EP1299304B1 - Method and production system for filling, closing, fitting and/or packing containers - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to a method and a production system for filling, closing (15), fitting and/or packing (18, 21, 23) containers or the like, whereby said containers are stored (17) temporarily, at the earliest after being closed (15), and at the latest before being packed.

Description

The invention relates to a method and a production plant for filling, closing, equipping and packaging vessels or the like according to the preamble of claims 1 and 10. Such a process and such a plant are known, for example, from US-A-5,366,063 ,

For filling and packaging of drinks, food or similar In vessels such as bottles or the like. Containers are used production equipment, which are usually formed from a variety of machines linked by transporters to a complete line. Which machines are used in detail depends, among other things, on whether disposable or reusable containers are to be processed. Furthermore, the type of packaging (box, tray, display, shrink wrap, carton wrap, carton, etc.), which in turn is influenced by the vessel material and ultimately the product to be filled, also plays a role. From a crude product store, vascular materials (bottles, cans, jars or the like) and others (jars, labels, adhesives, packaging material, bottoms, cleaners) are provided. The fully labeled, packed and palletized vessels at the end of a filling line are then usually taken to a delivery warehouse. This warehouse can be a picking warehouse, which is equipped with repacking and sorting facilities for the individual compilation of deliveries.

An example of a production plant typical of reusable bottle systems is shown in schematic form in FIG. 2 of German Patent DE 196 12 652 C1.

Practical experience shows that the concatenation of a large number of machines is connected to a completely continuous line with disadvantages, because disruptions of individual machines or line sections trigger consequential disturbances or interruptions of operation in front and / or downstream machines, which disadvantageously decreases the overall efficiency of a complete line. This problem is compounded by the fact that in the packaging sector (dry part) often cyclically operating machines are encountered, while the machines in the filling (wet) usually produce continuously.

To alleviate this situation, in particularly critical line areas, especially in the dry section, the transporters connecting the individual machines are designed as so-called buffer transporters having a high storage capacity in order to prevent the propagation of disturbances. This solution is not only space consuming, but also causes high costs for acquisition, operation and maintenance. In addition, buffer transporters and buffer storage devices themselves are an additional source of interference, for example, due to overturned or jammed bottles. Furthermore, the achievable buffer times are relatively narrow, since the buffer capacities can not be sized arbitrarily for economic reasons, ie only comparatively short-lasting disturbances can be successfully buffered, while longer-lasting interruptions penetrate yet on adjacent machines with time delay and reduce the efficiency of the system.

Furthermore, the use of machine buffer storage facilities, e.g. Example, from US 5,366,063, which are integrated between machines in a line, without spatially separating the continuous flow of material and allows a relatively short buffering within the line.

In addition, certain production processes, such as fillers or pasteurisers, should undergo constant, as far as possible, unaffected by foreign disturbances. Bottling drinks in particular is a process that ideally should be continuous so as not to affect the quality of the drinks. When filling beer, changing filling rates influence the foaming behavior and the oxygen uptake in a negative way. A filler stop triggered, for example, by a labeling or packaging machine arranged after a filling machine disadvantageously leads mostly to a discharge of a complete filler round.

Due to the increasing diversification of different products through different and more varied packaging and equipment variants, the number of equipment and packaging machines in a production plant is also increasing. With increasing equipment and / or packaging variety often loses the lot size per variant. The changeover work required in the production plant as part of a product variety change is fast in the area of the filling machine, while the expenditure of time in the field of equipment and packaging machines is higher, above all because of the more frequent changeover work - with increasing tendency. This means that during the conversion of the equipment and packaging part of the production plant, the filling capacity of the filling area lies idle unused. Because of this relationship, successive adjustments are avoided as far as possible in short time intervals; ie a conventional production plant operates with comparatively large batches, which cause correspondingly high inventories, and is with regard to a Demand-oriented, low-stock production (just-in-time) production is too inflexible.

To solve this problem is a tendency to substitute high-performance production facilities by several smaller-scale with lower output systems, but in principle have the same structure, recognizable. However, this concept causes a higher space requirement, personnel and maintenance costs.

The invention is therefore based on the object to provide a method for filling, closing, equipping and / or packaging of vessels and a production plant for this, which / which allows a low efficiency while maintaining high flexibility.

The problem is solved by the features of claim 1 and 10, respectively.

Due to the decoupling of the equipment and / or packaging process or area from the filling and closing process or area, the filling and closing of vessels advantageously unaffected by subsequent treatment steps go continuously with high performance and favorable efficiency vonstatten. At the same time an efficiency improvement in the equipment and / or packaging sector is achievable.

The separation of the hitherto continuous material flow in the area between the filling, sealing and the equipment and / or packaging machines also allows high flexibility on the equipment and packaging side without reducing the output of the filling, sealing machine.

An intermediate storage can also be used for the equipment and packaging part of the production plant to fulfill order picking tasks, so that the storage volume to be kept ready packed containers or containers in the distribution warehouse can be reduced, or such can possibly be dispensed with entirely, especially if In the equipment and packaging area of the production plant, several equipment and packaging lines can be designed to work in parallel. In this constellation, for example, the order-picking area can begin after the equipment machines, so that the vessels coming from the various equipment machines can be selectively fed to specific packaging machines in such a way that at the same time the load required for the shipment is given. Under this condition, a direct loading of transport vehicles (trucks or the like.) Without an intermediate distribution warehouse or segregated picking warehouse for the packaged Vollgut conceivable.

For temporary storage of the filled and closed vessels in the intermediate storage, it is expedient to palletise the vessels in batches of several layers, e.g. in displays or boxes. The pallets as a whole, the displays, boxes or even individual vessels can be coded for reliable recognition of the bottled product. For example, for labeling vessels, a marker which is invisible under normal circumstances can be used.

Further advantageous embodiments of the invention are the subject of the remaining dependent claims.

Hereinafter, an embodiment of a production plant will be explained with reference to the schematic representation in the single drawing.

The FIG. Shows a production plant P for bottling drinks or the like. Containers, the entire production plant P having essentially four sections or regions: a first storage area 1, a filling area 2, a second storage area 3 and an equipment and packaging area 4. The filling area 2 forms a first section and the furnishing and packaging area 4 forms a second section of the actual vessel treatment. Furthermore, there is also a functional order picking area, designated 5, which extends from a loading station 6 (truck loading or the like) into the packing area 4. In the drawing, the picking area 5 is identified by a dash-dotted line. By way of derogation from the illustration, it may possibly extend into the storage area 3 serving for intermediate storage, including the equipment machines (labeling machines). The demarcation of the picking area depends i.a. depending on whether only one or different types of beverage should be filled into uniform or individual containers. To control the picking tasks a computer control center 7 is present.

In storage area 1 there are provided for filling empty containers or containers, such as disposable bottles made of glass or plastic, which are palletized in layers and wrapped with serving as a transport protection film supplied by a bottle manufacturer to the camp. In addition to the storage of bottles, the storage area 1 can also serve for the provision of further raw materials, such as labels, closures, packaging material, adhesives, bottled goods, equipment cleaning agents, etc.

To remove the film from the bottle stacks a Entfoliermaschine 8 is present. From there, the stack of bottles standing on pallets reach a new-glass spout 9, which initially first picks up a slip cover lying on the uppermost bottle layer and drops it into a cover lid press 10 before the layer-by-layer expulsion of the individual bottle layers begins in successive work cycles. Always between two adjacent bottle layers is an intermediate layer of cardboard or plastic. These intermediate layers are collected in a designated container 11. The remaining after the removal of the bottommost bottle layer empty pallet enters an empty pallet magazine 12th

From Neuglasabschieber 9, the successively deported bottle layers are transferred to the bottles in a single-lane continuously conveyed bottle row transforming conveyor (conveyor belts) and transported by this in the direction of arrow to a standing in the filling area 2 inspection machine 13, the damaged or foreign body having bottles and ejects. By a further, also indicated by an arrow transport means the further transport of useful bottles to a rinser 14 and from there into a filler 15 with integrated capper takes place. Rinser, filler and capper can be combined in a conventional manner to a block unit. In the area after the capper, an unillustrated pasteurizer can be provided. After rinsing, filling and sealing (with a neutral or uniform closure), the bottles pass through a control and coding station 16, where, for example, filling level, closure, impermeability or other quality criteria are checked and, if necessary, an encoding indicating the content is applied. The Filling and sealing can be done continuously with high performance (60,000 to 80,000 bottles / hour).

Following this, the filled and controlled bottles are fed by means of a conveyor to a display palletizer 17. For batchwise storage of the bottles they are converted by this machine into displays and palletized in several layers. The loaded display pallets can now be transported in a conventional manner by forklift or even with a computer-controlled industrial truck to certain parking spaces A, B, C in the warehouse, e.g. depending on the beverage and / or bottle type.

Depending on the requirements from the Konunissionierbereich 5 via the computer 7 or manual input in Aussattungs- and packaging area 4, the display pallets from the aforementioned parking lots A, B, C targeted Bntpalettiertnaschinen 19a to 19c supplied, wherein the layers depalletized and removed from the displays Bottles can be fed via corresponding conveyors in three equipment and packaging lines 18a to 18c. Empty pallets released during the depalletizing process enter an empty pallet magazine 20, while the empty displays can be returned to the display palletizing machine 17.

At the beginning of the equipment and packaging lines 18a to 18c is in each case a labeling machine 21a to 21c, wherein the three labeling machines can be arranged so that the bottles - depending on which of the machines they are fed - can be provided with different equipment. The labeling machines are followed by packing machines 23a to 23c, as seen in the bottle flow direction, wherein in the line 18a the packer 23a is preceded by a so-called cluster packer 22, which is used to encase groups of bottles in each case a carton blank (six-packs) is provided. In the line 18a, the conveyor which feeds the bottles from the labeling machine is designed such that the bottles can optionally be supplied to the cluster packer 22 or packer 23a.

The packaging machines 23a to 23c can also be of different designs, depending on which type of packaging (box, carton, tray, display, shrink wrapping, etc.) is desired. Also adapted accordingly are the following in the packaging lines 18a to 18c palletizing 24a to 24c, for their supply an empty pallet magazine 25 is ready. After the layered palletizing the pallets for transport security downstream stretch wrapping machines 26a to 26c supplied where each loaded pallet is wrapped with an elastic film or other strapping provided.

The ready-to-consume pallets ready to be despatched after leaving the stretch wrappers 26a to 26c can now be loaded directly onto transport vehicles 27 (trucks or the like) which are ready to be loaded in the loading area 6. Particularly advantageous is an embodiment in which the equipment and packaging lines produce 18a to 18c on the just-in-time principle, so that the individually adjustable packaging mix and the desired packaging variants are commission-produced, in such a way that the transport vehicles 27 be loaded as directly as possible for their delivery routes. For this purpose, the commissioning area 5 is assigned the computer control station 7, which is in communication with the controllers of the machines located in the picking area.

If not only the packaging, but also the equipment (labels), the bottles and / or the filling product is variable, it may be appropriate to extend the order picking area 5 deviating from the graphical representation to the storage area 3, so that the labeling 21a to 21c and the depalletizers 19a to 19c belong to the picking area.

Furthermore, it would be conceivable that the bottles after leaving one of the labeling machines 21a to 21c can change the transport path by means of controllable switches or the like, not shown, and thus selectively selectively fed to one of the following packing machines 23a to 23c.

In order to avoid an interruption in the operation of the packaging lines 18a to 18c in the absence of transport vehicles 27, a bearing, not shown, assigned to the picking area 5 can be provided which advantageously can, however, manage with significantly less floor space than conventional conventional production facilities.

For intermediate palletizing and intermediate storage in storage area 3, other suitable facilities such as boxes or the like or other palletizing and / or temporary storage methods may be used instead of displays.

Contrary to the production plant described above, the equipment can also be done immediately after filling / closing, i. before the intermediate storage, for example, if only one type of product is filled into a single vessel and provided with the same equipment, but the packaging is different.

Furthermore, there is the possibility in the filling area of a machine for producing vessels, for example a stretch blow molding machine for plastic bottles, integrate. This solution is of particular interest in sterile filling.

Claims (22)

1. Method for filling, closing, fitting and packing containers or similar, characterised in that the containers go into intermediate storage temporarily by palletising at the earliest after closing, but at the latest before packing.
2. Method according to claim 1, characterised in that the containers go into intermediate storage in receivers or suitable receptacles, particularly displays or cases.
3. Method according to at least one of claims 1 or 2, characterised in that the containers are transported continuously during filling and closing.
4. Method according to at least one of claims 1 to 3, characterised in that packing is done at least partly in phases.
5. Method according to at least one of claims 1 to 4, characterised in that a product or various products is filled into one kind of container or various kinds of container in batches, closed and put into intermediate storage, particularly with a high capacity.
6. Method according to at least one of the previous claims 1 to 5, characterised in that fitting and/or packing is done with a lower capacity than filling and closing.
7. Method according to at least one of the previous claims 1 to 6, characterised in that fitting and/or packing the containers is done parallel in time on at least two fitting and/or packing lines, which are preferably independent of each other, if necessary set or equipped differently, in which fitting and/or packing and/or the type of container can be different.
8. Method according to at least one of the previous claims 1 to 7, characterised in that the containers are removed from intermediate storage and/or fitted and/or packed depending on commissions, preferably just in time on receipt of the order and/or dispatch, particularly also preferably direct, individual loading into transport vehicles depending on their delivery routes.
9. Method according to at least one of the previous claims 1 to 8, characterised in that the containers go into intermediate storage temporarily at the earliest after closing, but at the latest before fitting.
10. Production system for filling, closing, fitting and packing containers or similar, for carrying out the method according to at least one of claims 1 to 9, characterised in that the production system (P) has at least a first section (2) for handling the containers with machines (13, 14, 15, 16) at least for filling and closing containers and has at least a second section (4) for handling the containers with machines (21a to 26c) for fitting and packing the containers handled in the first section (2) and an intermediate store, which is suitable, so that the containers are transferred from the first to the second section of the production system through the intermediate store (3), which has the containers in palletised form for intermediate storage.
11. System according to claim 10, characterised in that the production system (P) has at least one machine (17) for putting the containers in receivers or suitable receptacles, particularly displays or cases, and/or for palletising the containers in layers for storing in the intermediate store (3).
12. Production system according to claim 10 or 11, characterised in that the production system (P) has at least one machine (19a to 19c) for removing the containers from receivers or suitable receptacles, particularly displays or cases, and/or depalletising the containers in layers for removing from the intermediate store (3) and feeding into the second section (4) of the production system.
13. System according to at least one of claims 10 to 12, characterised in that the second section (4) has at least one machine (21a to 21c) for fitting the containers with a label and/or printing and/or film sleeve or similar.
14. System according to at least one of claims 10 to 13, characterised in that the second section (4) has at least one machine (22 to 23c) for packing the containers in a cardboard and/or plastic film packing and/or a tray and/or a display and/or transport container made of plastic or card.
15. System according to at least one of claims 10 to 14, characterised in that the second section (4) has at least one machine (24a to 24c) for palletising the packed containers.
16. System according to at least one of claims 10 to 15, characterised in that the machines in the first (2) or second section (4) of the production system (P) are connected with each other to a line by conveyors, particularly conveyor belts, air conveyors or similar.
17. System according to claim 16, characterised in that in the second section (4) of the production system (P) several lines (18a, 18b, 18c) are arranged working parallel to each other, the relevant machines (21a to 26c) of which are used preferably to produce various fitted and/or packed containers.
18. System according to at least one of claims 16 or 17, characterised in that the first, preferably continuously working section (2) of the production system (P) has a higher capacity than an individual fitting and/or packing line (18a, 18b, 18c) in the second section (4).
19. System according to at least one of claims 10 to 18, characterised in that the production system (P) has at least one control (7) for removing containers from the intermediate store (3) and/or fitting and/or packing and/or loading the containers depending on commissions.
20. System according to claim 19, characterised in that the intermediate store (3) is a commission store, preferably with a store transfer system which can be controlled depending on commissions, particularly a floor conveying system, for supplying the second section (4) of the production system with containers depending on commissions.
21. System according to at least one of the previous claims 10 to 20, characterised in that the production system (P) has a device (16) for coding the containers and/or receivers/receptacles and/or stacks of containers before or during transfer into the intermediate store (3).
22. System according to at least one of the previous claims 10 to 21, characterised in that the containers, bottles, tins, glasses or similar are for packing drinks or foodstuffs.

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