Aim: open, modular, automation architecture

The leading end users of the Packaging & Processing world aim for greater flexibility, improved system efficiency, and reduced integration and maintenance costs. This goal can be reached with the aid of centralised control for the entire production site; this in turn requires standardised processes and system data.

OMAC is an organisation whose aim is to provide support in the gap between machine automation and manufacturing. OMAC's OPW group (OMAC Packaging Workgroup) has produced PackML™ (Packaging Machine Language), which is a specifications document of the communication interface between the production units and the supervisor. The main aim of PackML is to define one single “stile” for all the machines that make up a packaging system. In particular, it requires:
• the standardisation of the machine statuses and operating flows;
• data for OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness);
• data and analysis of causes and effects (Root Cause Analysis (RCA);
• flexible interfaces and standardised SCADA and/or MES data exchange.

The problems resulting from the management of a system, whose units sometimes come from different suppliers and manage the various machine statuses in different ways, are now well-known.
Alongside this, there is also the growing need to evaluate system effectiveness and efficiency quantitatively and qualitatively, using the well-established OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness). This method imposes, for each production unit (machine), the communication of certain key information: the unit status, the reasons for the production stop, how many products have actually been produced, and how many have been discarded or are available for re-use. This information must also be completed with a time indication. And finally, if the system performance level is not reached, it must be possible to trace the causes that prevented the goal from being reached; this is then the starting point for the improvement process.

Once the goals are made known, and the common language established, the process is transformed from a Tower of Babel to a model of efficient communication. Rexroth, thanks also to its active participation and its contribution in defining the standards (as a member of the OMAC packaging working groups), can offer its customers all the solutions, know-how and skills needed to create compatible PackML™ software packages, presenting itself to manufacturers not only as a product and solutions partner but also in terms of development support.
Rexroth products meet the market recognised standards confirming the open system characteristics, they are at the service of the customer and are able to grasp the market challenges.

MORE INFO
Packaging and Processing
Bosch Rexroth Italia
[email protected]
www.boschrexroth.com/packaging