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Digital Re-print - March | April 2010 Feature title: Designing bagging lines to meet requirements

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A bagging line in a production plant is closely tied to the associat-ed production and distribu-

tion processes, including the upstream and downstream logistics. This may have an impact on the availability of the entire production plant and must therefore be taken into account in evaluating and designing the line.

To achieve the best possible perform-ance, it is essential that the production management and distribution department cooperate closely in defining the basic con-cept of such a line.

The ”bag” as a container for packing foods offers various benefits.

It allows an attractive presentation of the product, is a significant advertising medium and reflects the quality of the product it contains.

In the grain-based food sector, bags are made almost exclusively of paper, woven plastic or textiles. A large number of suit-able bag and bag closure types are available, such as stitching with the optional addition of tape-bound closures or a folding device; gluing; or sealing. Each method has its specific advantages and disadvantages.

But whatever bag and closure type is chosen, this decision will always have an impact on the entire bagging line and its design. In addition, the bag materials used in fully automatic bagging lines must meet higher quality requirements.

Operating reliability and automation

In the design and specification of a bag-ging line, it is essential to satisfy the specific plant requirements. But a number of funda-mental requirements must always be met by bagging lines in food applications.

One key requirement is high operating reliability and maximum flexibility.

Due to the complexity of a bagging line, the individual components must be of high quality and carefully matched in order to ensure high operating reliability and maxi-mum availability.

Today, automatic bag attachers and bag transfer and spreading units are normally part of the standard equipment of bagging lines. If the proper bag materials are used, an automatic bag attacher will be capable of processing woven plastic bags as well as the paper bags commonly applied.

A bag transfer and spreading unit trans-fers the bag from the bagging spout and feeds it automatically to the bag closing system. Both automatic units increase the throughput capacity and reduce the man-power requirement. Both units can be inte-grated either with a single-bag packer or in a

Designing bagging lines to meet requirements Specifying and designing bagging lines for the food processing industry

by Peter Naef, Grain Processing Division, Bühler, Switzerland

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy28 | march - april 2010

FeatureBagging

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy march - april 2010 | 29

SACK-FILLING SYSTEMSPALLETISING SYSTEMS

DESIGN,DEVELOPMENT

AND MANUFACTURE

CUSTOM-MADE PACKAGING SYSTEMSfor low-fat dehydrated milk to wet sand in plastic or paper sacks  from tubular film to pre-made sacks   with or without gussets     from 1 to 50 kg        by weight or volume           from 100 to 2500 sacks per hour            with any closure              palletised in any pattern                with water-resistant stretchhood

ARODO BVBA,  Hoge Mauw 740,  2370 Arendonk BelgiumTel. +32 14 67 23 32,  Fax, +32 14 67 17 60

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New palletiser from EHCOLO- With servo control and energy recovery system

As the fi rst and only in the world, Ehcolo is now supplying its palletisers with servo control and kinetic energy recovery system, which collect all the motors braking energy for re-use, so we can supply the fi rst ”green” palletiser.

Products: all bag types and sizes.Capacity: types from 300 to 2500 bags per hour.

We are also supplying robot palletisers.We are also supplying turn-key bagging-palletizing–wrapping lines for any products.

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In the food sector, hygiene-related legal requirements are becoming increasingly stringent.

They must be satisfied by applying the proper system design and preventing prod-uct contamination. In this area, a substrac-tive bagging scale with direct bag filling will significantly reduce the risk of contamination compared to conventional batch bagging scales. Another advantage of substractive weighing is that every actual filling weight is registered and corrections can be made as required even with fast bagging cycles.

Bag compacting & centralised control

New, mechanical compacting systems allow more efficient reduction of the volume of bagged product and give bags a more stable form.

At the same time, this reduces the han-dling volume.

As in other areas, automation and cen-tralised control are becoming increasingly important for minimising the manpower requirement of bagging lines. A state-of-the-art control system will enable an entire bagging line including the automatic palletiser to be controlled and monitored from a single touch-screen terminal.

Such control systems are capable, say, of selecting a different bag weight together with the appropriate bag sise or of changing the bag layer pattern created by a palletiser.

age systems and of bagging bins and their dischargers.

The feed and weighing system selected must be matched to the product in question. Despite optimal electronic weight monitor-ing and automatic weight correction, it is of advantage to install a check scale with an automatic scrap bag ejector between the bagging line and the palletiser or loadout point to ensure complete monitoring of the packed bags.

bagging carrousel equipped with three, four or six spouts.

Accuracy and hygieneModern bagging lines are characterised

by their very high bagging weight accuracy and their top hygienic standard. To achieve accurate and consistent bagging weights, a product feed system operating at a constant capacity is needed in addition to specialist know-how in the design of product stor-

ParametersThe main company-specific parameters

determining the selection of a bagging line are:

• Output per week (exclusive of products shipped in bulk, Big Bags, and small packages).

• Number of products and their respective quantities, plus precise product specifications including bulk densities.

• Actual working hours per shift and day.

• Number of workdays per week.

• Number of bag weight and product changes per shift.

• Shares of the different bag weights of the entire product volume to be packed.

• Minimum storage time in storage and bagging bins (for “deaerating” or reducing the volume before packing).

ProfitabilityThe profitability of a bagging line depends essentially on the following factors:

• Investment matched to the actual requirements.

• Employment of operating personnel carefully planned.

• Level of automation matched to specific needs.

• Highly accurate bag weights.

• Low energy consumption.

• Low cost of expendable materials.

• High uptime and flexibility.

• Short times for product and bag weight changes, or none at all.

• Best possible design of the entire logistics chain from bag warehouse to loadout point.

• Minimised maintenance and servicing.

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy30 | march - april 2010

FeatureFeatureBagging

access to each individual item must be possible at any time.

Over 100 years of experience Bühler AG is a global technology group

and a system partner for the supply of plant, equipment, and process know-how to the food processing industries. Buhler has been supplying complete food processing plants for over 100 years and bagging lines in all capacity ranges for more than 40 years, especially for meeting the stringent standards of the food processing industry.

In addition, the manpower costs of a block storage sys-tem are very high, since several forklift drivers are needed simultaneously.

The drawbacks of rack stor-age systems are similar to those of block stor-age installations, though they do allow FIFO oper-ation to some extent. They also permit order-picking thanks to the access they allow to individual items in combina-tion with flow-rack or high-bay storage systems.

For many packing installations, a flow-rack store will be found to be an adequate solution.

Flow-rack storage systems offer the following advantages: FIFO is possible; the space utilisation rate is high; the capac-ity and uptime are high; the manpower requirement is low; the capital cost is relatively low, with an excellent price-to-performance ratio; and supply readiness is optimal. Fully automated high-bay ware-houses are the Rolls Royces in the field of warehousing.

But despite their outstanding advan-tages, they are too expensive and com-plex for many plants. A high-bay storage system is especially suitable if a very large number of items must be stored and if

This is done fully automatically and with-out manual intervention.

Moreover, these systems allow fast error diagnostics of the entire bagging line, which slashes line downtimes and makes it easier to familiarise new employees with bagging operations.

Balanced warehouse logisticsThe performance and cost-effectiveness

of a bagging line also depends on the warehousing system applied, which must be matched to the specific needs.

More and more, the method of direct loadout straight from the bagging line is being abandoned.

On the one hand, this is due to the high bagging capacity required. On the other hand, the direct linking of bagging and loa-dout and the increasing number of loadout variants with the related downtimes make this former approach uneconomical.

An analysis of the plant-specific require-ments is a prerequisite for selecting the adequate warehousing concept, which must also take account of the plant’s uptime and therefore its profitability.

A number of warehouse variants are pos-sible, which all have their specific advantages and disadvantages.

Today, very many plants apply the block storage method due to its low capital cost.

But it also has drawbacks: The first-in-first-out (FIFO) approach is not possible; a large surface area is needed, with poor space utilisation; automatic inventory control is not possible; the storage and retrieval capacity is low; and the number of possible variants or items is low.

More InforMatIon:Buhler SwitzerlandUzwilSwitzerland

Tel: +41 71 9551111Fax: +41 71 9556611Email: milling@buhlergroup.com

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy march - april 2010 | 31

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