Perhaps the most significant outcome from the meeting was a project charter. In addition to naming the key organizations that make up the group—WBF, OMAC Packaging Workgroup, and ISA SP-88—the charter gives the project an official name: Make2Pack. Here is a portion of the project description as it appears in the charter:
“Business owners universally recognize the need to overcome organizational and business process barriers (silos) within their manufacturing operations. Traditionally, technology has imposed artificial barriers or gaps between manufacturing operations. The goal of this project is to bridge these barriers and gaps by consciously identifying and applying underlying, unifying principles of manufacturing automation for the first time.
“This project will develop conceptual models and terminology for industrial automation that can be consistently applied to the total manufacturing process, which includes making, converting manufacturing, and packaging to reduce overall costs and improve system flexibility that enhances responsiveness to changing business requirements.
“The initial focus will be on packaging and converting machinery, and batch processing equipment. The result of this effort will provide mutual benefit for participating end users, machinery suppliers, and automation technology providers.
“The result of this work will be increased modularity, reusability, a common structure which together will significantly streamline development and programming efforts for new initiatives as well as improving maintenance and support.”
The next scheduled meeting of the Make2Pack group is scheduled for September 28-29 at Procter & Gamble’s Becket Ridge offices in Cincinnati. Anyone interested in joining the group should contact Procter & Gamble’s Dave Chappell at [email protected].
