Case-Coding Solution Come To Dairy Co-op

This dairy co-op finds both ink-jet coding and print-and-apply labeling work on cases of cheese that it sells to foodservice and institutional customers.

At Associated Milk Producers Inc., the recent installation of nine new pieces of equipment from Weber Marking Systems has brought a whole new level of versatility and efficiency to case coding.

A 4,600-member dairy cooperative based in New Ulm, MN, AMPI packages cheese for commercial and foodservice customers. Upgraded were three of the firm's sliced-cheese lines and six lines used to package cheese bricks and bags of shredded cheese. All nine lines are in the firm's Portage, WI, plant.

Each of the three sliced-cheese lines has different product identification requirements. They frequently change, too, because AMPI runs products for a wide variety of commercial and institutional customers. But nearly all corrugated cases at AMPI have to be marked with the following: the date of production, the time of day, and the use-by date.

"We needed a system that would operate reliably over three shifts a day and be easy for our operators to use," says Todd Turner, project coordinator at AMPI's Portage plant. "We tried several labeling and ink-jet solutions, but print quality was poor and we had difficulty producing the time and date codes we needed. Maintenance became a problem, too. We needed a better solution."

So Turner contacted Weber Marking, whose representative suggested the ML500 ink-jet system for AMPI's sliced-cheese lines. It's capable of printing high-resolution bar codes, text, and graphics up to 2.8" high at speeds to 175'/min. Weber's NetJet software also makes it easy for AMPI to format the date and time codes on its corrugated shippers. From a single PC in a nearby office, coding formats for all three packaging lines can be created using information from AMPI's product database. "With Weber's software, it's easy to create the right format," says Turner.

On sliced-cheese Line One, the system imprints one line of text 4" long and 5/8" tall. The text contains lot number, sell-by date, and the packaging line number.

The ink-jet coder on Line Two imprints four separate lines of text, including the lot number, company name, product description, plant number, sell-by date, time packaged, and line number. In addition, the ML500 prints a 1.4" tall Interleaved 2 of 5 scannable bar code.

The ML500 on Line Three also provides multi-line codes up to 2.8î high, but all of that information is marked on the top flap of the case. Immediately after coding, the case flaps are folded and taped shut.

"This works well because the ink dries so quickly," says Turner. "The packaging tape wouldnít stick as well if the ink were still wet." The ML500 units currently print about 10 to 12 cases/min. But they're rated at up to 75/min, so there's room for growth, says Turner.

Print-and-apply labeling

Elsewhere in the Portage plant, wrapped chunks of cheese and bags of shredded cheese are manually case packed at the end of six separate packaging lines. As with the sliced-cheese lines, each of these six lines runs multiple products for multiple customers, so flexibility is once again vital.

What's more, some customers require identification on two sides of the carton instead of one. This ruled out using ink-jet equipment, because fitting two ink-jet coders on a single line was considered inefficient from a cost perspective.

AMPI solved its dilemma by installing, on each of the six lines, a Model 5100 Twin-Tamp printer/applicator, also from Weber. Integrated into each is a 203 dpi thermal-transfer printer made by Sato. Operators can move easily from one label variation to another by accessing a drop-down menu on a touchscreen panel. Label size, however, is fixed at 4"x4". After a label is printed, itís automatically peeled from its release liner and held by vacuum on an applicator pad. The pad is mounted on a special 90&Mac176; rotary swing arm that reaches across the conveyor and blows a label onto the front panel of the passing case.

When the arm retracts, a second label is printed and a separate straight-line stroke applies the label to one side of the case. The Twin-Tamp unit is capable of 20 such cycles/min. It can also be programmed to label just one side of a case, too, which Turner likes because some customers require labels on only one panel of the case.

"The flexibility of this labeling system is what makes it so valuable to our operation," says Turner. "That's why we have one for each of our six lines."

As with the ink-jet operation, AMPI wanted to use a single PC to control all Twin-Tamp labelers. Weberís Legitronic Labeling Software makes it easy for an operator to select any one of the numerous labeling formats needed for a particular shift. Based on that input, the software will automatically switch formats during production.

"Using the Weber software has been easy," says Turner. It's among the reasons, he adds, that he is so pleased with the overall case-coding solution now in place. -PR