[Press] Robots excel at packaging

MG Tech opens North American facility.

MG Tech specializes in industrial robots for end-of-line packaging solutions, as well as automated guided vehicles (AGVs), autonomous intelligent vehicles (AIVs) and autonomous mobile robots(AMRs), especially for food production, pharma-cosmetic and industrial sectors.

With products ranging from cartoning and packaging machines to pallet loaders and conveyors,MG Tech manufactures both stand-alone machines and full-service automized packaging lines.Machines are connected to an online platform that collects real-time data on machine performance, allowing companies to schedule preventive maintenance or organize an internal training session.
MG Tech machines incorporate technologies from suppliers such as Yaskawa, Schneider Electricand Rockwell Automation. “We have been working with MG Tech for several years in France,”explains Gerald Auverdin, OEM sales manager at Rockwell Automation. “Over that time, MG hasdemonstrated solid technical skills with our Rockwell Automation products, including our magneticconveying solution. We are happy to continue our partnership with them via the new Canadianoffice.”

MG Tech works with a range of automations systems to better respond to clients’ needs.

“We understood early on in our development that a fluid and connected end-of-production line wasessential for our client base, and we have continued to work toward maintaining and improving thisapproach” says Xavier Lucas, COO of MG Tech.

This strategy has already appealed to North American clients, as MG Tech has helped several companies to find the best fit for their packaging needs. MG Tech already equips a dozen clients inNorth America, including Savencia, Nemera Group and Lanthier Bakery, with whom they work closely in Quebec.

The North American team will be in Booth N4975 at Pack Expo in Chicago October 24-26 to demonstrate the cobot palletizer, equipped with a Yaskawa robot and Rockwell Motologics technology, allowing it to be programmed and controlled with a machine remote. Charles Girault, business manager at MG Tech shares his thoughts on state-of-the-art packaging applications.

Interview of Charles GIRAULT, Business Developer

Tell us about your company’s state-of-the-art packaging-machinery technology.

MG Tech is designer and manufacturer of cartonend-of-line equipment dedicated to the food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and industrial markets. The biggest improvement to MG Tech’s packaging machinery in the past five years is, for sure, the use of robotics in all its machine range to realize loading phases at least, and sometimes also carton forming and closing. To achieve this, MG Tech has developed its own robots—poly-articulated and three-, four- and five-axis Delta robots—and has developed strong partnerships with robot and cobot suppliers, such as Yaskawa and Fanuc (Figure 1). Most of the robotic solutions are connected to vision solutions.

What’s the most innovative or efficient packaging-machinery application you’ve ever seen or been involved with?

One of the most impressive and efficient machines MG Tech has produced is a monobloc cartoning line, whose main functions are box forming from flat carton blanks—solid board—up to 100 cartons/minute, receive biscuits into flowpacks in one or two lanes up to 400 flowpacks/minute, pick flowpacks and group them into cartons continuously using nine Delta robots working with a vision-driven double tracking on product and carton, and carton closing when it has been loaded with two additional Delta robots. Mechanical efficiency of this monobloc machine achieving four main functions—forming, picking, loading and closing—is more than 98.5%.

How has packaging machinery benefitted from remote monitoring and connectivity?

MG Tech machines are all delivered with its new In Use platform. This platform enables customers to have access to its machinery updated documentation and a chat area with the service department, but, more than this, it offers an optional monitoring of equipment, checking production and efficiency data, introducing predictive maintenance.
Machines are equipped with a tele maintenance system, which can completed with cameras ideallyplaced in the machine to record events when they happen.

Can you explain how software development has changed packaging machinery’s design and production?

MG Tech software engineers have strongly developed the ability to interface a large number of robots working on a double tracking principle.

What future innovations will impact the use of packaging machinery in manufacturing operations?

MG Tech already thinks about the future of packaging lines. For two years, MG Tech has been developing around mobile robotics to offer collaborative solutions to operators in its lines or to take in charge pallets when completed and extend its know-how to the intralogistics world.

Article written by Mike Bacidore and published in Control Design magazine in August 2022