Machine monitoring maximizes high-speed palletizer uptime

Recently, Emerson and Arrowhead Systems partnered on amachine-health monitoring solution to boost the uptime of a highspeedpalletizer for container stacking and other primary products.

The Busse SJI Viper bulk palletizer and Alpha Turbo depalletizer pair with Emerson’s machine-health monitoring to get greater overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) by monitoring (in real-time) critical motion and pneumatic system parameters — including mechanical actuation speeds, airflow, pressure, vacuum, and motor vibration. System analytics and health information is processed at the edge via a local data historian with both local display or remote monitoring on a tablet or smartphone giving operators an easily accessible tool to monitor health.

“This solution offers the quickest and most scalable way to increase OEE and ultimately increase the overall production efficiency of plant operations,” says Dana Greenly, director of business development for food and beverage packaging with Emerson’s Automation Solutions business.

The new edge-based system has the PACSystems CPL410 at its core to bring all sensor data together for accessibility, visualization, and analysis. It is customizable and scalable to adapt to any primary product palletizer or packaging line. Real-time monitoring of machine health and diagnostics at the operator’s fingertips eliminates reliance on reactive maintenance practices. Predictive maintenance enables planning for potential issues which otherwise negatively affect the OEE of the packaging line. “Because we have container-handling equipment running at some of the highest speeds in the industry — even to 4,000 cans per minute or more — predictive monitoring of machine health is vital,” says Busse-SJI general manager Scott Chehak.

Emerson’s automation technologies impart packaging lines with flexibility by accommodating numerous package sizes and complexities; reducing losses from low product quality and waste; and improving operator and product safety.

For more information, visit therobotreport.com and search Arrowhead.

One of several Emerson solutions for IoT functionality is the Rx3i CPL410 — an edge device combining logic and application in one controller. Its real-time deterministic control is complemented by physics-based analytics to securely connect, collect, and analyze industrial data directly at the machine.