Confectionary & Snacks

TOG Cobot for Minderleinsmühle

The boxes filled by the TOG on their way to manual sealing

Organic cereal bars intelligently packed in the smallest of spaces

  • AI-powered TOG Cobot fully automates the packing of cereal bars into folding cartons
  • Up to 70 bars per minute across nine different carton formats
  • Compact footprint of just 1.5 x 1.4 metres
  • Commissioning in less than 24 hours
  • Autonomous product recognition powered by artificial intelligence

Challange

Traditional company seeks compact automation

Minderleinsmühle, located in Kalchreuth near Nuremberg, is a true organic pioneer: since the late 1980s, this family-owned company has been processing grain into premium organic products. Alongside flours, muesli and pasta, the popular cereal bars sold under the "Mühlengenuss" brand are also part of the product range. Until recently, production staff packed these bars by hand – a monotonous process that tied up valuable resources. Operations Manager Florian Schmiedecke and Cereals Division Manager Tim Scharringhausen were looking for a solution that could cartonate quickly and without time-consuming format changes. The challenge: the available floor space only allowed for an extremely compact system.

Solution

An intelligent robot with vision

At interpack 2023, the team at Minderleinsmühle discovered Schubert's TOG Cobot – and were immediately impressed. The AI-powered pick-and-place robot proved to be the ideal solution for the tight space constraints. Covering an area of just 1.5 x 1.4 metres, the TOG places up to 70 bars per minute into a total of nine different folding carton types. Thanks to artificial intelligence, it independently recognises the differently printed flow-wrap packs of the various flavours and picks them reliably. A camera and neural network enable the robot to fill even moving cartons with precision – all without complex programming.

Schubert’s TOG cobot places up to 70 bars per minute into a total of nine types of folding cartons with various packing configurations.

Our staff operated the TOG flawlessly from day one. With Schubert, we got off to a fantastic start – something I've never experienced with any other system.

Tim Scharringhausen

Cereals Division Manager, Minderleinsmühle

Technical details

  • TOG Cobot (pick-and-place) for automated loading into folding cartons
  • Output: up to 70 bars per minute
  • 9 folding carton types with different packing patterns
  • AI-powered product recognition (camera + neural network) for autonomous placement
The boxes filled by the TOG on their way to manual sealing

Lightning-fast commissioning

At Minderleinsmühle, just two days passed between delivery and the start of production. Because the TOG is housed in a flexible automation cell and the team had prepared the installation thoroughly, the robot was already packing its first bars by the late shift on commissioning day. "Thanks to Schubert, we now have a very smooth, consistent and trouble-free production process," confirms Operation Manager Florian Schmiedecke.

Further impressions

More Case Studies

All Case Studies