PLCopen workshop at Ipack Ima

“Creating efficient production lines through software harmonization with worldwide standards”

Speaker: Eelco van der Wal, Managing Director PLCopen

The  days with loosely coupled packaging functionalities in a production line are over.

Reasons for this include higher quality requirements of the packaged food, higher product responsibility which means better product traceability, smaller portions to be packed with even less waste and better usage of resources like energy, and an extended shelf life is expected by the users, even with fresh products. And of course higher efficiency on the production lines starts with the metrics to achieve this.

In practice this means the the different packaging functionalities need to be coupled to a production line with the different functionalities preferably providing more flexibility in itself.

This integration increases the requirements on communication. Communication between the different functionalities in the production line, and communication to higher leveled systems like planning and scheduling systems like ERP and MES.

This presentation will show that by using worldwide software standards one can create the basis for flexibility, transparency and improvements in new or existing production lines. The topics include mechatronic concepts, harmonized motion control functionalities, structured software development process, and transparent data access and information exchange.