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An OMAC update

PackML Version 3.0 is out, and a full complement of demo sponsors are prepared to educate and enlighten visitors to the OMAC booth at Pack Expo Las Vegas.

Pw 8157 Van Dyke

A banner day is approaching for the group of dedicated volunteers who have been quietly and methodically going through the steps necessary to take the OMAC Packaging Workgroup guidelines beyond their “guidelines” status and turn them into a genuine ISA standard. Why? Because the work is nearing a successful conclusion. To mark this imminent change in status from guidelines to standard, it seemed a good idea to ask a few experts for an OMAC update. What else is new from the OPW, what’s in the pipeline, what’s to be gained by transforming “guidelines” to “standard,” and what plans does OPW have for Pack Expo Las Vegas?

There’s no better place to begin such an update than with PackML, the “packaging machinery language” built on a universally accepted state model. Recently published was PackML Version 3.0, an upgrade on Version 2.2. According to Mike Lamping, a technology leader at Procter & Gamble as well as the committee chair for PackML, Version 3.0 is significant for the number of machine states that have been added and the introduction of the concept of a Machine Control Mode.

“Version 3.0 is an enhancement of 2.2,” says Lamping. “Version 2.2 only had an automatic machine control mode. The only machine control operation defined in it was fully automatic production. So if your machine did anything in a manual mode or had a cleanout or had some other machine control functionality associated with it, that really wasn’t dealt with in Version 2.2 at all. As long as your machine switch was in machine control automatic, you were good. But once you flipped that machine to machine control manual, version 2.2 didn’t have any way of dealing with that. There was no state model defined for any machine condition other than full automatic in Version 2.2.”

A primary driver behind the work that lead to Version 3.0 was the recognition that so many packaging machinery operating conditions require more modes than “automatic.”

“What we added was the concept that now an infinite number of machine control modes is allowed,” says Lamping. “You can have an infinite number of machine control modes and PackML actually says, ‘Okay, you can do multiple machine control modes, but the state diagram always uses a subset of the defined 17 states. You can only have 17 states. You don’t have to use every one of those states, but you’re never going to have more than 17 states.’

“The 17 states were based on the ISA 88 Part 1 concept of using a state diagram to represent a component of equipment operation, which is exactly what PackML Version 2.2 was based on. So what we did for Version 3.0, as far as states go, is add the states that weren’t accounted for in Version 2.2. So now you have what might be called an ‘ing’ state before every quiescent state. Each ‘ing’ state has a procedural operation that can direct the machine automation to successfully carry out what is necessary to achieve that ‘ing’ state. For example, instead of just ‘suspend,’ we now add ‘suspending.’ Similarly, we add ‘completing’ to ‘complete.’

“Or let’s say you’re in the ‘run’ state and you want to go to a ‘hold state.’ With Version 3.0, you go from ‘run’ to ‘holding’ to ‘hold’ to ‘unholding’ and back to ‘run.’”

Each Machine Control Mode will very likely have a different procedural operation to carry out the intent of an “ing” state to meet that Mode’s requirements. Starting in a “Production Control Mode” situation could be quite different than starting in a “Maintenance Control Mode” situation.

PackAdvantage Committee

Meanwhile, Siemens vertical marketing manager Bill Henderson, the leader of OPW’s PackAdvantage Team, is busy formulating plans that focus on what might be called the OPW “message.”

“At a recent executive council meeting we all agreed that OMAC, which of course stands for Open Modular Architecture Controls, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue,” says Henderson. “We need to create a keen message and put our marketing efforts behind that message.”

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INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for All Industries at PACK EXPO Southeast