One OEM's take on PackML

At Pack Expo Las Vegas, Wes Iversen, managing editor at Automation World, caught up with Joe Grove, vice president of engineering at packaging machinery OEM Ossid, to talk about implementation of the OMAC Connect-and-Pack standards of PackML. Here are a few of the highlights. Or you can listen to the entire podcast.

• The whole idea is to reduce integration and installation costs at the customer's facility. I see our customers adopting these standards and getting less insistent on specifying any particular type of individual controller. Just because we have specified a certain controller in the past, it doesn't mean we have to specify it again. If we see something out there that's better, our customers are now allowing us to go ahead and spec that better solution — as long as it's based on PackML standards. They see the true value in this because it reduces their integration costs and lets machines in their plants communicate freely. We've begun to adopt PackML standards for that exact reason.
• There's also a kind of hidden benefit to adopting the PackML standards, a benefit we gain internally. Remember, we may have multiple programmers on a project, and every programmer likes to design or code a system their own way. To really get a handle on how they program, we've adopted these standards. It gives them a diagram, something to program to. It forces them all to program in a similar fashion. It helps us increase our reliance on reusable code that we can cross-pollinate to different programmers, to hopefully benefit internally and get reduced cost in developing machines.
• PackML does require that we train our personnel. We start with baby steps, with PackTags. Then ISA 88 terminology, then state diagrams. We work with controls vendors to see what they have to offer, to see if they have made improvements in PackML systems. And we're finding that more and more of our controls vendors are moving into that realm. This makes programming of our machines easier for us. It makes it so that if you are familiar with function block programming, a lot of the code is prewritten. It doesn't take away from the intellectual property of our machine, it just makes it easier for us to have common code within our machines. So if there is an initial cost associated with PackML, it's minimal over the medium to long term.
• We started focusing on PackML about a year ago with our horizontal form fill seal machine. It was something that we worked on with P&G and other large companies that use this machine. We started with PackTags. We worked with our controls provider to go through the code and re-label things according to the PackTags. We knew the machine has to be integrated with an MES, where they're going to talk to the machine and pinpoint its OEE.
• Benefit of standards to the end user is reduced installation time and cost. Easier trouble shooting, too. If we connect our systems to an ERP type system, the integrator — whether it's us or them--will automatically know the tags they need to communicate with to retrieve data. They can track faults to be sure they are running at optimal efficiency.
• Do end users need to be further educated where standards are concerned? A lot of end users follow the big companies. If a lot of big companies are adopting these standards, the others will follow suit. Three or four years ago we didn't see this being requested as much. Now we are beginning to see it.

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