Enhancement of Packing and Material Handling System of a Cement Plant for Robustness

Abstract

Material handling system is one of the factors affecting productivity of an industry. Moreover synchronization of all material handling equipments is equally important to avoid bottlenecking in a production line, particularly for process industry like cement plant.

Cement bags are loaded in a truck as per its capacity. The exact number of bags should be packed, counted and loaded in a truck with an automatic material handling system. Material handling system is working in synchronization of the rotary cement bag packer. In present system, when a truck is arranged properly at loading platform, the rotary packer starts and the rotary packer remains off when a truck is being arranged for loading. Waiting period for next truck decreases productivity of a cement plant. Moreover, the bag counter doesn't function accurately and consistently when the two bags moves together in a single stack.

In this project a modified orienting device along with a counter, a buffer and a bag dispensing wheel, and a dispensing chute have been proposed to circumvent the problem. These systems were conceptualized, fabricated and found consistent during testing.