Case study | August 2026

A dairy producer in Central Europe — 180 million liters of milk, yogurt, and fresh dairy products per year — was running three packaging lines with case erecting capacity that had quietly become the bottleneck. Their internal OEE review showed the lines at 58–62% efficiency, and the root cause kept pointing to the same place: case erecting.

The Customer’s Pain Points

The plant packs 38,000–45,000 cases per shift across 20+ SKUs — fresh milk in 1 L cartons, yogurt in 4×125 g multipacks, and drinkable dairy in 330 ml bottles. Key problems:

• Erector capacity lag. The three legacy erectors ran at 8–10 CPM each against a line demand of 14–16 CPM during peak hours. The erectors were the wall the whole line hit.
• Cold-room operation. Part of the packaging runs in a chilled area at 6–8 °C, where the legacy machines’ glue systems suffered cold-flow and stringing, causing 3–4 bottom-seal failures per shift.
• Changeover-heavy SKU mix. 20+ SKUs meant 5–7 changeovers per day at 20–35 minutes each — over two hours of erecting downtime per day.
• No fault visibility. The legacy machines had no logging; when a jam happened, operators walked over, cleared it, and nobody knew the jam rate.

The Solution: Three ZRAY High-Speed Case Formers

ZRAY replaced all three legacy erectors with double-head high-speed case formers rated at 24–40 CPM each — a deliberate 2.5–4× capacity headroom over the legacy machines. Configuration highlights:

1. Cold-Room-Ready Glue System

• Trace-heated glue lines from tank to guns, keeping the adhesive at setpoint even when the room is at 6–8 °C — cold-flow and stringing eliminated.
• Closed-loop temperature control at 160 ± 3 °C with a low-temperature alarm that stops the machine rather than running cold joints.
• Cold-joint verification: IR bead detection confirms glue presence on every case; a dry flap is caught in-cycle.

2. Changeover Under 3 Minutes

• Recipe memory for all 20+ SKUs with servo-positioned guides and glue-gun positioning.
• Changeover is now one button: the PLC repositions the machine and pre-checks blank availability; under 3 minutes vs. 20–35 minutes before.

3. Full Diagnostics

• 500-event alarm logging with an Ethernet link to the plant’s SCADA and CMMS.
• Per-shift production reporting: cases erected, rejects, downtime codes — automatically, replacing the manual shift reports.

Results and ROI

The dairy plant measured 6 months before and 8 months after commissioning:

The Efficiency Story

Line efficiency rose from ~60% to ~85% — a 40% relative improvement. Because the erecting station is no longer the wall, the filling and packaging lines now run at their true rated speed. The plant gained the equivalent of 1.2 extra line-days per week without adding any equipment except the erectors.

Annualized financial impact:

• Extra production from recovered efficiency (milk volume at plant margin): EUR 310,000/yr
• Rework and scrap reduction (failed cases, repack): EUR 26,000/yr
• Reduced overtime: EUR 18,000/yr
• Total: EUR 354,000/yr against a machine investment of EUR 210,000 — payback in 7.1 months.

ROI Summary Table

What the Plant Manager Said

“We knew the erectors were slow. We didn’t know they were costing us a third of a million euros a year. The OEE number after the upgrade is what our board asks about now.”

The Lesson for Dairy and Chilled Lines

Two rules from this project:

1. Size erecting capacity 30–40% above peak filling demand — the cheapest hour of capacity is the one the machine has in reserve.
2. In cold rooms, treat the glue system as a cold-chain component, not a generic hot-melt: trace-heated lines and cold-joint verification are not options on chilled lines, they are requirements.

If your line efficiency is below 70% and your erectors are older than 8 years, the payback math almost always favors replacement. Request a line efficiency analysis or message us on WhatsApp at +86 13681839278.