INDUSTRY 4.0 AND BEYOND Industry 4.0, the automation of manufacturing and industrial processes with smart technology, featuring machine-to-machine communication and the internet of things, is omnipresent in the packaging industry. Elisabeth Skoda gains insights from two major players in the field on recent developments and innovations, and explores the relatively new concept of Industry 5.0, which sets out to put the worker at the centre. Packaging line efficiency and sustainability Inefficiencies in a packaging line usually go hand in hand with bottlenecks, waste and increased energy use, and of course companies are keen to address these issues. Dan Rossek, Omron’s UK marketing manager, explains that the first remedial step is to explore where exactly the problem lies, and outlines how smart automation can help. “Some of the underlying issues that packaging companies face, and that are hard to pin down, are unplanned downtime, long changeover times and machine bottle necks. Smart automation, or at least support data driven analysis, can play an important role to determine what the root cause of an inefficiency is. Once it has been identified correctly, mitigation in the form of solutions like preventative maintenance, flexible part handling or robotic automation becomes possible.” In line with this, AI analysis and smart automation have been successfully used to support packaging sustainability, for example when
using materials such as compostable or recycled materials or bioplastics, which continue to be more in demand, but come with their own set of challenges. When it comes to heat sealing or thermoforming, many of the more ecologically friendly packaging media are not as robust as traditional materials and legacy packaging machinery cannot be easily converted to use them. For example, ‘traditional’ teabags often contain plastic to strengthen the bag, and to make the forming and sealing process more reliable, as Mr Rossek points out. “As part of their sustainability drive, one of our customers, a teabag manufacturer, decided to remove the plastic from their teabags. They then faced the challenge of a high number of rejects, because the material wasn’t sealing correctly, as it is more sensitive to temperature fluctuations. To address this, we measured the thickness of the media, using high-speed, high precision gauging systems, and monitored the temperature in the sealing jaws, recordPackaging Europe | 17 |
