How Ecommerce is Impacting Packaging Equipment Design

Getting Ahead of the Specs

Proven systems like independent cart technology (ICT) are a smart alternative to the throughput and physical limitations of existing mechanics. But you have to get ahead of the specs.

The typical process goes something like this: Purchasing or engineering is charged with buying a machine for X. They send out an RFQ for exactly that and OEMs quote the machine without too much deviation, or risk losing the sale.

Now, fast forward to after the job is won, machine is built and the executive team shows up for the factory acceptance test. The machine they see isn’t built for a more flexible future. It doesn’t offer one-button changeovers, different pack patterns or solve their greatest business challenges. With this audience, the added upfront costs for the right packaging equipment becomes secondary as they see an inevitable future of costly modifications and retrofits down the road.

Operations leadership needs to know how advances like ICT solve their business, not just production, challenges. That ICT is so much more than a typical linear transport system with a fancy infeed or way to vary pitch.

And, this process all starts before there’s a project on the table. Before the RFQ goes out. Before there’s a directive to buy for X, when everything from A through Z is still possible.

4000 Configurations with the Push of a Button

OEM of custom automation equipment, Aagard, recently saw this scenario play out with a customer.

Aagard learned of their customer’s business challenge, to automate packaging of variety packs in various configurations. Four-thousand configurations to be exact. These ranged from one to six flavors and 12 to 96 products per case. And, with stand-up display trays, divider sheets, tight floor space, fast changeover and high-end line rates (100 cases per minute), it became clear that traditional packaging technology would not offer the agile solution the customer really needed.

Competitive proposals involved dozens of delta robots over a conveyor, adding up to thousands of components including rotary motors, gearboxes, grippers and other complexities. With the agility and ease of operation needed, an automated packaging solution built around iTRAK^® technology became a simple answer.

This project didn’t start with an RFQ, or a call from purchasing. Aagard, Rockwell Automation and the end user sat in the same room and envisioned a machine that could do something never done before.

The key to success in this situation was to focus in on the business need and evaluate available technology,” said Jason Norlien, vice president of technical sales at Aagard. “We created a solution built for future market demand and business growth.”

Rockwell Automation-controlled gantry robots will pick the product for staging, building the pattern needed for each carton. From there, iTRAK components adjust to accommodate the height, width and overall configuration of the pack and select the right-sized cardboard blank to fit the product. This is all done without tooling changes. Only the single push of a button on the HMI.

That same instruction from the HMI could also come from a supervisory or ecommerce system. So as the Amazon Effect takes a deeper hold in CPG, custom orders can be easily accommodated without manual intervention.

A Smarter Way

Whatever the solution, I think we can all agree we need to stop unpacking just to repack. To stop modifying and retrofitting for each change in consumer behavior. There is a smarter way, and it starts with thinking ahead, educating up front, and being a business enabler. Not just a packaging equipment manufacturer.

The world is changing. Are you ready? Learn more about how a modular, scalable linear motor system can help your business, and your customers, prepare for tomorrow.