For 20 years, Transnova Ruf Verpackungs- und Palettiertechnik GmbH, Ansbach, has consistently relied on industrial robots to implement flexible automation solutions. Michael Ruf, who has been with the company for ten years, provides information on further development steps.
Today, Transnova Ruf is one of Europe's leading manufacturers of robot-based solutions for the End-of-line packaging & palletising. The Robot Flexline concept from Transnova Ruf enables best-in-class solutions in terms of flexibility and space requirements. Tailor-made solutions for picking, packing (side and top loading) and palletising processes are implemented on the basis of a modular concept (design-to-order). It can be adapted in practice for cost-effective single-station systems through to central palletising systems with up to 30 palletising stations.
With this unique approach, Transnova Ruf is one of the leading manufacturers in the End-of-line packaging. This is documented by references from the food, pharmaceutical, personal care and non-food industries. An interview with Michael Ruf, who is responsible for sales in particular.
pj: Mr Ruf, what is the current focus of your strategy?
Michael Ruf: Our company is clearly characterised by the metatrend „Flexibility“ in focus. Our customers in the packaging industry are confronted with changing consumer needs with increasing speed and intensity. The Wide range of variants for products and packaging is increasing, the Life cycles of products are declining. This greatly increases the demands on production and packaging processes and, of course, on their automation.
pj: How is the trend affecting packaging machines?
Michael Ruf: The flexibility requirements for packaging machines are complex. For example, there is a need for increasing Format range flexibility for product and carton dimensions, such as collective packaging for shelf-ready cartons measuring 150 x 50 x 50 millimetres on the one hand and shipping cartons for export measuring 600 x 520 x 400 millimetres on the other.
Of course, maximum flexibility in the configuration of the packing schemes in the carton should be possible (e.g. facing upright or horizontally) at the touch of a button without lengthy format changeovers on the machine.
pj: What is different about the Transnova RUF solutions?
Michael Ruf: Transnova RUF has been focussing on industrial robot technology for 20 years and, with the Robot Flexline concept, today offers an approach with a unique solution space for the customer. The automation task is performed on the basis of a Modular construction kit and the broad use of robots customised to the application. The great flexibility of movement of the robot arms, equipped with smart multi-functional tools, allows the aforementioned requirements to be flexibly realised. The tools can be changed via automatic changeover flanges on the robots, and format changeover times can be reduced to five minutes, for example.
pj: What is Transnova RUF's vision?
Michael Ruf: Innovations in automation technology will further increase the potential for flexibility and thus open up new application possibilities. This represents a kind of cycle. The new requirements in Industry 4.0 production systems in particular make this clear. Fully networked value chains with the aim of "Mass customisation", The increasing complexity of the packaging industry, i.e. batch size 1 in mass production, also poses enormous challenges for the automated packaging process.
pj: Can you give us a specific example?
Michael Ruf: Our developers are currently working on a project with Fully automatic format changeover time of five seconds. In this project, the end customer orders a new product unit online. A production order for this unit is then generated fully automatically. Approximately 30 minutes before this unit is packed, the appropriate carton blank is requested from the warehouse and Just-in-sequence fully automatically to the packaging system. This flexibility would have been utopian just a few years ago. Today it is already a reality.
