Interactive educational displays and informative sessions on cutting-edge technologies from proven automation leaders—that's what you'll get if you venture into the Center for Trends and Technology (CTT) at PACK EXPO International this year.
Free to all PACK EXPO attendees, the CTT is sponsored by Rockwell Automation. It's built around the premise that in today's competitive environment, brand owners need innovative machines that integrate readily into a plant-wide infrastructure. These machines must be more flexible and efficient than ever, because agility and optimized productivity are what it's all about—that and a heavy dose of sustainability.
Among the presenters at CTT will be the Alliance for Innovation & Operational Excellence (AIOE), which serves leading consumer product companies and other stakeholders in major vertical markets who collaborate to produce upstream innovations for continuous improvement of their supply chain. I got a glimpse of what this organization was up to when I attended the September 15-17 PMMI Annual Meeting. Included on the program was Greg Flickinger, Vice President of Manufacturing and Corporate Engineering at Snyder's-Lance, Inc. His ideas on transitioning the production floor culture from traditional to one centered on high-performance and Total Employment Engagement (TEE) were eye-opening to say the least. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the initiatives underway through AIOE. Best practices for Factory Acceptance Tests, product safety, and the development of an OEE Calculator are also being looked at. You can learn about them all at CTT.
Systems Integrator Stone Technologies is another highlight among the speakers at the CTT. Based in St. Louis, Stone focuses on project delivery, and for the past 18 years has provided manufacturing consulting and industrial automation services, including process control and MES/MOM design, software development, and commissioning. According to Stone's Director, Dan Engelhard, line integration and the use of analytics to turn plant floor data into actionable information will be a key focus in Stone's CTT presentation. "Accurate and timely plant floor data brings real-time visibility, and without that visibility management has no way of even knowing what line conditions are let alone doing anything about improving them," says Engelhard. In the demo planned for CTT, people from Stone will show how they implemented systems for real customers and enabled them—from plant-floor operators on up into the C-suites—to use a variety of automation technologies, reporting tools, and even mobile devices to gain visibility into their processes and improve OEE in the process.
