KELLY-MOORE PAINT COMPANY

KELLY-MOORE PAINT COMPANY Alvey Robotic Palletizers From Honeywell Intelligrated Paint a Picture of Efficiency for Kelly-Moore Case Study

Alvey Robotic Palletizers From Honeywell Intelligrated Paint a Picture of Efficiency for Kelly-Moore Willingness to Invest in Future Yields Big Dividends With 76 Percent Return on Investment in First Year Please note: Honeywell Intelligrated within this case study refers to Intelligrated, which Honeywell acquired in 2016. Beginning in 1946 with a single manufacturing facility in San Carlos, California, Kelly-Moore Paints has grown to the largest employee-owned, and the fifth-largest paint company, in the United States. Supporting more than 165 local stores, Kelly-Moore is the painter s paint store, providing high-quality paint and related products to contractors, commercial and maintenance accounts, and do-it-yourself consumers. Today, the company maintains two facilities - in California and Texas - manufacturing and distributing nearly 15 million gallons of paint per year. State-of-the-art on-site laboratories ensure quality control and produce some of the most technologically advanced paint products available, including their ecoat Recycled and Zero-VOC Enviro Coat and Green Coat lines. Headquartered in San Carlos, Calif., this carbonneutral manufacturing facility needed to keep pace with the advances in the company s product lines. Hand palletizing of products weighing up to 70 pounds and production flow inefficiencies pointed to some obvious areas needing improvement. PAGE 2

The Challenge When plant manager Keith Hussinger joined Kelly-Moore at their San Carlos, California headquarters four years ago, one thing was clear: Kelly- Moore s manufacturing process had not kept pace with advances in the company s product lines. As an employee-owned company, Kelly-Moore has a strong focus on the safety and ergonomic issues impacting their employees. Hand palletizing of products weighing up to 70 pounds and production flow inefficiencies pointed to some obvious areas needing improvement. Even with a vacuum assist, manual lifting was an issue of worker comfort as well as production efficiency. The building selected to receive upgrades would soon begin production of Kelly-Moore s most advanced and most technically difficult product lines. These lines typically have smaller runs with a higher SKU change rate, demanding flexibility in both the production and the handling of product. At this point, the Kelly-Moore team, led by Hussinger, actively set out to find a materials handling partner who could meet the company s needs. Finding a Palletizing Solution Partner Visiting the Honeywell Intelligrated booth at PACK EXPO in 2008, Hussinger was impressed with the knowledge of the company s end-of-line materials handling integration team as well as the capabilities available, particularly their single-source responsibility for system design, fabrication, installation, commissioning and local customer support. Taking bids from several integrators and independent palletizing companies, Kelly-Moore chose Honeywell Intelligrated and its line of Alvey robotic palletizers based on the company s reputation, 60 years of palletizing experience, and breadth of product and integration capabilities. What we found with Honeywell Intelligrated was exactly what we wanted: a complete, turnkey installation with the experienced team to support it, said Hussinger. End-of-arm tooling from Honeywell Intelligrated lifting five-gallon pails in groups of three to the build station contains a custom-designed ring within the vacuum plenum to prevent the flow of air from pulling out a tinting port. Honeywell Intelligrated rose to the challenge. A design team, with specialists in conventional, robotic and hybrid palletizing manufacturing and integration, was assigned to the Kelly-Moore project and led by Honeywell Intelligrated s director of robotics integration, Bill Natsch. The Alvey robotic palletizing system would be built, assembled and tested in St. Louis and installed by Honeywell Intelligrated s local Los Angeles-based technicians. PAGE 3

Once the buckets are filled and sealed, they are conveyed via 15 feet of Accuglide zero-pressure accumulation conveyor. The challenges that we knew we faced and, maybe more importantly, the ones we did not know about were pretty significant. We needed a partner that could work with us to engineer a solution that fit our needs in a scalable way. said Hussinger. An Engineered Solution With strict space limitations in the building, the Honeywell Intelligrated team set out to design the most compact solution for the company s manufacturing processes. Building columns set in the middle of the room made fitting the palletizing cells a tight squeeze with only inches to spare. The system designers wanted to ensure that Kelly-Moore would not have to make any structural changes to the building to accommodate its final design. The Kelly-Moore manufacturing process revolves around four lines: two lines handling smaller, conventional gallon and quart paint cans; and the other two handling larger, five gallon pails. It was decided that two robotic arms would meet the palletizing rates that Kelly-Moore required. In this case, the Alvey robotic palletizing system used robotic arms sourced from long-time partner, Motoman. Unwrapped trays of quart or gallon paint cans presented an early challenge for the end-of-arm tool designers. The solution demanded a tool that could pick up configurations of 2x2-gallon and 3x3-quart paint can patterns, and their respective loose cardboard trays. Honeywell Intelligrated decided that the best solution for this particular product was an end-of-arm tool with an additional vacuum arm specifically for the cardboard tray. Working with Tepro Machine & Pac System and its line of Unigripper lifting tools, the final design lifts the cans and secures the tray with a separate pivoting vacuum arm that descends as product is moved to the pallet. PAGE 4

It s the end-of-arm tooling and system controls that we add, that really customizes the solution to fit the need, explained Natsch. The five-gallon pails posed their own engineering challenge. A two-inch diameter tinting port on each lid that allowed customers to tint the paint in the store could not withstand a vacuum. The solution was end-ofarm tooling that would be designed and manufactured by Honeywell Intelligrated with a custom-designed ring within the vacuum plenum to prevent the flow of air from pulling out this port. The pails would then be lifted three-at-a-time and palletized in a nested configuration. Continuous Improvement, Improving the Earth Kelly-Moore Paint s San Carlos headquarters is a carbon-neutral, certified green business and recipient of the 2010 Large Green Business of the Year Award*. Our products are engineered with a continuous improvement mentality and we have put that to work in the manufacturing process as well, said Keith Hussinger, plant manager for Kelly-Moore Paints. We knew that we had the corporate support to invigorate and update our manufacturing process. Leading 100,000 California companies, Kelly-Moore was selected by the Green Business Committee in 2009 for its series of recycling and improvement programs that diverted 80 percent of its waste, and for its ability to motivate employees to commit to its recycling effort a rare achievement for a company in the chemical-based paint industry. Kelly-Moore was also recognized for its carbon-offset program, resulting in the San Carlos plant being carbon neutral. Our employees can see the benefits of the Alvey robotic palletizer, said Hussinger. It makes them more willing to participate in some of our other initiatives; it proves that we re not just talking about change. Winning awards like the Large Green Business of the Year is a result of our hard work, our willingness to invest in the future, and our commitment to continuous improvement. * 2010 Large Green Business of the Year Award is hosted by the San Carlos Chamber of Commerce. PAGE 5

Unwrapped trays of quart and gallon paint cans presented a challenge for end-of-arm tooling. Working with Tepro, the final design lifts the cans and secures the tray with a separate pivoting vacuum arm that descends while product is moved to the pallet. Key Benefits: Zero-pressure Accumulation and Line Changeovers Without Delay or Retooling Once the pails are filled and sealed, they are conveyed via 15 feet of Accuglide zero-pressure accumulation conveyor. Zero-pressure accumulation is critical with a circular product, like paint cans or pails, where any line pressure would be concentrated at the point of contact between adjacent pails, and product backups could create a jam or push the pails off the conveyor. The heavier five-gallon lines are equipped with escapements to position the product in a precise location to allow the robot to pick them up in groups of three. Based on Kelly-Moore s original specifications, the system design did not call for the Alvey robotic palletizer to handle pallets. However, Honeywell Intelligrated determined that the robot could handle the empty pallet placement at the build positions without significantly impacting the speed of production. This design change alone saved Kelly-Moore $25,000. Both robotic arms repeatedly pick and place cans or pails from the infeed conveyors and stack them sequentially on the waiting pallets. Multiple layers are built on the pallet until the pallet load is complete. Once a pallet is complete, it is conveyed on a Honeywell Intelligrated chain-driven live roller pallet conveyor to a new Lantech stretch wrapper supplied by Honeywell Intelligrated. Before, we were securing our pail pallets with rope, said Hussinger. The wrapper is a much more forward-thinking piece of equipment, and speaks to the wide range of integration technologies Honeywell Intelligrated can bring to the table. PAGE 6

The transformation has been incredible. What was the most outdated of our buildings has quickly become our stateof-the-art gem, said Hussinger. This is the building that we showcase to our clients. The Alvey robotic system lends a forward-looking element that we believe reflects our vision of where we are going with our product lines clean, efficient and technically advanced. As with all robotic projects, Honeywell Intelligrated completed a factory acceptance test (FAT) for the Kelly-Moore project at its St. Louis, Mo., engineering and manufacturing facility. During the FAT, all robotic functions were completed, including pallet handling and product palletizing for both the trays and pails. Project management and installation, as well as startup and commissioning services for the project were executed by the Honeywell Intelligrated western regional office based in Sacramento, Calif. Key to this system was the ability of the Alvey robotic palletizer to accommodate quick line changeovers. This flexibility proved invaluable shortly after installation, when a large Kelly-Moore customer requested a custom run of three-gallon pails. Although they had the same footprint as the five-gallon product, the new pails were several inches shorter. Honeywell Intelligrated handled the request with a straightforward pattern addition, avoiding the typical re-tooling required for a conventional end-of-line installation. Results: 76 Percent Return on Investment in First Year and 80 Percent Reduction in Changeover Time The system was installed and delivered on time and on budget during Kelly-Moore s off-peak season in January and February 2009. Over the next year, the improved San Carlos facility experienced impressive results. In only one year, we have had an incredible 76 percent ROI in our labor time, said Hussinger. We were able to cut out almost all overtime, but still fill our orders. Without a doubt, this project has exceeded our expectations in both efficiency and numbers. Additionally, our main goal of increasing worker comfort and safety was met, as the number of our lost-time accidents decreased rapidly, from 23 in 2005 to five in 2009. The automated end-of-line system has enabled the line to run at an even pace throughout the day, as the breaks required by heavy lifting from the old manual palletizing system were eliminated. Line changeovers, which took 45 minutes of downtime with the old system, today take only nine minutes. This represents an 80 percent reduction in line changeover time. PAGE 7

Kelly-Moore System Overview Honeywell Intelligrated Alvey robotic palletizing system integrating Motoman EPL-160 robotic arms Honeywell Intelligrated Accuglide accumulation conveyor Honeywell Intelligrated pallet dispenser Honeywell Intelligrated chain-driven live roller pallet conveyor Honeywell Intelligrated pallet transfers Conveyors: Honeywell Intelligrated Robotic Arms: Motoman Vacuum Tooling: Honeywell Intelligrated Tepro Machine & Pac Systems From left, project manager Tim Lasko, Honeywell Intelligrated; maintenance manager Brendan Ingraham, Kelly-Moore; plant manager Keith Hussinger, Kelly-Moore Pallet Dispenser: Honeywell Intelligrated Stretch Wrapper: Lantech Controls and Programming Software: Honeywell Intelligrated System Design: Honeywell Intelligrated System Integration: Honeywell Intelligrated PAGE 8

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