Digital transformation is taking place in bunches of sectors and industries such as in the supply chain where people now have available the end-to-end transparency of everything that happens along the process thanks to the latest technology and the application of industry 4.0. The same trend is going on at the processing and manufacturing end where operators used to count on papers and written records to keep a track of the production and status of the equipment running there in the facility. In the packaging automation industry, companies and end-user at all sizes would always care about:
- how much the efficiency their packaging equipment brings to their production?
- at how fast a pace is it working with an improved ROI?
- how much is the production of each shift?
- how long each time size changeover has taken?
- when would the downtime happens and what are their causes?
In this article, we would like to discuss how our digitalization solutions can help companies to have more control over their production and packaging automation processes.
Keep Track of your Packaging Automation with a Simple Set-up
A cloud-based IOT software for packaging does not call for too much additional equipment to have it available at your facility. The system is able to extract signals, data and information from the already-incorporated devices such as sensors and PLCs.
Keep Track of your Production to Calculate KPI and ROI
Some of the packaging machines are already with functions of counting units of packaging produced though, them are not able to figure out those failed units from the data or provide a visual analysis of production over time which does not provide any convenience for data-based analysis for this issue.
With digitalization and IoT for packaging, it is enabled to evaluate the production over a given and certain period of time, or a shift for a specific product, so that the final user can organize reasonable their schedule to maximize their production and thus to achieve an improve KPI and ROI.
Keep Record of the Downtime and Find out the Reasons
A packaging machines downtime caused a bunch of problems from manmade mistakes to internal failures in terms of set-up, configurations and sometimes the programming. By incorporating a smart HMI and digitalization software to collect data from the various sensors and devices on the machine, the technicians and production team would be able to analysis and give an insight into the logs and records to figure out the section where the problem occurs and then to dig into the root cause.
The record and data also help to monitor the downtime during the size and format changeover so that the management can prioritize different recipes and menus and to allocate accordingly the people and resources to maximize their production. The constant improvement can finally contribute to avoiding any unexpecting failure and enhancing overall equipment efficiency.
EDI and Software-Based Data Collection System Save your Time
Digitalization with either packaging or other kinds of automation allows you to access to all the data with just a click on your portable devices rather than searching through piles of papers and only finding what you need underneath.
The traditional way of implementing and installing a packaging machine would engage elaboration of mountains of documents including service and operation manual, electrical diagrams, and more. As suggested by professionals at ELITER Packaging Machinery, the digitalization can facilitate a lot of paperwork as well as for the final user’s convenience so that both the customer and packaging machine manufacturer are able to incorporate our documents as EDI into the software and HMI.
The Bottom Line
Implementing digitalization converts your packaging automation process into an Internet of Packaging that allows production management to have at their disposal up-to-date information about all the factors around their products and facilitate the data collection, analysis and communication to pave the right and efficient way to a right decision-making.
