Contributing Editor Keith Campbell scoured the miles of aisles at the
interpack 2014 show in Düsseldorf, Germany, to deliver this insightful
view of what might be next in the world of packaging machinery controls
and automation.
It wasn’t too many years ago that a debate was still raging among
packaging machinery builders and buyers about the value of servo motion
control for packaging. A walk through the 20 halls of this year’s
interpack made one thing abundantly clear: that debate is over. The
widespread acceptance of servos has been driven, and rightly so, by the
competitive advantage gained by machine builders and the improved
performance enjoyed by end users, with both hopefully taking more
dollars to their bottom lines. With this enabling technology now so
widespread, one can only wonder what’s next? Where will the next
significant increase in competitive advantage and performance come from
for packaging?
Who better to ask than the world’s leading automation providers and
machine builders exhibiting at interpack? Read on for what I learned, or
visit to pwgo.to/1011 to listen to an 11-minute podcast of this information.
Mathematical modeling
Patrich Marchion is a mechatronics engineer with Swiss machine builder
Dividella, which makes Gen 3 machines with high axis counts for the
pharmaceutical industry. Marchion believes that the next breakthrough
will occur when engineers rely more heavily on mathematical modeling for
designing machines. This will be a fundamental transformation of
machine design from an art to a science. I have heard a similar idea
expressed before from some of the more sophisticated consumer packaged
goods companies, those who still rely on their own internal machine
design departments for development of machines for their proprietary
processes. Performance breakthroughs do come from end users who are not
constrained by time and cost concerns when it comes to optimizing the
most key machines in their operations. Much more can be done in terms of
improving performance if machine designs are subjected to rigorous
dynamic modeling to identify resonances and other factors that limit
performance. Many designers have made the transition to 3D CADD models,
but these are largely static models that help with optimization of part geometry. Taking these static
models to dynamic models that embed the complex mathematical
relationships of the materials, components, and systems may be a means
of achieving break-through performance. There are a lot more
opportunities to optimize both the component designs and the drive
software to obtain superior performance.
As I mentioned this idea to technology providers, many expressed a
belief in dynamic modeling becoming more common in the packaging
machinery industry and providing some breakthroughs in performance. They
report that only a handful of machine builders are currently taking
advantage of mathematical modeling. They also stress the increasing
ability of the drives themselves to optimize the machine dynamics. Bosch
Packaging was touting a new generation of delta robots that have
improved kinematics due to new software. Bosch-Rexroth showed their
drives’ ability to detect and suppress vibration. B&R also spoke of
suppressing vibration and compensating in real time for the system
dynamics. Schneider Electric suggested eliminating the servo motor
cogging by using feed-forward and other advanced control loop strategies
within the drive. Beckhoff sees a need to model motors, drives, and
machines. Both Schneider and Beckhoff stressed advantages to speed.
Beckhoff mentioned the need for high precision, high performance
synchronization in time frames of 100
nanoseconds, enabling builders to have reaction times in their machines
of 60 microseconds. Schneider also sees benefits from being able to
change the motion profile of an axis within every cycle of the machine,
taking advantage of higher-speed networks and processors. The limiting
axis of the machine may change as conditions change, and being able to
detect this during runtime and adapt to it could be a game changer. Lief
Juergensen of Schneider says that their controllers are able to change a
cam profile within one cycle of the Sercos network.
Integration is the key
As machines reach the limits of increasing speed, some believe that more
performance improvements will come from system optimization than from
machine optimization. Having machines utilize those higher level
integration strategies defined early on by OMAC will enable machines to
talk with one another and with their human overseers to benefit from
improved planning, reduced downtime, and better overall performance of
entire packaging legs, cells, or lines. Most of the engineers that I
spoke with expressed support for the belief that the next breakthrough
will come with the full integration of information from the top floor to
the shop floor.
Some of this is in place already. For example, onboard drive
diagnostics get passed up from the bottom through software functionality
such as that offered by B&R’s System Diagnostic Manager. From the
opposite direction, orders get passed down from the top level ERP system
to at-line or in-line printers to enable order quantities as small as
one. In both cases, integration is the key.
Increasing number of changeovers requires more efficient changeovers.
Maurizio Tarozzi of B&R pointed out that with more companies
manufacturing for markets in multiple countries, in-line printing offers
the opportunity to put country-specific information on the label to
satisfy regulatory requirements or to put village-specific information
on the package to satisfy marketing needs.
Most engineers mentioned aids to integration such as PackML,
Weihenstephan protocol, MTConnect, and SECS/GEM protocol—each of which
is meant to solve the same problem for packaging, bottling, machining,
and electronic fabrication. Schneider’s Juergensen believes that these
standards are all so similar that they should converge, maybe in another
dog year. (Isn’t it unfortunate that there is not a neutral arbiter
that could cause this to happen in a people year as the computer and
cell phone industries seem able to do?)
But beyond tag and protocol standards, engineers are talking about
something much greater. Gerd Hoppe of Beckhoff described the work taking
place in Europe on Industry 4.0 or the Internet of Things. Perhaps GEN 4
depends upon Industry 4.0, which imagines automatic configuration of
smart cities, smart health, and smart manufacturing. This will take a
breakthrough in both technology and the cultural divide that often
exists between IT and manufacturing engineering. Those predicting this
development aren’t talking about just passing streams of data around,
but massive use of computer power in interconnected machines. Motors and
drives will have electronic nameplates. Machines will describe their
own features through an electronic passport, allowing upper level
systems to browse lower level systems to figure out what they do and
what they are able to do. Following the model of USB devices plugged in
to your computer, a machine may identify itself as a flow wrapper and
tell the network that it is capable of running at some speed x, that it
supports PackML, and that it contains a recipe management system that is
structured like “this.” Work on self organizing sensor networks has been underway for some time, and last year a special
interest group of ODVA was initiated to move machines in the direction
of self-identifying.
Still need to optimize Gen 3
Several companies mentioned that Gen 3 machines are far from being
optimized. Size is one area being worked on by many, and this can be a
big payoff for end users who are short of space in existing factories
and want to avoid paying for square footage in new factories. Smaller
size may also mean less mass, less inertia, and less complexity, all of
which eventually lead to less cost.
Cabinet-free construction was being discussed at interpack with the
Schubert cabinet-free design most fully demonstrating the concept. Using
Bosch-Rexroth drives and motors with Festo valves, all mounted directly
on the machine and networked together, there was little need for a
cabinet as we now know it. One also wonders about the future need for
controls engineers or systems integrators, because these configurations
will largely be worked out by the technology suppliers. Modularity is
also a benefit of cabinet-free design, allowing machine builders to
customize machines using standardized modules, reducing production time
and variability in the field and increasing support capability.
Developing and applying good cable management practices will be an opportunity for many of these designs,
especially in environments where dust or moisture may be present. And
one final “less is more idea” involves shedding the HMI. One supplier
reported that printing presses are being delivered that use only a
tablet or smart phone as an HMI. What’s good for the converter may also
be good for the packager.
Other ways of reducing machine size are by using fully integrated
robotics, building customized arms, and using control vendor kinematics
for implementation. Italian machine builder CAMA went a step further,
internally developing robotic software that allowed the placement of 12
pickers in a space of 10 square meters with overlapping work envelopes
and operating together with complete collision avoidance. Several
engineers pointed out that the true integration of robotics and vision
as components in machines is still in its infancy. The converse is also
true, that robots have not yet fulfilled their capability to do more
than move product. Schneider described a pick-process-and-place
application where a robot not only picks up a fish and places it into a can, but cuts, slices, and cleans the fish along the way.
CAMA and a couple other suppliers showed machines at interpack that
utilized either the Rockwell or Beckhoff versions of the linear motor
racetrack. But there were fewer than six such machines on the floor,
reminiscent of rotary servo penetration in 1993. The makers of these
systems believe that they are a disruptive technology that will play a
significant role in Gen 4. They certainly do have potential for
significant reduction in the size of machines. Other direct drive servo
configurations may yet to be seen. One can only hope that the patent
issues surrounding these devices can be resolved in a manner that they
become readily available as components for a wide range of applications
that will benefit the packaging arena.
As an engineering colleague of mine frequently pointed out, all good
ideas eventually evolve into work, for engineers and others. In the area
of engineering, several technology providers suggested that better and
more integrated design tools will lead to better machines. Dr. Thomas
Cord of Lenze discussed the need for mechanical engineering, controls
engineering, and HMI middleware tools to cooperate effectively. Machine
builders need better ways to manage the technology in the machines and
deal with the complexity, especially of the ever-increasing software
components. He believes that before we can get to Industry 4.0, we need
to optimize the execution of Gen 3 machines. Siemens, which owns
Unigraphics, sees the need for the tools to support collaboration and
parallel design. Siemens is not just concentrating on the automation
tools, but also the mechanical design tools. While in the future there
will still be some specialization, the trend must be to a systems
engineering or mechatronics engineering approach. For now, products like
Rockwell’s RAPID aim to ease the integration burden and software tools
are available to help analyze designs. Schneider’s acquisition of
Wonderware should provide new opportunities for integration of tools and
applications in the machine space.
So what is a Gen 4 machine? I’m not sure that it is clear that any
one breakthrough will dominate the transition. But with simultaneous
forward movement on all of the topics discussed here, machines are
certainly going to change in significant ways. Dynamic modeling of
machines; improved advanced control algorithms in drives; faster
processors and networks; Industry 4.0 or the Internet of Things; greater
integration of machines, robotic arms, and vision; less-is-more modular
design; new types of linear motors; and better engineering tools with a
mechatronics focus—these will all provide huge opportunities for change
and improvement. When someone identifies a clear transition to
recognizable Gen 4 machines, let us all know.
Founding of OMAC Packaging Workgroup
During the latter half of the 1990s, with the urging and support of
European technology providers, packaging applications using motion
control technology began to appear in the U.S. trade press, including
this publication. At the 1999 ARC conference, talk was initiated about
forming an OMAC working group that would concentrate on packaging. OMAC
was then a group focused upon the machine tool industry, led by
companies such as General Motors and Boeing. OMAC stood for Open Modular
Architecture Control. Later that same year at Pack Expo Las Vegas, a
meeting was sponsored by ARC, Packaging World, and Indramat
where a panel of engineers from five of the US’s top CPG companies
addressed an audience of over 100 people representing packaging machine
builders, control suppliers, and other packagers. Participants agreed to
meet again in February 2000 at the ARC Automation Strategies
Conference, where 50 people representing the same constituents and PMMI
agreed to form an OMAC working group focused on the use of motion
control in packaging machinery.
A mission, vision, and operating principles document was adopted in March of 2000 at a meeting held in the offices of Packaging World
during Manufacturing Week in Chicago. Over 70 people attended the
meeting, at which PMMI agreed to endorse and participate in the group.
The meeting concluded with the newly-formed OMAC Motion for Packaging Workgroup focused
on 4 key areas: Business Benefits; Education; Technical Architecture
& Connectivity; and Programming Languages and Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs). In subsequent years, as the emphasis
moved away from bringing motion control awareness to the U.S., the name
was changed to the OMAC Packaging Workgroup. The PackML initiative,
which is now OPW’s primary focus, grew out of a suggestion brought to
the group from Markem.
Source:-http://www.automationworld.com/whats-next-packaging-machinery-automation
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