DCC Automation (for Anonymous Nutrition Supplement Manufacturer)

A nutrition supplement manufacturer operating a high-speed production line faced mounting pressure from an aging, semi-automated case packing system that was rapidly approaching end-of-life. The equipment — which handled the facility's best-selling product and ran two case patterns for different product sizes — relied on multiple legacy controllers and conveyors generating up to 10% downtime per shift. Changeovers between product sizes consumed 40 to 45 minutes and required continual parameter adjustment throughout each run. The combined case erecting and packing design left no room for product accumulation, preventing the line from hitting its required 25 cases-per-minute throughput. To compensate, two to three workers were permanently stationed at the line manually packing cases — an inefficient use of labor that signaled the system had reached its operational limit.

DCC Automation, a Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork member specializing in food industry secondary packaging, redesigned the system around a key architectural change: separating case erecting from case packing. Relocating the case erector freed floor space for product accumulation, enabling efficient multi-stream division by pack pattern. Two-dimensional delta robots handle pick-and-place, presenting fully formed pack patterns into fully erected cases. Before any physical build, DCC Automation used Emulate3D digital twin software to simulate and validate the entire system, catching design issues upstream without disrupting the production floor. The deployed solution runs on Allen-Bradley Compact GuardLogix controllers, Kinetix servo drives and motors, and FactoryTalk View HMI over an EtherNet/IP network. Critically, the Rockwell Automation platform handles all machine and robotic functions within a single unified controller — eliminating a separate robotics control platform and reducing both integration complexity and operator training burden.

The new case packer delivers a step-change across every performance dimension that constrained the original system:

• >99% uptime (99%–99.5%), eliminating the up to 10% per-shift downtime that previously bottlenecked the high-speed line
• 90% changeover reduction — from 45 minutes to approximately 5 minutes — directly improving the economics of frequent product transitions
• Manual case packing eliminated: the two to three workers previously assigned to compensate for the system's throughput gap have been reassigned to higher-value duties elsewhere in the facility

Beyond the headline numbers, the unified control architecture means operators support a single system rather than managing separate machine and robot platforms, reducing troubleshooting time and training overhead. DCC Automation continues to collaborate with the customer on future improvements, including recipe-driven automated changeover.

• Machine architecture matters as much as technology selection: separating case erecting from case packing — not just upgrading controls — was the root fix that unlocked throughput and accumulation capacity.
• Digital twin pre-commissioning reduces deployment risk: simulating the full system in Emulate3D before build confirmed functionality and surfaced design issues without a single minute of production disruption.
• Unified robotic control lowers the total cost of ownership: a single programming environment for both machine and robot reduces integration time, simplifies operator training, and narrows the maintenance skill set required on the floor.
• Changeover economics reshape product flexibility strategy: a 90% reduction in changeover time changes what's commercially viable — shorter runs and more SKU diversity become practical where they previously weren't.