The Kelgray Blog

Quaker has over a century of oat experience and has been milling oats in the UK since 1899. Quaker prides itself on its leading oat knowledge and expertise.

Kelgray was asked to provide an automatic system to apply two A5 size self-adhesive labels to adjacent sides of a complete pallet moving along a conveyor line.  The pallet could be loaded with different product originating from a number of different production lines. We therefore needed to take a signal from an automatic palletiser to tell the printer which label would be needed for which pallet.  This information would then be added to a print queue for application to the designated pallet further down the line.

• The Easi Print Plus system has a high quality thermal transfer print engine that prints a barcoded A5 size pallet label to a pre–determined design from a product database

• The pallet applicator is controlled by a program running on a dedicated PC, housed in the applicator’s protective cabinet.

• The software takes inputs from the robotic palletiser and collates data to be printed, adding the data to a print queue that is displayed on the PC screen.

• This allows the operator to remove any reject pallets from the print sequence, produce stock reports and control all aspects of the system.

Famous for our iconic brands on five continents, Heinz provides delicious, nutritious and convenient foods for families in 200 countries around the world. In more than 50 of those countries, we enjoy the number-one or number-two market position.

HJ Heinz required a system that would apply either one or two labels to an individual pallet as it passed down the conveyor line.

Kelgray provided a system that would interface with HJ Heinz’s existing system to produce a detailed pallet label.

Kelgray also installed a number of measures to make sure labels are accurately produced.

Where there is no information for a particular pallet, a hand scanner and back up printer allows the manual production of a label by the system operative. There are also alarms and halt procedures for non-readable barcodes.

Their Process

• The pallets pass down a conveyor line where a pre-applied barcode is scanned by fixed position scanners.
• This information is sent back to a controlling PC, then back to the AS400 where the required information can be collected and sent back to a print queue.
• The information collected refers to the contents of the pallets and each label is specific to each pallet. The label(s) can then be printed and applied to the pallet side(s).
• The pallet then proceeds to a verification point where another fixed position barcode reader scans the barcode to determine readability.

Globally renowned food company, Weetabix, has deployed a bespoke intelligent labelling solution from food sector labelling specialist, Kelgray, at its four UK food manufacturing sites.  The intelligent printing solution which includes wireless printers, automated ‘print & apply’ systems and barcode scanners, is optimised to streamline pallet labelling operations whilst ensuring the company complies with GS1 labelling, food standards and traceability legislation.

The Weetabix Food Company is one of the worlds best known breakfast cereal producers, producing cereals on a massive scale; the company’s Kettering Site alone produces over three billion breakfast biscuits every year, as well as other famous brands, such as Alpen, Ready Brek, Oatibix and Oatiflakes, for worldwide distribution.

Under the contract, Kelgray is supplying Weetabix with rugged, high performance Intermec PX6i intelligent wireless printers operating over a Cisco wireless network.  The PX6i has an on-board computer, which means it doesn’t require connection to a PC. Weetabix is using the PX6i printers with a tethered Intermec 1553 barcode scanner as a complete mobile printing solution, mounted on a trolley.  This means that operators can take the printers wherever they are needed across the entire multi-factory site.

A Senior Product Manager at Weetabix, recalls “We needed a pallet labelling solution that complied with our current requirements and could integrate with our planned installation of a new Warehouse Management System (WMS).  Each site has many factories, each with numerous production lines providing any of the range of branded cereals.  We did not want to hard wire a vast amount of hardware into the factories, we wanted a much more flexible solution – and that meant that wireless was essential.”

The tethered scanners are used with the wireless PX6i printers for verification of product information prior to pallet labelling, and once the information has been verified, and the label printed and applied, the data is sent to the central database where it is held as production and traceability information to comply with food standards 178 2002 detailed traceability requirements.

The solution also includes ‘print & apply’ automated two side pallet labellers from Kelgray.  The P601 2-sided automated label printer and applicator sits immediately after the wrapper on the production line and delivers high speed, automated double sided pallet labelling.  There are also a number of Kelgray’s own in-house developed EasiPrint automatic case labellers in operation, which print and apply labels with barcoded commodity codes (TUC codes) to each outer case box of cereal.  The production line automation provider has integrated the scanning of these barcodes into the automated pallet wrapping process, and the data is sent straight to the pallet label printer to ensure that the correct label is printed.

The intelligent solution is driven by data from the production management system. Using its experience of working with food processing companies, Kelgray has been able to include a number of features that ensure maximum up-time for production lines. For example, as a contingency against wireless network failure, the intelligent printers periodically poll the host database and download the latest update of production data into the on-board processors, so that even in the event of failure of the wireless network, the production lines can keep on working.

“Kelgray offered us a bespoke solution for a complicated system that they have delivered on time and on budget. The solution meets our labelling requirements today and is designed to be fully integrated with a new WMS system, scheduled to go live in 2008. I am happy to say that Kelgray has been flexible and adaptable throughout the project; this being one of the key reasons for choosing them as our supplier with regards this project,” commented the Weetabix Senior Product Manager.