Process and packaging—the manufacturing operations that combine to bring us the vast majority of the products that we use every day. Typically, though, they operate largely independently of each other. These are vastly different operations, with different mechanical and control characteristics, so their traditional separation only makes sense, right?

Wrong, say a growing number of industry professionals, who note that modern technology makes controls coordination and information sharing between processing and packaging lines feasible, and that the business realities make it desirable. Mark Langridge is one of them. “Today, we see a lack of communication between the process and the packaging sides of the operation," says Langridge, manager for food, beverage and commercial accounts for automation components supplier Sick Inc., Minneapolis. “We are trying to help organizations bridge that gap between process and packaging in terms of sharing information about what's actually occurring on the production line."

A prime focus for Langridge and his team in this regard is information on product dimensions. “With some of our large customers in the confectionary industry, we are looking at whether or not the product is meeting its dimensioning specifications, and feeding that information in real-time to both the processing and the packaging operations."

Langridge uses the example of a chocolate bar to illustrate the advantages of this type of rapid bi-functional communication. “If it is not meeting specification requirements, then packaging will know that there is an issue coming down the line, be aware of it and be prepared to take the necessary actions, while processing will be alerted to quickly make changes in order to bring the product back into specification."

On the other hand, the chocolate bars may be getting too big to wrap. Real-time communication between packaging and processing, Langridge claims, could flag this potentially costly trend more quickly than typical process quality-control systems. The subtext here is waste. “If you look at the amount of waste that comes out of end-user plants just because of, in my opinion, lack of communication between process and packaging, it's huge. For one bakery, the figure was 25 percent wasted product. These are massive figures. And it's not just wasted product, it's also wasted resources, wasted energy and wasted time. The volume," he stresses, "can be tremendous."

In addition to obvious waste, there is also “giveaway." This occurs when a product is made within tolerance, but at the upper end of that tolerance. “Using our chocolate bar example, you're giving the consumer more chocolate than you actually need to, so you are giving away product and losing money. Here's another example of where the lack of communication between process and packaging has a negative impact."

How widespread is concern over this lack of communication? Langridge says that amongst the customers he deals with, baked goods, confectionary, and beverage companies have shown interest in the subject, but for other companies, less so. “It doesn't yet seem to be their kind of issue."

Leo Petrokonis, business development manager—packaging, OEM business, for Milwaukee-based automation vendor Rockwell Automation Inc., concurs that interest in this subject still lags among many end-users who could potentially benefit from this sort of process-packaging interaction. Petrokonis, though, sees the key to this issue—and many others—in terms of integrated control and communication architecture. “We provide the same controllers for processing and packaging along with a uniform programming methodology, so it makes sense to look at ways of capturing and utilizing data from both sides of the plant in order to boost operational efficiency."

Capturing and utilizing that data, though, can still entail time-consuming and costly engineering efforts, notes Keith McPherson, Rockwell's director, market development, visualization & information software. “When you get equipment in from different OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), they're typically not programmed in a standard fashion, and it becomes a data-mapping challenge because it all has to be mapped and configured before you can begin to get meaningful data from the line."

The role of standards

Increasingly, claims McPherson, machine builders are realizing that the best way to bring order and efficiency to the data-mapping process is by following industry standards such as the International Society of Automation's ISA88/PackML, with its uniform definitions and terminology. This provides programmers with a predefined data structure based on industry standards and best practices, along with starter code that has already been written and tested. Machine builders can employ the PackML state model as their base specification and add fill-in-the-blank information provided by the end-user. “It's like using building blocks to write a program, rather ...