Look no farther than their October cover.
So I thought I’d shake a few trees myself to see if this “transformational technology,” as many are calling it, has been knocking much on packaging’s door. My first few calls were to industry analysts and consultants. All of them agreed that engineers on the processing, warehousing, logistics, and distribution sides of manufacturing are turning to wireless with increasing frequency. But they haven’t seen the technology surfacing much at all in packaging operations.
At that point, I figured it was time to scare up a new topic for my November column. But then, serendipitously enough, three e-mails reaching my inbox in the space of four days all carried news of wireless connectivity in packaging applications. One is unfolding in the U.S. food sector. Mark D’Onofrio, president of Lock Inspection Systems, a maker of metal detection systems, can’t name the food company that is involved. But in general terms he describes the application this way.
“Food and pharma customers for the most part have been slow to embrace the idea of collecting data in any automated fashion, relying instead on the more traditional method of clipboard, pen, and paper. Then around two or three years ago, they began coming around to the idea of automating this data collection process. In our case, for example, they began to take data from as many as 40 metal detectors throughout the plant, all networked via Ethernet or some comparable communications protocol, so that the data could be stored and accessed quickly and much more efficiently on a PC or PLC. Having reached that stage in their quest for automated data acquisition, they’re now beginning to inquire if there’s a way to avoid all the conduit and cabling inherent in an Ethernet-based network. And that has led them to wireless technology.”
