WITH A 22-PERCENT SHARE OF THE MARKET,
Cruz Azul is already a major player in Mexico’s cement
industry. Even so, the company recently decided to
expand its product menu with a new line of tile mortar
products. In the interests of getting the new products to
market quickly, the building
materials supplier installed
an automated packaging
system for the mortar at its
recently completed greenfield production facility in
Hidalgo, Mexico.
To design the new packaging line and supply the
equipment, Cruz Azul
turned to the Beumer
Group, a Germany-based
systems integrator and packaging specialist. Victor Luna,
technical director at Cruz Azul, says his company chose
Beumer based on its experience working with the vendor
on previous projects. Among other systems, Beumer has
supplied the cement producer with bucket elevators,
Autopac truck loaders, and Paletpac palletizing devices.
The solution Beumer Group created for Cruz Azul
automates the packaging process from end to end.
Among other capabilities, it fills bags with eight different
types of tile mortar, stacks the bags onto pallets, and seals
the loaded product for cross-country transportation.
The process begins with a “bag placer” machine that
guides empty bags onto highly pressurized filling spouts
that compact the fine-grained material. Once the bag
is filled, an electronic scale verifies the filling accura-
cy and weight of each bag
and automatically removes
any bags that fall outside of
quality standards.
After moving through a
bag flattener that helps to
optimize bag stack quality,
When it comes to productivity, the solution is producing solid results. The new packaging system at Cruz Azul
has a throughput capacity of 2,200 bags per hour.
An automated packaging line delivers solid performance for a Mexican cement producer.
Concrete results
company in Sydney using route planning and execution
visibility software.
As for how it’s all working out, BC Sands says it has
seen a number of benefits. To begin with, there’s accu-
racy. The solution ensures the right product is loaded
onto the right truck, while scanning and POD (proof
of delivery) ensure accurate delivery. Then there are the
cost savings. By optimizing route planning and delivery
with a GPS-based mobile solution, Descartes helped BC
Sands enhance its fleet capacity utilization, reduce the
frequency of returned loads, and minimize distance trav-
eled and fuel usage, thereby reducing operating expens-
es. And finally, there are the customer benefits. BC Sands
is now able to offer customers short leadtimes, flexible
time-window choices, and in-full/on-time deliveries on
a more consistent basis than it could in the past.
But the new solution didn’t just help the company
improve service and reduce logistics costs; it also opened
the door to an unexpected revenue stream. Once it had
the new system in place, BC Sands discovered it could
leverage its newfound scheduling capabilities to earn
something more substantial than customers’ gratitude.
To be precise, it learned that in many cases, customers
placed such a high value on expedited, time-definite
delivery service that they were willing to pay premium
prices for the products.
