Redefining Machine Flexibility

For years, machine builders have focused on improving the changeover time – and flexibility of their equipment. While the result has enabled an unprecedented increase in the number of SKUs produced, flexibility and throughput are not evenly matched across a typical plant floor.

In other words, a case packer loads pouches at 300 per minute, but the pouch filler cannot match that speed. An entire packaging line can change over in minutes. But the high-speed processing equipment that feeds it isn’t as agile.

Under normal circumstances, manufacturers can sacrifice throughput on some equipment – and maintain flexible production and adequate supply. But when the pandemic struck, the surge in demand quickly tipped the scales in favor of maximizing plant throughput. And flexibility suffered.

Recent events have highlighted the next significant challenge for all of us that serve the industry: how do we build smarter, highly flexible machines – that don’t compromise on throughput?

Technologies that Remove Boundaries

Optimizing machine performance is a top priority but many machine builders have discovered that incremental improvements to equipment based on conventional technology are no longer enough to achieve the flexibility customers demand.

Machines built with static mechanical parts, friction-based conveyance and a plethora of ancillary equipment may achieve high throughput running uniform product with fixed variables. But they are often unable to reach productivity objectives in a “high mix, low volume” world – no matter how much designs are tweaked.

Thanks to advances in mechatronics, the road to more flexible equipment is often the path to better throughput. Particularly in assembly, packaging and other applications, these technologies are leading the way:

• Robotics

Intrinsically flexible, robots use vision-guided line tracking – not mechanical rerouting – to address infinitely variable product shapes and sizes. Robots can change their recipe on the fly – and still meet production rate demands.

• Independent cart technology (ICT)

Conventional conveyance systems move product on a preconfigured path at a fixed speed. ICT boosts flexibility and throughput by intelligently moving carts based on where other carts are in the system.

• Automated changeover

With smart servo motors and drives on changeover mechanisms, machine setup for a new product configuration is achieved with the push of a button.

Because mechatronics replace complex mechanical designs, your machines can do more – with fewer components in much less space. And with emulation and digital twin technology, machine builders can test and confirm designs in the virtual world to help speed innovation with less risk.

More OEMs are using unified machine control strategies to integrate these technologies into their equipment – and plant architectures.

Take Data to the Next Level

One way to improve your customers’ opportunity for success is to design your machines for information availability. This means standardizing on a control platform and network infrastructure that simplifies integration – and seamlessly and securely connects to analytics platforms and business systems.

It is likely that your machines and equipment provide descriptive alarming to help improve maintenance and uptime. An alarm that indicates a motor overload has tripped helps with troubleshooting. But a worker still must make multiple decisions about how to react in the moment.

With network connectivity to a robust historical machine database, analytics tools can create models that predict future behavior based on past performance and use machine learning to optimize operations. This can be as simple as predicting an anomaly to give an operator time to take preventative steps.

Or as sophisticated as enabling your machine to take prescriptive action autonomously – like slowing motor speed – to maintain thresholds and keep equipment running.

Open for Business

Machine builders must also reimagine what flexibility means today. Over the past decade, the virtual marketplace has grown exponentially. And the pandemic ramped up demand by making the convenience of online retail a necessity.

In addition, more manufacturers are moving away from wholesale and retail distribution altogether – and increasing their profit margins by selling directly to consumers online.

What’s next? Tighter integration between the supply chain, e-commerce portals and MES systems to enable a faster, more flexible manufacturing response better aligned to demand.

And for OEMs, this means sharing the digital foundation of machines with customers early in the process. And designing equipment that’s not only easily integrated in the production space – but also connects directly to applications across the enterprise and beyond.

Meet Expectations with Scalable Offerings

A scalable automation platform improves the flexibility of your offerings and delivers a “win” for both you and your customers. A truly scalable offering provides options throughout every aspect of the platform – from controllers and I/O through the human machine interface (HMI), batch process control and analytics.

With open communication protocols, your customers can capture the value of smarter equipment without a major upfront investment in automation infrastructure – and scale as they grow.

Machine builders have the opportunity to take advantage of reusable, plug-and-play enabled tools to streamline the design process as offerings expand. Additionally, they easily leverage applications and analytics developed from one system to another.

A Smarter Way to Work

Even the most agile machine cannot maximize throughput if it’s not performing optimally. And over the past two years, we learned to take a more flexible approach to solving equipment challenges.

For OEMs faced with travel restrictions, remote connectivity to installed assets was the only way to service machinery and customers are increasingly warming to the technology.

The pandemic has also accelerated the adoption of other digital technologies that optimize machine performance – and support more flexible work paradigms. In particular, augmented reality platforms have made a significant impact.

Strategy for Success

The latest advances in mechatronics and digital technologies could improve machine flexibility or throughput on machines by 50% or more. So what steps can a machine builder take?

One piece of advice: This isn’t a retrofit project.

To achieve the dramatic gains new technologies promise, you will likely need a “clean slate” approach to machine design. And have a vision of where your digital journey will ultimately lead – aligned with customer needs. Collaborative projects that take advantage of the natural “push and pull” between OEMs and their customers result in the most transformative, cost-effective machines.

Learn more about how to build smarter machines and equipment that improve flexibility without compromising throughput.