Company: ROFOBOX
Industry: Gastronomy
DENSO Products Used: 3x VS-087 (IP40)
Company Location: Germany
Website: http://www.rofobox.com
PROBLEM
Folding napkins is one of the most labor consuming processes in the gastronomy and hotel industries. Each year, around 400,000 napkins are folded in larger hotels. It was witnessed that it takes about 30 seconds to fold a napkin but the 3,333 hours of folding can quickly become monotonous and demotivating for the worker. In addition to this, in food courts, napkins fall under special hygienic requirements as they come into contact with the mouth.
SOLUTION
Designing and developing a cost-effective, efficient and hygienic automatized system could replace this monotonous manual task.
The company ROFOBOX (RobotFoldingBox) together with partners developed a fully automatized machine that uses, combined with other devices, DENSO robots for the handling, folding and palletizing of napkins.
The DENSO technology that is being utilised by the ROFOBOX is the best robotics technology available on the market. “The robots are compact, fast, relatively light and have a long arm reach. In addition, the small floor area required for the robot allows for easy installation- whether it is on the ground, or mounted on the ceiling. The VS087 DENSO robots that we use have an attractive design and their white color portrays the purity of their design. These are precisely the skills we need for our innovative napkin machine,” says Kartal Can. CEO of Rofobox.
RESULT
For ten months, the ROFOBOX, the first high-tech napkin-folding machine worldwide, was tested under real conditions at the Estrel Hotel & Convention Center in Berlin. During the test phase, up to 50,000 napkins were accurately folded by the robots. This underscores the high process reliability and repeatability of DENSO robots.
At the INTERGASTRA 2012 in Stuttgart, the technology received a special award for technology innovation. In addition to the hygiene, the time saved also speaks for the use of the napkin machine. This folding technology can reduce costs.
The ROFOBOX is now being used into mass production for a laundry service near Frankfurt am Main.
Videos of ROFOBOX are available here: www.youtube.de/rofobox.