SEW-Eurodrive conveyors keep things moving at Swire

An upgraded conveyor system has helped Australia’s largest cold-chain logistics service provider stay on top of its game - at low cost.

Handling more than 30,000 boxes each day, Swire Cold Storage’s Cannon Hill site relies heavily on its conveyor system. As production levels rose over the years, however, it became apparent that Swire’s ageing conveyor system wasn’t handling the increased volume.

The SEW-Eurodrive conveyor in action at Swire Cold Storage.

“Because of the high volume of boxes coming down the main conveyor line, the chain drive pushers just couldn’t cope at peak times, with the boxes getting caught up and forcing us to stop the whole conveyor line,” explains Colin Carter, Swire’s Queensland Engineering Manager.

Any downtime in the operation directly impacts Swire’s customers, something Swire was keen to minimise. After trying a number of approaches to address the problem, Swire approached SEW-Eurodrive.

“In the end, using SEW-Eurodrive’s smart products and the company’s in-depth knowledge of conveyor systems, we managed to fix the problem for far less money than we initially thought,” said Carter. “In fact, it was a very low-cost project for such a big improvement to our production efficiency.”

SEW-Eurodrive Applications Engineer Shahry Zand considered solutions for Swire’s pusher problem. He thought a servo drive with a high-resolution encoder would be ideal for the application, but it wasn’t going to be cheap: over $100,000 for the total solution.

But Zand found a solution for Swire that was efficient and affordable. The original motor was replaced with an SEW-Eurodrive high-efficiency motor, and an MQD DeviceNet module with internal positioning and sequence control (IPOS) capabilities replaced the original module.

To achieve a pushing cycle of less than 0.5 s, a speed profile was programmed in IPOS based on the pusher position. The aim of the set-up was to prevent the boxes being damaged by being hit at high speed while being able to stop the pusher at the home prox within the required accuracy.

“Thanks to the new built-in encoder, the pusher hasn’t missed the Home Prox even once and it’s pushing the boxes quicker and smoother than ever before,” said Zand.

With this solution, SEW-Eurodrive was able to fix the problem for less than $2200. Even better, the conveyor took just one day to install and was completed over a weekend, which meant no disruption to Swire’s production at all.

Carter is very impressed with the improvements and SEW-Eurodrive. “Their engineering skills and professionalism are first class. Since putting in the new drive our downtime has decreased considerably. In fact, I’ve just ordered three more drives from SEW-Eurodrive.

“We have over 150 of their drives on site and over 200 SEW-Eurodrive motors and gearboxes,” said Carter. “Basically you get what you pay for. There are probably cheaper drives on the market but they don’t go the distance. SEW-Eurodrive products are very flexible and reliable.”