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Progress on standards

On a gray day in mid-March, engineers from eight packaging end users, 21 machinery builders and 12 controls suppliers filed into a conference room in a downtown Chicago skyscraper.

Two end-user executive committee members are Daniel J. Amundson, technology leader, corporate engineering technologies at Procte
Two end-user executive committee members are Daniel J. Amundson, technology leader, corporate engineering technologies at Procte

It was the first official meeting of the newly formed OMAC Open Modular Architecture Controls Motion for Packaging Working Group, and the first time specific plans were hatched to simplify motion control in packaging machinery (see sidebar).

Prior to this meeting, engineers have aired many general thoughts at previous meetings on how to reduce the complexity of motion control technology in packaging machinery. The March meeting struck a marked difference by the participants’ willingness to finally hammer out details. The meeting, led by Keith Campbell, Hershey Foods’ director of automation & integration, was sponsored by Packaging World.

Connectivity important

One of the top needs reported by end-user attendees was the desire for a standard way to connect packaging machine controllers both to one another and to existing factory networks.

“I want to be able to connect [a given machine] to my network and tell that machine to do what I want,” said Sentekin Can, principal controls engineer with Ralston Purina Co., referring to the ability to download changeover settings into programmable logic controllers via a network. He also added that he was just as interested in automatically retrieving production data from the PLCs via the very same network connection.

Also, Can stressed that time is of the essence: “We’re interested in connectivity [standards] today, not two or three years from now.” He advised that existing standards should be adopted soon rather than creating a new one in a committee that will be obsolete by the time it’s commercialized.

Another top area of concern is the need for a common motion control programming environment. This was an area that seemed to resonate more with machine builders, at least one of whom acknowledged that machine builders are trying to deal with the shift in evolving their expertise from mechanical engineering to software engineering.

“That means in the future, the development of a machine will [require] more programming hours than mechanical/construction hours,” said Bernd Junker, manager, electronic development at Rovema Packaging Machines, a maker of form/fill/seal equipment. “For me, the most important goal is a standard programming language for all the applications we [develop].”

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