Automation greases the skids at JTM

A move to robotic palletizing increased productivity 55% at the lubricant manufacturer.

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/1/2005

JTM Products could be thought of as a revolutionary company.

In this case, however, it's the Second Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s with which JTM is most often associated. Founded in 1890 as the Phoenix Oil Company, JTM was the original producer of Murphy Oil Soap along with lubricants for the machinery that made the Second Industrial Revolution possible.

But times change, and so has JTM Products. Based in Solon, Ohio, the privately held company now concentrates on industrial lubricants along with private label and specialty manufacturing. Still owned by grandsons of Jeremiah Timothy Murphy, JTM produces Murphy's tire mounting and demounting lubricants and Phoenix pipe joint lubricants.

And while the company is now 115 years old, JTM continues to grow, with an estimated 65% market share for its two main products.

That created a challenge. If the company was going to continue to grow, would a new facility be required? And if so, what new materials handling equipment would be needed to support the company's growth?

"We were pretty much pigeonholed into an old building," says Dan Schodowski, president and CEO. "We couldn't expand. Even within the building, we could not add a lot of machinery or equipment. If we wanted to expand our business, we needed more room."

The answer to the first question was a new manufacturing plant in the Cleveland suburb. The answer to the second question was a robotic palletizer (FKI Logistex) to handle the variety of packaging that comes down the line before shipment. The Murphy products are primarily packaged in 25- and 40-pound pails, while the Phoenix line is primarily packaged in cases of quart or gallon containers.

The robotic palletizer now handles more than 200,000 pails and 150,000 cases each year; 75% of the pails are 25 pounds and 75% of the cases hold quart containers. That throughput, a 55% increase over previous levels, requires the same size labor force as before.

Materials handling at JTM is bare bones. Most raw materials are purchased by the drum, which allows for a fair amount of floor storage.

Production of the company's biggest selling items is done on a continuous basis, then stored in bulk containers for packaging later. That doesn't require much handling.

But that doesn't mean materials handling is not important. In fact, materials handling was identified as an area ripe for improvement in a new facility.

"When we decided to move, we looked at how we could set up our operations differently," says Schodowski. "In the old building, our layout was fragmented. We couldn't bring in automated palletizers or other automated equipment. We were faced with having to keep adding people to manually load the product on the pallets and truck them somewhere else to have them shrink-wrapped."

What's more, they couldn't run both product lines without extra staff on hand to manage the palletizing duties.

In addition, JTM realized it needed a solution that could handle both product lines. That would allow the company to allocate more space in the new 70,000-square foot facility to its chemical processing, packaging equipment and inventory. The answer was an automated articulated-arm robotic palletizer with a vacuum end-effector that could palletize both pails and cases.

The palletizer also freed up labor in the new plant. "We thought if we have an automatic palletizer then we don't need somebody at the end of the line," says Schodowski. "The idea was not to eliminate any jobs, but we also didn't want to have to add any personnel when the business started growing."

To design the cell, JTM had to look at the sizes of the pails and boxes that would be handled. Since each product has its own pallet build pattern and production rate, managers also had to determine how much of each product would be picked at a time, and then go about building the patterns.

Since the robot had to handle both pails and boxes, JTM went with a vacuum end-effector instead of a mechanical one. That allowed it to pick both types of product from the top, and to pick up different product and different quantities that are released in several variations.

The company also implemented a sophisticated control system that minimizes the amount of operator interface required.

On a heavy day, the robot palletizes as many as 70 pallets of 25-pound pails, a total of 3,300 pails. On an average day, 2,800 pails are palletized compared with the 1,800 that could be hand-stacked in a day at the old facility.

"In the old facility without the robot, I would have had to add two people to get up to this volume," says Larry Wilson, director of operations.

The system has also created a safer more ergonomic environment for the factory crew.

"The ergonomics factored into our decision," adds Wilson. "We have an older workforce. Since we've moved here, we've retired three people. We had people picking up 1,800 or 1,900 pails a day. That's a long day."

The robotic palletizer has lived up to JTM's expectations, with room to grow. At present, the system is running at only 65% of capacity, leaving the door open to much higher volumes as sales increase.

Click  the icon to read more about palletizing. (How palletizers stack up - June 2005)