If you make packaging machines, one of your big concerns in recent years is making sure that your machines can talk to the rest of the manufacturing line. You also have to be certain that your machines are flexible enough for fast almost instant changeovers from one type of packaging to another. Your customers—especially the mid-size manufacturers demand equipment that can be changed using a touchscreen and very few manual movements.

Adco Manufacturing Inc., a packaging machine producer in Sanger, Calif., has worked to meet its manufacturing customers’ needs for increased integration and flexibility. “What we have done for integration is to align ourselves with the PackML Group,” says Kevin Gilpin, electrical engineering manager at Adco. “We’re using the PackML data structure to connect to the rest of the line.” PackML is the packaging machine language guidelines developed by the Packaging Workgroup that is part of the Open Modular Architecture Control Users Group (OMAC).

One big machine

Adco has worked with Rockwell Automation Inc., the big Milwaukee-based automation controls
vendor, to develop a common platform between the packaging machinery and the automation system. The integration keeps the entire manufacturing line including the packaging machinery visible from the control platform. “The integration allows the operators to control the entire line,” says Gilpin. “So if the packaging machinery goes down, the whole line goes down. It’s like one big machine.”

Not all integration requires the complexity of PackML. In many cases, manufacturers use rudimentary Ethernet connections to send a few specific signals back and forth between the packaging machines and the manufacturing line. “If the customer specifies it, we can hardwire half a dozen devices to send discrete signals using Ethernet,” says Gilpin. He notes that Ethernet has become trendy because of its low cost. “It’s not quite real-time, but it’s very, very close—and it’s cheap, which helps a great deal.”

Control technology also comes into play in making packaging machinery more flexible. “A lot of our customers want to get a variety of packaging out of one machine. We’re using Rockwell technology to make it easier for changeovers,” says Gilpin. “Now it can be done modularly. You change a few parts and make a couple of different adjustments on the screen. There are some manual things you do, but there are fewer of them now.”

The improved flexibility is a response to customer demand for greater changeover speed. Quick changeover is a competitive factor and a demand that comes from the manufacturers’ customers who want more and more differentiation in packaging. Large retailers, for instance, are now demanding their own individual packaging for many of their consumer goods.

In addition to controls integration, robotics is also playing a role in making packaging equipment more flexible. Some robotic-equipped machinery is now so flexible that changeovers can be completed entirely through a touchscreen, with few or no manual changes required.

Flexibility key

The need for manufacturers to change packaging on-the-run comes frequently through pressure from retail customers.  “Wal-Mart will want its package of batteries to look different than Lowe’s or Home Depot’s,” says Carl Traynor, senior general manager, distribution and handling, Motoman Inc., a robot manufacturer in West Carrollton, Ohio. “You used to be able to do one package for all of them. Now you have to do different packages.”

Another factor driving the need for flexibility is the sheer number of products produced by manufacturers. “We’re seeing rapid changes in the packaging for food and pharmaceuticals, and we’re seeing a greater number of SKUs (stock keeping units) they need to produce,” says Travis Holley, consultant for packaging at Siemens Energy and Automation Inc., the Alpharetta, Ga.-based automation vendor.
“That means changes to the machines need to be rapid. That leads to the modular design of the machines, and we need to have the controls to support the flexibility.”

Some of the flexibility is achieved through use of servo-mechanisms, or servo for short. A servo is typically a motor that includes a velocity and/or position feedback device that can be adjusted. Servo drives can also be programmed to be self-regulating. Servo drives used in conjunction with PackML can help operators make quick changes to packaging machinery to produce different types of packaging.

“You can increase the flexibility of machines to produce faster changeovers—and you can reduce the number of spare parts—by using servo motion and the variable structure of PackML,” says Mike Lamping, a technology leader for consumer products giant Procter & Gamble Co., and the chair of OMAC’s PackML Group. “There ...