Palletizing a wide variety of products at Na-Nomi

Palletizing cobot

In 2019, Na-Nomi started looking into automating part of their palletizing process, to aid in the innovation of Na-Nomi and to cut costs. The choice for a cobot solution was an easy call, due to limited space and the need for a user-friendly system. After being introduced to Smart Robotics , the decision to start a cooperation was made quickly. The user-friendliness of the system, as well as short delivery times and the option of rental played large roles in the decision making process.

Na-Nomi was looking for a partner specifically to aid in the process of palletizing 520.000 grocery packages of a large Dutch supermarket chain. As this was a temporary project, the decision was made to rent the Smart Palletizer, including the Smart Formation Unit, for six months. To meet the large demand, the Smart Palletizer performed its tasks in cooperation with one human employee.

“We are very happy with our Smart Palletizer. The delivery times were short and the installation was performed very quickly. Smart Robotics only needed a few hours to get the Smart Palletizer fully operational. Nowadays, our Smart Palletizer performs 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, with a 99% availability rate. As we receive our products from external suppliers, it may sometimes occur that boxes do not have the right quality to be picked-and-placed correctly, but we can easily correct this in the system. If a problem occurs, Frank (Service Engineer at Smart Robotics) is always available to help in the best way possible.

We receive a large amount of new products every week. The Product Editor allows our Process Engineers and Team leads to easily add new products and choose stacking patterns. We are very pleased that we can do this beforehand, as it allows for the Smart Palletizer to continue working during its shift!

In general, our employees are happy with the Smart Palletizer. It is a very user-friendly system. It took them some time to get used to the system and to the editing of products, but now they work with the Smart Palletizer as if they’ve never done differently. They walk around the Smart Palletizer with confidence and are not afraid of the cobot. Lastly, communication with Smart Robotics and Verduyn is smooth. Every three months, we evaluate the performance, the process and future plans”