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From picking and packaging to palletizing, Master's Gallery Foods relies on Quest Industrial's flexible robotic system to simplify the offline packaging throughput of its six Wisconsin cheese maturation facilities.

Jim McMahon | Quest Industrial is a division of ProMach

Behind many of the most well-known private-label and store-branded cheese and cheese products sold in North American supermarkets is one of the country’s largest cheese maturation and cheese processors. Based in Wisconsin, Masters Gallery Foods supplies more than 250 million pounds of cheese to grocery chains, wholesalers, restaurants, and distributors each year, and has one of the largest private cheese inventories in the United States.

The company's extensive product line includes the most popular flavors in the United States, such as light and aged cheddar cheese; mixed cheeses, such as Colby Jack and Monterey Jack with Peppers; and Italian curd cheeses, such as mozzarella and provolone. , And hard grated Parmesan cheese, Romano cheese and Asiago cheese; specialty cheeses, including Brie cheese, Gouda cheese and Swiss cheese; and mixed processed cheeses to provide a consistent texture and flavor. These cheeses come from producers and are shipped to Masters Gallery Foods' factories in bulk, aged in six temperature-controlled warehouses, and then processed, cut, packaged, and shipped throughout North America for retail, food service, and industrial use.

Although each cheese is aged, shredded and cut differently, only high-quality cheeses can leave the company's facilities.

"We are passionate about quality cheese," said Mark Wirtz, engineering manager at Masters Gallery Foods. “This is first to ensure the quality, consistency and reliability of our cheese suppliers. Every barrel of cheese from our door is tasted, smelled and tested by one of our 14 licensed cheese graders. To ensure that it has ingredients and sensory properties to meet the highest standards. Our process ensures that premium cheeses and custom blended cheeses can meet the needs of customers. This means that only the exact age, texture, flavor, color and performance of the cheese will be approved for release To our customers."

For the retail market, Masters Gallery Foods produces hundreds of cheese products, packaged in sachets, breads and barrels in slices, strips, filaments, chunks and bars. For catering services, 5 and 10 pounds of chips, dice, cubes, slices and bread buns are prepared. To serve its industrial customers-for cutting and packaging operators, food processors, cheese ingredient manufacturers and finished product manufacturers-the company offers 6 lb, 40 lb and 640 lb cheese blocks under its in-house Wisconsin Premium™ brand. Multiple The storage facility allows Masters Gallery Foods to store a large inventory of cheese, helping its customers manage risk, hedge the dairy market, maintain fixed prices, and purchase inventory in a timely manner.

"In the past 46 years, we have built our market share by preparing customized cheese products for our customers," Wirtz added. "Many times, they will provide cheese and hope to transform it into a different product, a unique shred or cut, or a unique packaging that has never been tried before. For customers who are looking for a certain cheese taste, we will work with us Of cheese producers in cooperation to come up with a mixture that suits them." 

The management of this quantity and variety of products requires highly specialized automation that can flexibly adapt to changes in product operations.

"In order to support the demand for customized products in this market, we must promote our automation as much as possible and let it do things it shouldn't," Wirtz continued. "We have been redesigning our machines. Our automation systems have been very unique from the beginning, and were originally built to make them easy to modify."

This is particularly important for the company's end-of-line packaging systems, where consistent high throughput is essential to keep upstream processes running. Each of the company's six mature facilities uses advanced robotic technology for boxing and palletizing. 

Designed by Quest Industrial (Quest)-a manufacturer of industrial automation equipment that specializes in robotics and vision guidance solutions, covering food, dairy, and many other industries-these robotic systems have unique high-speed and precise grasping and placement capabilities, and Because they can flexibly adapt to changes in product mix in real time.

"Quest understands our challenges," Wirtz explained. "In the past ten years, the company has been building robotic systems for our terminal packaging, especially robotic boxers and robotic palletizers. These are highly customized systems built according to our requirements, but with great Flexibility to meet our needs for the transformation of internal equipment." 

"Each case packer is unique in its design process," Wirtz said. “But fundamentally, we require extremely high flexibility in the case packer. We use Quest’s Quik Pick QP200 robotic case packer in our factory. Basically, the robot picks up items from the stacking conveyor and puts them on. Into a box. For example, one of our applications-robots need to be able to pick up ultra-small cheese items weighing less than an ounce, and then pick up a large package weighing two pounds. This degree of flexibility is what our case The packaging process required."

Quik Pick QP200 Robot Packing Machine. (Picture provided by Quest Industrial)

The Quik Pick system is a fast, accurate and compact high-speed robotic case packer. One major difference is its flexibility. Through its touch screen HMI and customized software, it can be configured for a product feed rate of 20 to 400 pieces per minute.

Aaron Philips, vice president of automation at Quest, said: “This robotic cartoner can accept products of various types, sizes and textures.” It provides flexible options for the custom direction of cheese products, such as: stacking, bottom stacking, Random cutting, shingle stacking, 2-3 stacking and double stacking. " 

"The system can handle product weights from 1/2 ounce to 20 pounds." Grinnell added. "Supports quality inspection, it provides automatic visual inspection and product weight verification for many different cheese products running in the production line of the Masters Gallery Foods factory."

Masters Gallery Foods has nine robotic palletizers in operation in its six mature facilities. These are used to palletize the packaging boxes off-line and finished products before they are stretch-packed and moved to the cold storage. All of these palletizers were developed directly by the engineering teams of Quest and Masters Gallery Foods. Three of the Boxed-Bot® robotic palletizers were recently installed in the company's new plant, and some of them were designed based on Toyota Production System (TPS).

"We are entering the initial stages of launching our own operational excellence program, which we call the Island of Excellence, modeled after TPS," added Wirtz. "This new factory produces a variety of sliced ​​cheese products. We have installed three Quest Boxed-Bot robotic palletizers, which have unique features that support our Island of Excellence program."

One of these features is the up/down ability of the pallet to move within the palletizing unit. The forklift places a pallet on the feed conveyor and moves it towards the robot. The pallet is raised about 18 inches. After the stacking is completed, the completed pallet is bounced back to the top of the conveyor and reaches the starting point of the feed, where it is picked up by a forklift. The speed of the palletizer exceeds 30 cycles per minute, which allows the forklift operator to wait for the palletizing to be completed without returning.

Another feature is the integration of custom-designed foam fixtures, which use foam pads to compensate for irregularities on the top of the shell. Traditional robot suction cups have a limit on the number of suction cups that can actually be fixed on the top of the box. When moving at high speeds, the case may be deformed, or if the suction cup happens to fall on the seam of the case or the deformed flip, the vacuum seal may break and the case may fly. The foam pad eliminates these problems.

"If there is no foam clamp, it will limit the products that the palletizer can actually run," Wirtz continued. "Some boxes need to be stacked manually. Foam grippers make picking more reliable. This reduces false picking and the slowing of the production line caused by them."

“It is very unusual to need a robotic palletizer that can handle 50 different box types,” explains Wirtz. "Most can only handle a small number of box changes, but these Boxed-Bot robot palletizers in our factory can handle boxes of any size. The palletizer can also change the number of boxes. The robot has two vacuum zones, so it can Pick up one or two boxes, or it can do two sets of two-four boxes each, and can only lift nearly 100 pounds each time it is picked up."

Boxed robot robot palletizer. (Picture provided by Quest Industrial)

The robot palletizer installed by Masters Gallery Foods provides operators with more functions to design and produce precise robot palletizing patterns for packaging changes of different product types. One allows for instant changes to box and packaging sizes and patterns, allowing easy conversion from product to product without reprogramming. Behind this feature is Quest's QBox® robotic palletizing software.

The software can easily drag and drop to change the box or packaging pattern (such as chimney, interlocking and unified pattern) and size; select, rotate or flip the layer; change the length, width and height of the box; adjust the size or type of the tray; consider the label Or label entry direction; and box/package rotation.

QBox robot palletizing software. (Picture provided by Quest Industrial)

You can select a specific box or package and move it slightly to a more precise location, or change their order, placing them tightly on adjacent boxes and packages. Custom edge detection can achieve maximum stacking efficiency.

“The palletizing operator at Masters Gallery Foods can easily create new patterns using the HMI touch screen,” Grinnell added. "The intuitive screen performs all machine settings, product conversion and diagnostic functions. The HMI screen is designed to provide simple and comprehensive access to all aspects of the palletizer function, including automatic and custom manual operations, mode selection and programming, backup, recovery operations, Security status and maintenance log."

"For operators with no robot programming experience, creating a new palletizing program and dynamically modifying it as needed is a considerable advantage for our operations," Wirtz continued. "We no longer need engineering programmers to enter all the code. This is the unique and revolutionary aspect of these palletizers."

By integrating multifunctional and intuitive robotic boxing and palletizing, Masters Gallery Foods has brought the flexibility and efficiency of its mature factories to a new level.   

"This provides more options for customized container and pallet configurations, faster conversion of different packaging runs, reduced downtime, and more consistent throughput at the end of the production line," Wirtz said. "It is helping us get closer to our goal of achieving an island of excellence."

About Masters Gallery Foods, Inc. Since its establishment in 1974, Masters Gallery Foods has developed into a service that provides a full range of cheese and cheese-related products to many grocery chains, wholesalers, restaurants and distributors in the United States. The company also specializes in the procurement, aging and distribution of national bulk cheese. With more than 900 employees, the Masters Gallery family is strong and growing.

For more information, please contact Mark Wirtz, Engineering Manager, Masters Gallery Foods, Inc., P.O. Box 170, Plymouth, Wisconsin 53073; email mwirtz@mastersgalleryfoods.com; phone 920-893-9158; www.mastersgalleryfoods.com.

About Quest Industrial Quest is a turnkey industrial automation equipment manufacturer, focusing on robots and vision guidance, serving high-demand markets such as food, beverages, and dairy products. It needs to optimize the footprint, expand operations in an accurate and consistent manner, and Improve the flexibility and efficiency of the overall production line.

Many of its packaging solutions meet industry-specific requirements through special tools, software and protective coatings designed for dairy products, agricultural products and other markets. The company’s unique robotic solutions include applications in picking and placing, cup filling, knife cutting, vacuum sealing, boxing, pallet forming, boxing, palletizing, vision and verification systems, including bundling multiple application technologies Pack the cells in a robot.

For more information, please contact Naomi Holdvogt, Director of End-of-Line Marketing at Quest Industrial/ProMach; 4750 County Road 13 NE, Alexandria MN 56308; Tel 320-852-7705; Email naomi.holdvogt@promachbuilt.com; www.questindustrial. com. 

About ProMach ProMach is a series of first-class packaging solutions brands serving manufacturers of all sizes and geographies in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, household and industrial supplies industries. The ProMach brand operates throughout the entire packaging range: filling and capping, flexible packaging, pharmaceuticals, product handling, labeling and coding, and the end of the production line. ProMach also provides performance services, including integrated solutions, design/build, engineering services, and productivity software to optimize packaging line design and provide the longest uptime.

We are FANUC authorized robot integrator, specializing in cutting-edge technology. Quest can provide your company with meaningful solutions by helping to achieve production goals, increase profits, save floor space, and improve safety in an affordable way. Applications include: Various food and beverage equipment pick-and-place machines, loading and unloading, palletizing and unpalletizing boxes and box installation/sealing, ultrasonic cutting knife packaging equipment, water jet cutting and sorting, visual inspection

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