Survey sheds light on controls in packaging

Both those who build and those who buy packaging machinery talk with PW about a controls and integration study done for the Packaging Automation Forum.

Pw 9507 Paf Chart 1

When it comes to controls integration and automation, what progress are the builders and buyers of packaging machinery making these days? Packaging World and OMAC teamed up on a survey recently to find out. These were among the key findings:

• Data collection on packaging lines is seldom practiced

• Some progress is being made in getting packaging lines networked

• Less than 25% of packaging machinery buyers specify OMAC guidelines on new equipment, and

• Integrating packaging lines with ERP systems is a subject of considerable interest among packaged goods manufacturers even though not many currently have such a connection.

In a presentation at the May 24 Packaging Automation Forum in Chicago—sponsored by Packaging World and Automation World magazines—Dave Bauman, OMAC Technical Director, shared the survey results. Subsequently, Bauman agreed to join Packaging World in a conference call with several packaging machinery builders and buyers (see sidebar listing of participants) to gauge their response to the survey. This story is essentially their reaction to key survey results.

We begin with Chart 1, which shows how many end users specify OMAC packaging guidelines on the machines they buy. These guidelines, in a nutshell, are aimed at establishing naming conventions and tags for machine states—aborted, running, stopped, jammed, etc—that all programmers in the packaging machinery space can agree upon as standards. Among large companies—annual revenue of more than $1 billion—25.6% said they do specify OMAC packaging guidelines in the machines they buy. Among respondents overall, the number was 20.1%.

Conference call participants

Dave Bauman, OMAC technical director

Kevin Gilpin, Adco, electrical engineering manager

Darren Elliott, R.A. Jones,

chief engineer, electrical controls group

Colin Warnes, Adco, lead R & D engineer

Rick Van Dyke, Frito-Lay, senior group manager

Mike Lamping, P&G, technology leader corporate controls

“I don’t think enough people know about OMAC packaging guidelines,” says Adco’s Kevin Gilpin.

“I was surprised at the numbers,” says R.A. Jones’ Darren Elliott. “I think it becomes an education issue, really. We recently had a machine checkout meeting with an end user from South Africa, and when we asked if they were familiar with OMAC or any of the advantages it might offer, they hadn’t even heard of it. When we explained it to them, they were on board with the message right away, but it was just one of those things they didn’t know was a resource for them.”

“It’s going to take a lot of repetition before the end users start buying into it,” says Colin Warnes of Adco. “But in time I think it will become commonplace. One of the biggest advantages OMAC guidelines offer is the ability to communicate upstream and downstream on a packaging line. If my machine is able to participate in that kind of ‘conversation,’ it becomes a significant benefit if the machine is going into a line where the case packer, wrapper, labeler, and conveyor are all from different machinery makers. If all these machines can speak with a common voice, it can help increase efficiency, reduce training time, and reduce time spent on startups.”

Bringing this “common voice” to disparate pieces of packaging machinery from multiple machinery vendors would also mean end users wouldn’t have to have in-house “specialists” for practically each packaging machine, notes Gilpin. “If the OMAC guidelines are followed, the programming should be fairly similar from machine to machine,” he says. In other words, one “specialist” fits all.

The impact of IT

“I think the other thing that’s coming up in the next couple of years that will make the adoption of OMAC guidelines even more valuable is something that’s coming from the IT world,” says Elliott. “It’s the growing emphasis on being able to pipe information up from the packaging machines on the plant floor to the MES layer so that real-time production data can be tracked and managed. For the most part OMAC guidelines and standards have been positioned as tools that bring greater connectivity from machine to machine. But the IT folks out there are developing system architectures that will increasingly seek out real-time information from the plant floor that can help packaged goods companies meet demand signals from the marketplace without building up costly and unnecessary inventory.” A greater reliance on standards like those promulgated by OMAC, says Elliott, can only help where this kind of information flow is concerned.

Warnes sees another value inherent in OMAC standards and guidelines that could become increasingly important in the very near future. He foresees a day when packaged goods companies will grant OEMs Ethernet access to the machines in operation on the plant floor. “If they give us an IP address on their Ethernet network, we can access our machine in their plant to see how it’s performing,” says Warnes. “If the data is collected according to tags and naming conventions widely agreed upon in the OMAC guidelines, it will be easier for us to monitor our machine and provide help if, say, a servo motor or drive is giving us irregular feedback. We’ll be able to call the end user and say, hey, have you guys noticed this irregularity?”

Elliott agrees that the OMAC standards could play a key role in facilitating this kind of remote, web-based troubleshooting. But he emphasizes that for now, at least, such access is practically unheard of.

“Very few customers request a remote monitoring feature on equipment they buy from us,” says Elliott. “The reason is basically two-fold. First, they don’t want to grant access to anybody that can tinker around with their proprietary information. And second, their IT folks are afraid of viruses or hackers or other intruders who might cause trouble if the network is accessible. It’s unfortunate, because it amounts to shutting the door on any feedback that might go to the machinery OEMs on how their machines or lines are performing. We only find out about a problem after the fact. With remote monitoring capabilities, we could be more proactive about preventive maintenance.”

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