Solutions
Vision robots demonstrate their power by automating rice bag depalletizing.
Yamatane Co., Ltd. Inzai Rice Milling Center
overview
Yamatane Co., Ltd., a major rice wholesaler, completed construction of the Inzai Rice Milling Center (Inzai City, Chiba Prefecture) in January 2022 and began operations in February. The center consolidates two factories in Tokyo and Saitama, aiming to improve production efficiency and strengthen production capacity. The center has introduced Okura's latest robotics system, automating loading and unloading work during receiving and shipping, and reducing the human burden.
Equipment Features
Feature 1
Depalletizing brown rice bags using the latest vision technology
The raw material, brown rice, arrives in either flexible container packaging or kraft packaging, and is then supplied to the bag-opening line. Of these, the latest depalletizing robot has been installed on the kraft bag-opening line. The kraft bags arrive loaded on pallets, and previously the depalletizing work was done manually. Each bag weighs 30 kg, which was a significant burden for workers, but automation with the depalletizing robot has reduced the number of workers by three. Palletized kraft bags tend to become unstable due to vibrations during transport and unloading, making depalletizing by robots difficult, but the latest vision technology has made it possible to accurately read the position of the transported items and achieve stable depalletizing.
A robot depalletizer that transfers kraft bags to the bag opening line
The latest laser vision system accurately recognizes the shape of the bags.
Feature 2
Five palletizing robots are key to increasing production capacity
Five Ai1800 robot palletizers have also been installed in the shipping area for palletizing rice polishing bags. To accommodate the increasing speed of upstream packaging machines, two bags are gripped by a dedicated hand, enabling fast and stable palletizing of rice polishing bags. The current shipping volume is 160 tons per day, ensuring the production volume of two consolidated factories.
Five robot palletizers installed
The special hand grips two rice polishing bags at once.
Customer testimonials
When the Inzai Rice Milling Center was built, it required high production capacity as it would consolidate two existing factories. For this reason, the latest equipment was installed. At the shipping site, the depalletizing of kraft paper bags, which had previously been done manually, was automated, reducing the number of workers by three. High-performance rice milling and packaging machines were also installed. However, without the ability to palletize at the most downstream stage, production capacity would not increase no matter how fast the upstream rice milling and packaging machines were. For this reason, the introduction of a high-speed palletizing robot was essential. The center has already secured the shipping volume of two factories, and there is still production capacity to spare. It will be able to fully handle future increases in production.
- Company Name
- Yamatane Co., Ltd.
- Business content
- Logistics (domestic warehousing and international transportation), food (rice wholesale), information, and real estate businesses
- Number of employees
- 324 (as of March 2022)
- Home page
- https://www.yamatane.co.jp/
