Creating a successful business takes hard work, vision, and the readiness to enter unknown territory. In the early 2000s, robotics as a field was starting to take off across the United States, but in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, few were involved at the time.
Don Wickstrum was. Driven by his interest in technology, he founded Quest Industrial in his garage, taking on the challenge of integrating robotics into packaging and food handling applications, specifically Wisconsin’s world-famous cheese and dairy industry.
As the company expanded its team and invested in the machinery to meet client demand, it grew to the point where Don and Mary Wickstrum had to buy a new building.
And then, in 2019, the successful, full-service robotic integrator was acquired by ProMach. With over 45 go-to-market product brands and more than 150,000 machines in the field, ProMach is one of the world’s best-in-class production line and packaging companies, providing turnkey solutions to small manufacturers and Fortune 500 companies alike in food and beverage, personal care, pharmaceutical, household goods, and other sectors.
“We’ve grown really rapidly from somebody’s garage into three different buildings that we build our machines out of,” says Justin Linxwiler, Director of Sales.
Buoyed by the strength and robotics expertise of multi-billion-dollar ProMach, Quest works with ProMach’s family of dozens of best-in-class product brands to provide a host of solutions, including direct food handling, case packing, palletizing, automated guided vehicles, after-sales service, and more.
From its base in Monroe, Wisconsin, Quest provides customers with industrial automation equipment. Focused on robotics and vision guidance, Quest is an award-winning FANUC (Fuju Automatic Numerical Control—one of the world’s largest robotics companies) Authorized System Integrator and Certified Vision Specialist. With accumulated decades of combined experience in its team, Quest provides industrial automation equipment for clients in sectors including cheese and dairy, produce, consumer packaged goods, frozen foods, beverages, snack food, and pet food.
Designing, engineering, and manufacturing robotics and vision-guidance systems, Quest is a one-stop shop for robotic products, including pick and place, case packing, and palletizing systems renowned for accuracy, consistency, and optimizing production line efficiency.
Pick, place, pack, palletize
For manufacturers and food processors, one of the biggest challenges with conveyors is finding and grabbing food products like raw chicken and other proteins, cheese, corn, and cucumbers, which are often scattered all over the place and need to be located. To do this, and depending on application, Quest’s equipment uses 2D, 3D, and AI vision.
Additionally, to ensure soft products like raw chicken breasts and bread are handled safely yet securely, Quest’s QP100 robotic picking system is ideal. Incorporating FANUC robotics’ DR-3iB/6 stainless food-grade delta robot along with a soft gripper end-of-arm tool, “this solution is capable of direct food contact with U.S. Department of Agriculture and USDA Dairy compliant and washdown designs,” according to Quest. “AI vision allows Quest to program the robot and end of arm tooling to handle products on an infeed that are both random and/or piled.”
If soft protein products are squeezed too hard, they will be ruined, which is why the company uses vision and soft grippers. Palletizing, on the other hand, requires only sensors to pick and place boxes.
Customer needs
Drawing on the strength of ProMach, Quest provides clients with specialized and proprietary packaging solutions for everything from flexible bags and pouches to compartment trays, display cases, cartons, vacuum packs, and more. Made from durable materials designed for longevity and convenient sanitization, Quest’s family of primary packaging solutions includes the Quik Pick QP100 Robotic Primary Food Handling, Quik Fill QF100 Primary Tray Loading, and its series of proprietary recipe creation systems.
Quest is hands-on, working with customers from packaging system design to completion and installation, service, and more. Factory-trained service technicians perform preventative maintenance, and alternative service plans are available to match every client’s requirements. “It’s about doing whatever customers need, and we’re willing to be there,” says Linxwiler.
Clients contact Quest both to modernize existing systems and to acquire brand-new machinery. And for customers who need technical support, training, or spare parts, speedy and professional service is available via Quest’s after-hours emergency hotline.
Saving space
Known for its cost-effective, highly reliable machinery, Quest also has a reputation for ongoing technological innovation. Along with creating long-lasting and user-friendly products, Quest realizes that every inch of floor space counts. Customers often have vertical space available in their facilities, but not valuable horizontal space. In this case, the company has the ability to build its palletizing solutions up, rather than out.
Space-saving skid-based palletizers have an inclined conveyance, which means utilizing space upward, rather than down below. Products come in from a normal conveyor, go up an incline conveyor, and the palletizing system is also built upward.
Similarly to case packing, systems are manufactured to be as compact as possible. “It’s one of those things where an automated system is going to take up a decent amount of space, but it will take up less space than 15 people standing there manually loading cases,” comments Linxwiler. “You just have a little system with two robots doing what 10 people used to do, and you’re going to save a lot of space that way too.”
With four product lines, Quest is seeing plenty of interest with its Quik Pack robotic case packing solutions. Although there’s a lot of competition in other robotic applications, there’s much less in case packing, and few others can do it as well as Quest, with its leading-edge vision systems and other innovations.
The vertical difference
“What really sets us apart is flexibility,” says Linxwiler. “If you picture bags in a case vertically and horizontally, we can do that all on one system. You don’t have to buy one system to do the vertical and another to do the horizontal; we can do it all in one.”
Just as robotic systems continue to evolve, manufacturing is also changing, with large display cases gaining popularity with major stores like Costco and Sam’s Club. Quest’s machines can handle virtually any size, weight, or type of case, including box store display cases. “That sets us apart,” Linxwiler says, “and there’s a huge priority to push that solution, to make sure manufacturers in a variety of industries know it’s available.”
At Quest, customers can choose from a mix of custom and standard pre-engineered systems for their case-packing and palletizing solutions. Sometimes, customers see a cost-effective standard-engineered system that is perfect for their needs; sometimes they take a standard configuration and change it a little, or a lot. While this is slightly more expensive, it is still more cost-effective than starting from scratch.
The third option is an application for which there is no standard configuration—completely new and different and created from the ground up by Quest’s engineers. “We’ve had great success with all three tiers of that process,” shares Linxwiler.
As a part of ProMach, Quest can provide turnkey solutions and take advantage of the strength of almost 50 brands. To customers, this means an array of case erectors, case sealers, stretch wrappers, labelers, and more. Machines for wrapping, filling, liquid filling, sealing, and labeling can all be integrated within ProMach.
“This really extends our capabilities, not just within the end of line, but also with primary handling as well,” explains Linxwiler, citing the example of small cucumbers. Before they arrive at grocery stores, small cucumbers must be picked off a belt and gently placed on small foam trays, which are then over-wrapped, packed into cases, and palletized. Instead of multiple, inefficient processes, Quest and ProMach can do it all, saving clients time and money.
The way to grow
In the future, Linxwiler sees ProMach growing both organically and through acquisition. This year alone, ProMach acquired Italy-based MBF—a global leader in filling solutions for the wine and spirits industries—and Mexico’s Etiflex, a leading producer of RFID labels, tickets, and pressure-sensitive labels. Today, the company has brands all over Europe, Asia, and North and South America, and continues to grow across the globe.
Quest and ProMach continue to attract new clients through their information-packed website and videos, and by targeting customers dealing with issues like labor challenges and keeping up with demand. With a presence at Pack Expo International in Chicago this November, Quest will showcase its many robotics, packaging, and food handling solutions to many new potential clients.
Exciting times ahead!
