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A robotic pick and place solution by Schubert to increase the throughput of the production line

04 November 20245 min reading

Sweet Candy Company, based in Salt Lake City, the unofficial “sweet tooth capital” of the United States, is known for its quality candy and world-class customer service. To meet the increasing customer demand for its signature product, the Chocolate Sticks, a Schubert Pickerline enables Sweet Candy Company to add another shift to their production to satisfy its customer.

Dark chocolate or Milk chocolate coating? Cherry, Orange or even Mango flavored-jelly fillings? Sweet Candy Company’s chocolate jelly sticks are offered in a broad variety of flavors. Customers can select up to 10 different standard flavors and additional different seasonal flavors. Sweet’s R&D team is always working on surprising their customers with new tasty flavors, from coconut-pineapple to mango-chili sticks. The company’s signature product has become one of the most popular sweet treats in North America. Actively managed by the third, fourth and fifth generation, the family-owned American confectioner has been supplying its customers with their favorite sweets since 1892. Already back in early days, Utah was known for its love for sugar, so Leon Sweet, who first sold licorice root candies from a horse-drawn wagon in Portland, decided to move to Utah for greater access to the sugar mills. Today, Sweet Candy Company is the largest national distributor of salt-water taffies, jelly-filled chocolate sticks, sour candy, and chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. 

Sweet Candy Company has survived a couple of pandemics, the Great Depression and two World Wars. “The famous “Candy Bomber” Gail Halvorsen dropped Sweet’s chocolates from his C-54 cargo plane for children in post-war Germany. And during the Prohibition, the liquor once used in the flavorings had to be locked in a vault and every drop accounted for” describes Rick Kay, President & Owner. Whatever it is, “folks need their candy” says Rick, “during a pandemic, you may not be buying a jet ski, but you’ll probably keep buying your orange sticks.” So, it was no surprise that during the covid pandemic, Sweet’s ran their plant as usual, without furloughing any of its employees. The demand for the chocolate stick products even kept increasing and the confectioner needed to increase the throughput of the line to be able to add on another shift. 

A robotics-based packaging line instead of a semi-automated equipment

The equipment that was there was semi-automated. “It had done a great job of getting us to where we are today, but it wasn’t the right equipment for us to take the next step and it required a lot of human intervention and manipulation. Additionally, it was only packing about 50% of the upstream product and so the other 50% needed to be packed by hand” explains Geoff Dzuida, VP Operations at Sweet Candy Company. “We turned to Schubert for a robotic solution that solved our labor equation and also allowed us to make that change in throughput.”

Sweet’s needed a robotics based packaging system to handle the larger production volume that is also able to flexibly adjust the amount of products per box. At the same time, Sweet’s focused on high mechanical stability, outstanding customer service & easy machine operation. “Schubert became a very obvious choice, and I don’t regret it one bit” emphasizes Rick.

Pre-erected trays for quality chocolate sticks

Sweet’s new Schubert Pickerline packages the quality chocolate sticks into pre-erected trays. Special to this packaging task is that a layer of wax paper is placed between the two layers of products. Another important feature is the “on the fly” product count modification. The bottom layer has a fixed number of products, and the top layer can be adjusted by +/-1 products during production. This adjustment is necessary as the product is sold by weight and not by count. The adjustment can be done during production via a manual input at the machine HMI.

1920 chocolate sticks transition into Sweet’s new packaging system from an 860 mm wide cooling tunnel belt. Within the packaging system, the products are pre-grouped in a multi-pick fashion in layer formations of 15-17 sticks by 16 vision guided F4-axis scara type robots. Previously erected carton bases are indexed into a transport chain and an F4 robot loads the carton trays with the first pre-grouped layer. In the next step a wax paper is placed on top of the first layer, also executed by an F4 robot. Then occurs the loading of the second product layer onto the wax paper. And finally, the box is closed by an F4 robot placing the pre-erected lid onto the fille carton bottom.

Looking back at the new machine project, Rick remembers the good times spent at Schubert’s Headquarters in Germany, Crailsheim. “The FAT in Germany was perfect, the SAT onsite in Salt Lake City was accelerated and remarkably well. From the initial project planning to the currently ongoing operator training in Charlotte, North Carolina, Schubert has provided everything we’ve expected” Rick describes.

“Sweet Candy Company is a great customer with lots of potential for growth. By opting to automate their packaging processes, the confectioner is now able to take on another level of flexibility and product availability to succeed in fulfilling the demands of their continuously growing customer base. The company’s culture, the friendliness and openness of the owner-family and management is remarkable and reflected well throughout the entire workforce, making our teams always feel a warm welcome onsite. One can notice similarities to Schubert’s company culture – it must be a family-owned company thing.” says Armin Klotz, Sales Account Manager at Schubert.

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