Fast food restaurants are popular the world over, no more so than in the USA, where there are some 200,000 sites, serving approximately 50 million customers each day. With around 60,000 of these restaurants dedicated to hamburgers, supporting these businesses are the bakeries that have the challenge of producing vast quantities of fresh buns each day.
Production volumes such as this require the implementation of automation, and since 2003, Pennsylvania based Workhorse Automation has been leading the commercial bakery automation sector with a wide range of pan handling and storage equipment, including 4 axis palletizing robots, used for pan stacking applications. However, if greater levels of flexibility and improved capacity are to be achieved, then alternative solutions would be required.
Following extensive research and development, Workhorse Automation settled on a solution based upon a 2-axis Güdel ZP-4 gantry robot module, with Allen-Bradley motion and programmable logic controls. This new solution allows Workhorse Automation’s clients to increase stacking system
speeds whilst continuing to deliver the safe, gentle, and accurate stacking systems that customers have come to expect. To create a user and maintenance friendly turnkey automated system, Workhorse Automation’s engineers integrated the conveying systems, end-of-arm tooling and an Allen-Bradley control system to the gantry. The company’s first Güdel gantry-based system, installed several years ago,
continues to operate successfully at Northeast Foods – Automatic Rolls of North Carolina.
This facility produces 1,400 buns per minute, or 2 million over a 24-hour period, primarily for McDonald’s restaurants, using the Güdel gantry-based pan-stacking systems together with the Workhorse Automation automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RSs). Each Workhorse Automation system includes as many Güdel ZP-4 gantry vertical axes as necessary to meet the throughput requirements of the system. Therefore, in some systems, two vertical axes are located over the same bun-pan conveying system to meet processing requirements, with each vertical axis individually capable of stacking and de- stacking pans.
The Z and Y strokes of the gantry will be determined by the individual customers application requirements on the size and number of pans to be handled. The pan stacking / de-stacking system provides a critical function in the process, as pans are specific to the type of bun being produced. The Northeast Foods facility makes four different styles of buns every day, each requiring a different style of pan. The changeover process of the pans is automatically handled by the automation, with the system moving from one pan type to the next without significant loss of throughput. The only time humans interact with the system is to visually check and confirm that the last pan has cleared the system at the end of a production run.
“The Güdel gantry system allowed us to significantly improve the pan-stacking process,” says Ken Mentch, Workhorse Automation Sales Manager. “With Güdel’s gantry robots, we can increase the pan size and weight handled, as well as handle multiple pans simultaneously, reducing the motion speed requirements. The gantry gives us the exact work envelope needed for the application, increasing system safety and reducing the floor space required.” In addition, replacing the conventional magnetic machine used previously for pan stacking — known in the industry as the “pan crusher” — reduces the damage to the pans and the noise generated from the pan-handling process. “The gantry allows us to create a gentler, quieter and smoother automation system,” Mentch says.
During the past few years, the bakery industry has taken note of the gantry system’s improved operation and reliability, moving the industry away from traditional technologies and toward robotic automation. Not only are current customers installing additional systems but new customers are coming to Workhorse for these proven solutions as well. Güdel has supported Workhorse Automation through this growth phase.
