Applications: Positioning for Cartoning Success
Cartoning of these OPI treatment products is now fully automated.
With a CEO who tests his company's nail lacquers and treatments on his own nails, OPI isn't about to outsource anything it couldn't do itself. And that includes running its own state-of-the-art packaging lines.
OPI's formula for success is clear—handle as much as possible in-house. Its worldwide headquarters—a 19-building, 7.5-acre campus in North Hollywood , CA , with 450 full-time employees—houses the company's formulating, manufacturing, packaging, assembly, fulfillment, and promotional operations. “We do not outsource anything,” says Randy Allen, vice president of operations. [Allen is not related to the author of this article.] “Everything is done on-site.” This includes running seven nail lacquer–filling lines, all explosionproof, and the packaging lines to support them. While seasonal kits and some products are hand packed, OPI “saves a lot of labor with automation,” Allen reports. “If there is decent return-on-investment, we'll automate it.” For instance, he says that the firm is looking into robotics for certain packaging and assembly functions.
Premium nail treatments include Nail Envy strengtheners, Start to Finish base and top coats, RapiDry topcoat, and ChipSkip chip preventer. All feature OPI's patent-pending ProWide Brush. These high-end products are packaged in gable-top-like cartons supplied by Marfred Industries (Sunland, CA), with the bottles held in place by internal trays.
The bottles had originally been placed into trays and packed into cartons by hand. OPI then moved cartoning to a specially engineered cartoning machine from MGS Machine (Maple Grove, MN). The intermittent machine ran 50 cartons per minute. Operators oriented the bottles to face forward through the windowed cartons by hand. But Allen was determined to “get all handling out of premium treatments,” he says.
Last October, OPI installed a new Stealth cartoner from MGS Machine. Capable of running at 400 pieces per minute, the cartoner is integrated on an 80-piece-per-minute line, whose speed is dictated by the bottle-filling station. (The original cartoning line was not integrated with the filler, which is a washdown mono-block filler from Capmatic.)
The new cartoner offers much more than speed. OPI gave MGS Machine a specific footprint in which the new cartoner would need to operate, and MGS met its requirements. “We wanted a Hummer the size of a Volkswagon,” says Allen. “The available space for the cartoner is cramped, and we didn't want to move our wall.”
MGS’s Stealth horizontal cartoner. MGS delivered its Stealth horizontal cartoner, measuring 17.5 ft from the infeed to the exit of the cartoner. The system uses pneumatics and vacuum to drive product handling. A star-wheel system accepts bottles from a dual-lane infeed. “Engineering from MGS Machine is superb,” says Allen.
To eliminate hand orientation of the bottles, MGS Machine integrated a vision system into the line. Through pneumatics and vacuum, the bottles are picked up and placed into the star wheel. As the star wheel turns, the dual-portal vision system looks for registration eye marks printed on the bottles, and a red light illuminates the eye marks for providing the needed contrast. Once the system picks up the mark, it can rotate the bottle up to 359° from the mark. It then places the bottle in the custom-molded tray.
The filled tray is then placed on top of the package insert in bucket-like cars on the conveyor. The gable-top carton is erected around the end of the bucket, so no gaps exist, eliminating the chance of misfeeds into the carton. All components are fed into the carton horizontally in a continuous motion. Glue is applied to the carton's gable top as it is being pinched closed.
Allen Bradley controls guide the entire cartoning process. Adjustments can be made with a touch screen, and the system can be reprogrammed by hooking up a laptop directly to a control box. All line information is archived.
Specialty stainless-steel guarding and tempered-glass windows were used on the new cartoning line because some of the cleaning solvents used on cartoning machines can eat away at guarding materials traditionally used on cartoners.
The gable-top-style cartons are also used for OPI's designer-series nail lacquer featuring diamond dust, but there are currently no plans to bring that project to the new Stealth cartoner. “Manual orientation is still necessary because of the lacquer colors. The vision system cannot see the black orientation mark against a purple lacquer,” for instance, he says.
Line changeover can be accomplished in 5 minutes, regardless of the packaging component being changed.
OPI is known worldwide for its well-named, well-made nail lacquers and nail treatments. Lacquer names such as “Wanted . . . Red or Alive,” “Polar Bare,” and “Tijuana Dance” draw in consumers and professionals alike. Product quality stemming from a heritage in the dental acrylics market continues to fortify OPI's reputation as a market leader. (ChipSkip chip preventer, for instance, carries the Good Housekeeping replacement warranty seal.)
OPI spends about $1 million per year on new equipment and another $800,000 on maintenance. Automation, however, doesn't mean that OPI eliminates any staff positions. Allen redeployed 18 people and a team leader previously working on the original cartoning line to other projects. With OPI's sales well in excess of $140 million and 10% growth projected, “they have plenty to do!” says Allen.