Manufacturing company Conforma automates precision work
Conforma is a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Destelbergen. Their expertise? Among other things, filling tubes and vials with liquid and semi-liquid products. Those products are then put into boxes to be sold in pharmacies. "We are looking for ways to automate our production more," explains Plant Manager Jeroen Mebis. "With the help of Flanders Make, we are developing a robot to alleviate repetitive work on our production lines."
Putting tubes in boxes: more complex than you think
On Conforma's production lines today, people do very careful precision work. And that is not easy to automate. Jeroen Mebis: "We produce a large number of different types of packaging, from small to large and each time with different products inside. If we specialized in one type of packaging, we could buy a specific machine for it. But that's not how Conforma works. Our biggest challenge right now is multitube packaging: boxes containing five or 10 tubes of ointment." Looking for a smart solution to work more efficiently, Conforma came to Flanders Make. "Unfolding the box, putting in tubes, adding a leaflet and closing the box: these are operations where a lot can go wrong. Today we need human hands for that. But it is also very repetitive work, and that is stressful and monotonous for our workers. By training a robot to do that work, we can deploy our people on the more complex tasks where they really add value."
Robot as colleague
Flanders Make set to work to build a prototype of a collaborative robot. Such a "cobot" works along with the people on the production line. "We are very happy that Flanders Make wanted to take on this challenge. We weren't sure if our request was realistic. But in the meantime, a test setup is in place and we're working on connecting the dots. The robot has already been trained to fold open the boxes, place leaflets and put the tubes neatly in the box. Now we still need to link those operations and add controls. For example, we want to make sure there are enough tubes in each box and that they are deep enough to close the box."
In addition to the operations the cobot performs, safety and maintenance features were also considered. "The cobot is equipped with all kinds of safety skills. If someone gets too close, it automatically stops. In addition, we train our technician to know the robot inside out. So he can always perform maintenance and check the systems."
Freeing up people for complex work
"As a final step in the process, Flanders Make gives us advice on the correct implementation of the hardware and software. With that, we will go to a robot builder to make our first robot. If this system works well, we will definitely think about expansion. Because if we can deploy robots and thus free up our human colleagues to do the complex work, we keep our employees happy and we can grow better as a company."