Neighboring buildings connected by new automation and conveyor system

Joseph Vitale’s lifelong passion for food began in his mother’s kitchen in Bari, Italy. He founded Italpasta in 1989 and since then, it has grown to become a leading manufacturer of pasta in Canada. Amid continued growth, the company identified challenges with the packaging process. By installing a new automated system that bridged two existing facilities, the company enhanced the operation’s safety, capacity and efficiency.

Space in the company’s manufacturing plant had become one of the biggest concerns. The building managed 750 SKUs to produce up to 5,500 cases per hour, 24 hours a day, six days a week. The original setup filled the entire facility footprint with no additional room to grow.

In addition, Vitale and his team wanted to automate the pallet building to accommodate production growth. In April 2010, Italpasta approached an integration partner to help streamline its packaging process. The solution needed to work seamlessly with current manufacturing process with minimal impact on operations.

“The implementation has allowed Italpasta to double its production capability, producing more with increased efficiencies,” Vitale says. “We also have better working conditions for staff as well as an increase in our operating footprint that will enable us to expand with more equipment.”

Previously, product came off the lines in the 90,000-square-foot manufacturing area before being transported to a building next door where employees manually built pallets. In the 30,000-square-foot packaging area and the 40,000-square-foot staging area, the storage of empty pallet stacks and forklift traffic was creating employee safety and food safety issues. The solution (Schaefer Systems International, ssi-schaefer.us) automated and restructured this area. Both case and pallet conveyor now support automatic case and layer palletizers, integrating scales, label applicators, elevators and sortation.

Italpasta had to bridge the manufacturing plant to the finished goods holding area in the neighboring building so the proposed equipment solution could seamlessly extend the packaging process. Once construction of the bridge was completed, two case conveyor lines were added to directly connect the 21 lines of packaging to the case buffer area, where a conveyor sortation loop sorts and stages cases for palletizing.

After the cases are conveyed over the bridge, they are buffered and sent to one of four automated palletizing stations. At each station, the machines palletize the cartons, automatically shrink wrap them, apply SSCC/GS128 code labels and prepare them for storage until transferred to the distribution center.

Prior to system installation, Vitale could expect 800 to 900 cases per worker, per hour. That figure is now between 1,800 and 2,000. Vitale also notes increased efficiencies in tracing packaged cases and pallets, eliminated bottlenecks and improved employee and food safety as a result of eliminating pallet storage and heavy forklift traffic. Automation has also boosted employee skill level after transitioning from manual labor to more skilled work.