The Cadbury factory in
Bournville maintains a buffer
stock of wrapped but
unpackaged product for its
Roses and Heroes lines of
assorted chocolate selections.

Individual types of
chocolates used to be stored
separately in cardboard boxes
which were emptied by hand
for packing into the Heroes
or Roses product.

Regulations for weight
handling meant units had to
be stored in a large number
of small boxes, rather than
‘polypans’.

Bournville began to look
at the use of robots to feed in
the different chocolates. As
they would be able to handle
polypans directly, storage of
boxes would be eliminated.

It became apparent that
use of robots would mean
sophisticated control systems
and a large investment of
time and money. Cadbury
turned to WITNESS software
from Lanner to simulate the
processes involved. The
simulation system visually
represents real world
processes in a dynamic,
animated computergenerated
model, enabling
experimentation with ‘whatif
‘ scenarios.

In this project, modelling
of the initial design was
completed quickly including
a range of complex control
logic. At that stage, the real
investigation began and the
model was used to refine
robot timing and sequences,
conveyor delivery and full
operational control.

Use of WITNESS has been
a great success. The robot
introduction has eliminated
wasteful manual processes.

Now, it is single automatic
tipping of polypans that
carry 5.5kg of chocolate.

Cardboard use and transport
requirements have been cut,
supporting Cadbury’s ‘Purple
Goes Green’ policy.