizontal filling and labelling of cosmetic and
pharmaceutical products, requires specialist
Length of the system machinery. Traditionally, conveyor belts
(unwound one circuit) 33m with ‘puck handling’ are used to move
products from one work station to the
Number of movers 70 next. The puck, also called the product
carrier, transport cup or carrier,
Time for one mover to guarantees stability and optimal
complete one circuit 41.95sec position of the product. At first
glance, this traditional solution looks
Life required in years >=5 years the most sensible and economic
option, but on closer inspection there
are flaws to be found.
SECAD, a specialist machine building
company in France, states: “The performance On traditional product transport
of a system is greater than the sum of the methods, individual work stations are
individual parts; it is the result of their connected by a series of conveyors.
interaction.” SECAD should know; the Consequently, a large plant footprint is
company regularly develops machines for required. Separate work cells and
giants of the cosmetics industry. “Every new connecting conveyors need more space
project presents new challenges,” says Kevin than a standardised system that facilitates a
Gomes, machine engineer for this specialist range of processes. Furthermore, additional
machine building company in Northern equipment and machinery is needed to complete the
transfer of pucks
from system to
system. Another factor to consider with
traditional setups is that a large number of
pucks are required to achieve sufficient
product throughput and allow continuous
flow where processing times differ. A total of
300 pucks were being used by L’Oréal in the
existing processing plant. In the new cell, this
quantity could be reduced by 76% to only
70 pucks, whilst simultaneously increasing
productivity. The accumulation vessels would
also no longer be required. “Simply by
reducing the quantity of pucks in the system,
significant savings can be made in terms of
In this cosmetics application, six separate production lines are merged in one single economy of scale,” commented SECAD on
production line with a focus on maximum efficiency. the results.

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