Based on demonstrable past experience with similar products, the customer chose FMI ImProvia as their supplier. The customer's project team is composed internationally. They worked with a Chinese project manager, a Czech consultant, Dutch consultants and the end users of this machine in America. There were weekly project meetings, where the Americans had to get up early, the Chinese project manager had to go to bed late and we were comfortably in the middle of the time zones. During these meetings there was also time to discuss the local Corona situation and determine what impact that would have on progress and delivery.
The goal of the project was to develop a “standard” packaging machine that is capable of packaging the complete range of 4 to 20 articles per stick without manual adjustments to the machine. The interest from America is mainly the larger stick with 12 to 20 articles per stick. In Europe (Czech Republic) the interest is in the 10 and 12 articles per stick and in Asia it is all about the smaller sticks.
The machine developed in 2007 is based on a rotating drum that assembles the sweets per stick and places them between cams mounted on the chain. The disadvantage of this principle is that with a different number of articles per stick, the chain has to be changed. This is a time-consuming job. In the newly developed machine we have used the iTrak from the Rockwell brand. A flexible linear servo system that can automatically position cams at any distance from each other, making the changing of chains unnecessary.
Despite the corona restrictions in the Netherlands, it was ultimately possible to have two employees of the customer travel from America to the Netherlands to attend the factory acceptance at FMI ImProvia. Incidentally, in order to be able to commission the machine at FMI ImProvia and to be able to run series during the factory acceptance, the customer delivered ± 8,000 kg of articles.
The factory acceptance was successfully completed at FMI ImProvia in early September, after which the machine was packed and transported by plane to America. Unfortunately, we were again confronted with corona restrictions, which meant that we were unable to install and commission the machine at the customer's location with FMI ImProvia employees.
In October, the customer carried out the installation work themselves, and we guided and supported them through daily Teams meetings and a remote software connection.
The machine is now running and the customer can use it to package saleable products.