Most end-of-line problems aren't inside a machine. They're between machines — at the handoffs, the rate mismatches and the separate screens. Odecopack integrates case packers, palletizers, robot cells and the equipment you already own into one line that starts, stops and recovers as a single system.
Integrated automation is what turns several automated machines into one automated line. Each machine can work perfectly on its own test and the line can still lose an hour a shift — because nobody engineered what happens when product passes from one machine to the next, when one stops, or when the line changes format.
Custom industrial automation projects usually start with a single machine. The good ones are planned so the second and third machines join the first under the same controls, the same safety scheme and the same idea of how the line should behave.
For engineering a single custom cell, see custom automation. This page is about what happens between cells.
None of them show up in a single machine's spec sheet. All of them show up in your line's output.
Product changes hands between machines — case packer to conveyor, conveyor to palletizer. Each transfer is a place for product to jam, tip or arrive out of position.
We design each transfer as part of the system: product orientation, spacing and pickup position agreed between the machine that releases it and the machine that receives it.
Machines rarely run at exactly the same rate, and they never stop at the same moment. Without room to absorb the difference, one short stop becomes a stopped line.
Rates are balanced across the line at scoping, with accumulation sized so a brief stop downstream does not immediately starve or back up the machines around it.
Every machine arrives with its own PLC and its own screen. Nobody sees the line as one thing, and diagnosing a stoppage means walking between panels.
The machines are tied into one controls architecture over the protocols your plant already runs, such as EtherNet/IP and Safety over EtherCAT, so the line starts, stops and reports as a unit.
When one machine faults, what do the others do? Undefined behavior at a fault is how a two-minute stop becomes a twenty-minute restart.
Stop, hold and restart behavior is defined for the whole line, so a fault in one cell puts its neighbors into a known state instead of an improvised one.
Each machine may be guarded on its own, while the gaps between them — where people clear jams — are nobody's responsibility.
Safety is assessed across the line, including access points between machines, rather than accepted as the sum of each machine's own guarding.
Switching SKUs means every machine on the line changing over. Done one machine at a time, the line spends longer changing than running.
Changeover is planned for the line as a whole, so the machines switch formats in a coordinated sequence rather than each on its own schedule.
We build the case packers and palletizers ourselves, integrate the robots as a FANUC Authorized System Integrator, and bring your existing equipment into the same scheme.
Our T-BOT Cartesian Case Packer, or a robotic case packing cell where the product needs one.
T-BOT case packerOur gantry palletizer for moderate rates and case weights, or a robotic palletizer for faster, heavier lines.
PalletizersFANUC robot cells for pick and place, kitting or machine tending, engineered with their own tooling and guarding.
Robotic integrationMachines already on your floor, brought into the same controls and safety scheme through retrofits and upgrades.
Retrofits and upgradesYou rarely need to automate everything at once. You do need every stage built to join the same system.
Rates, stoppages, manual stations and the equipment worth keeping. The integration plan starts from where the line actually loses time, not from a machine list.
Usually the heaviest, least staffable station — very often palletizing. It is automated so it can later join the line, not as an island.
Case packing and other stations are added in sequence, each connected to the controls architecture laid down in the first stage.
Line-level start, stop, fault recovery and changeover — the point where separate machines start behaving as a single system.
