Health and Material Handling Case Study

The water heater manufacturer wanted to find a better way to load and unload large metal tanks from a conveyor. The tanks were offloaded from the welding line and needed to be loaded onto hangers in constant motion on a wash line. The manufacturer used manual labor to complete all of these loads and offloads, which resulted in injury to some of their employees, both from repeated lifting of the tanks that ranged from 90 to 120 lbs. and from heatstroke in hot weather. Besides the risk of injury, having a person manually load these large tanks on and off hangers was not an efficient way to process the material.

Originally, the manufacturer had resorted to manual labor for loading and offloading tanks because of a seemingly insurmountable technical challenge. There were 28 different tank sizes that needed to move through the line without changeover of loading equipment. The diversity of sizes deterred the customer from implementing an automation solution; any robotic model they had previously encountered was a “one-size-fits-all” concept that didn’t fit their workflow.

After assessing the operation, Wes-Tech’s solution streamlined the customer’s entire process. Wes-Tech began with a heavy-lifting material handling robot, removing the risk of human injury from loading the tanks. The system was equipped with sensors to understand the diameter and length of each tank and adjust the pick position and lift tanks in any sequence without requiring changeover. Additionally, the robot was equipped with a motion tracker to follow the conveyor and load tanks correctly onto the hangers.

The initial loading module worked so well, and operational improvement saved so much money that Wes-Tech was asked back a year later to build an unloading module. The unloading module picks the tanks off the moving hangers and lay them into a cradle to shift up onto a conveyor to the next part of the line.

One of the many benefits of industrial automation is that it can help an operation determine the best places for human intervention and use human capital only in those places. The success of this project allowed our client to gain massive ROI by reducing risk and improving operations by eliminating places in their operation where human intervention was unneeded. Some of the results of this project included:

• The equipment paid for itself in a single month by reducing injuries and workers’ comp claims.
• Operational risks were reduced, and downtime decreased by having robots do the heavy lifting.
• Employee satisfaction increased because they no longer felt subjected to potential health hazards.
• The equipment was so reliable that the client reported it was some of the best running equipment in the building, and years later, it’s still running smoothly.

The success of this project serves as a testament to the transformative power of automation. It optimized the use of robots and delivered a remarkable return on investment, showcasing a future where technology and human ingenuity work hand-in-hand for safer, more efficient operations.