Industrial IoT gives packaging and weighing equipment manufacturers real-time visibility into scale accuracy and machine health. A packing scale tipping 12 times per minute and overfilling a 10 kg bag by just half a kilogram produces losses of more than 2 tonnes of product in a single 8-hour shift, according to author Kudzai Manditereza, Founder and CEO of Cygnus Engine.
What Problems Do Packaging Manufacturers Face?
Packaging and weighing equipment manufacturers face three core problems: scale inaccuracies that cause costly overfill or regulatory fines for underfill, unplanned machine downtime that disrupts production, and legacy technology systems that block data sharing between PLCs on packaging equipment and Manufacturing Execution Systems, leaving decision makers reliant on guesswork.
Packaging equipment manufacturers therefore owe it to themselves and their clients to cast a wide net and find new ways of solving these challenges among many others.
How Does an Industrial IoT Solution Work?
An Industrial IoT solution for packaging connects packing scale indicators through an IoT gateway, which converts proprietary serial protocols such as RS485 or Modbus/RTU into standardised internet protocols including MQTT and HTTPS for cloud communication. The gateway also serves data to external systems such as MES platforms via REST or OPC UA, making real-time KPIs available across the plant.
The data can also be served to external systems such as MES systems using REST or OPC UA. On the cloud front Small data and Big Data analytics can be employed appropriately to produce descriptive, predictive and/or prescriptive analytics. Data from the rest of the plant can also be collected as the context would give the data more value.
Packaging equipment manufacturers can henceforth gain valuable business intelligence insights and also come up with proactive maintenance models.
The above architecture presents the bigger picture. If milling is involved, the process weighing indicators can also be integrated and crucial real-time KPIs such as the Mill Gain/Loss can be made available to shift managers on mobile devices. Packaging and Weighing equipment manufacturers can remotely monitor equipment health in many plants from a central location.
Scale malfunction, communication problems can be sent as alerts to service technicians or plant personnel who are best positioned to respond. Common issues that sometimes require simple device re-initialisation can be diagnosed and resolved remotely instead of technicians travelling hundreds of kilometers to site .
Why Should Packaging Manufacturers Adopt IIoT?
Packaging equipment manufacturers that adopt Industrial IoT gain a competitive advantage by shifting from reactive repairs to proactive maintenance. Remote monitoring means scale malfunctions and communication faults are sent as alerts to service technicians, and common issues that require simple device re-initialisation can be resolved remotely.
The article was written by Kudzai Manditereza, the Founder and CEO of Cygnus Engine, an IIoT startup based in South Africa. Originally the article was published on LinkedIn.
