Harnessing information to meet rapidly changing packaging demands

Global competition is increasingly challenging manufacturers to offer an exhaustive breadth of products to meet rapidly changing customer needs. In the case of packaging machinery, this means that the machinery must be flexible enough to keep up with frequent line changes and scalable enough to handle the introduction of new products.

The recent acceleration of the Internet of Things enables new levels of connectivity for people, processes, data and things — ultimately providing greater productivity, better utilisation of assets and improved decision-making for industrial companies. The magnitude of this evolution is momentous with more than 80 billion internet-connected devices projected to be in use in 2024, up from less than 20 billion in 2014.

Establishing a connected enterprise can help manufacturers optimise their production and supply chain by integrating information technology (IT) with operations technology (OT) to improve business performance and minimise risks.

To achieve this, end users are looking to machine builders to provide smart machines that can provide real-time access to production information, enable flexibility in relation to changing markets and demands, and also easily integrate into their facility.

The need for smart manufacturing is growing, particularly in countries where manufacturing costs are high, with more and more manufacturers requiring the capability to access intelligent, real-time data from their machines.

There is also a growing need for our customers to merge their information technology and operational technology to harness real-time data and improve productivity and agility. This convergence improves connectivity across enterprise operations and provides the platform to integrate information across business systems and the plant floor.

One of the technologies that makes possible the acceleration of this convergence of network infrastructure and the integration of technical and business systems is the EtherNet/IP communications platform, through Rockwell Automation’s collaboration with Cisco on products, services and educational resources.

Effectively managing real-time control and information flow provides enterprise-wide machine and device-level information gathering. This connectivity provides access to real-time production data and helps packaging manufacturers increase agility and productivity while also reducing engineering time and costs for machine builders.

While having access to real-time data is invaluable from a diagnostic, production throughput, safety, quality and efficiency perspective, increasing connectivity and visibility into the system opens it up to potential security risks that require careful consideration and mitigation.

Effectively developing a complete connected enterprise requires a comprehensive approach to industrial security that extends beyond the control system to include policies and procedures that address people, process and technology-related risks.

The value proposition that the connected enterprise delivers to both machine builders and end users is focused on information. It provides the technology to dramatically increase the amount of data available for analysis. It enables a variety of opportunities for improving business models and performance for machine builders, from reduced downtime and optimised capacity to improved machine design and monitoring capabilities.

Better information sharing drives better decision-making, exposes process inefficiencies, facilitates best-practice collaboration and uncovers new competitive opportunities. Packaging machine builders and their customers are increasingly realising the benefits that more information, insights and data can offer them to improve profitability in a competitive marketplace.

Michael Vlahos has 15 years’ experience in industrial automation and has worked with customers and system integrators in a range of industries including mining; water and wastewater; food and beverage; and automotive. In his current role at Rockwell Automation, Michael is the OEM Sales Lead for the South Pacific region.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Alexey Stiop