At dairy giant Arla Foods' factory in Sweden the repetitive work of packing cheese into boxes was taking its toll on the workforce. Placing blocks of cheese into a carton at the rate of nearly one per second caused high rates of repetitive strain injuries. The solution was to automate with four packing cells from Graniten, each built around an IRB 120 robot from ABB. Thomas Johansson project manager at Arla FoodsJohansson says he is pleased with
Graniten's solution and adds that the workers who are now monitoring the robots rather than packing cheese by hand welcome the fact that they are no longer exposed to potential injury. He says, "The robots can't do everything that a person can do on this workstation, but they can certainly do 98--99 percent of the job. "