Ideas and actions for “operational sustainability”
From machine learning systems to futuristic talking packaging to be always connected: PFM Packaging Machinery solutions as told by Andrea Fioravanti, R&D manager of the group.
Having consolidated and historicized the concept of Industry 4.0, applied for years to the entire range of packaging machines, lines and weighing machines, PFM Packaging Machinery (leader of all the companies in the group) is now focusing on sustainability, protection, information and traceability: the pillars that will support the future of the food packaging industry and beyond.
An ecosystem for machines
Andrea Fioravanti, R&D manager of the industrial group, is convinced of this and explains how PFM is working concretely to refine machine learning systems, augmented reality applied to design, training and after-sales service.
«We are committed to implementing and improving all the predictive functions already present on our machines to put them increasingly at the service of the operator, in a design perspective that we internally define as “PFM operational sustainability”: an ecosystem of functions applied to machines that inform, instruct, and direct the operator to the benefit of the OEE index».
«Our machines - continues the manager - put the customer in a position to know in real time their operating and wear status and are equipped with self-improvement systems for performance, depending on the product and production flow».
Products, gateway to the virtual world
On the robotics front, then, PFM is offering customers a valuable contribution in terms of safety and reliability «through the continuous improvement of robotic vision systems, which are able to recognize not only the position and orientation of each individual product or package, but also to identify any imperfections. In other words, our gaze is directed at the technologies that make every single package unique and connected to the virtual world, from which all the information on the package itself, on the product and on its production history can be drawn».
Andrea Fioravanti’s conclusions on this subject are stimulating:
«If we think of the package no longer as a purely printed protective wrapping, but as a multimedia access point for the consumer to the universe of production and processing of the content, then absolutely new scenarios are emerging, in which the automation and flexible packaging sectors are destined for epochal changes».
But the “world-machine” connection alone does not exhaust the topic; in fact, it is even PFM that remains connected through the PFM Bridge remote digital services platform, created to communicate and share technical and commercial information with customers, professionals and the sales network.
And the PFM Virtual Stand is the virtual space reserved for customers to share projects, present innovations, welcome and answer the most diverse technical questions, using the technologies (which in recent months have become so familiar to everyone) of video conferencing and 3DVR.
