Leveraging real-time machine monitoring to streamline packing solutions

Increasing packing efficiency operations

In the last several years, many industries, such as the food and beverage industry, have aimed to reduce waste in packaging products. Companies are focusing on minimizing material waste by understanding package losses on a machine level and creating waste management solutions.

MQPack is a Brazil-based company that specializes in weighing and packing market-specific goods and manufacturing machines. The company sells these machines to customers that use them to package various food and beverage items.

MQPack recently partnered with Siemens Digital Industries Software to gain a competitive advantage in remote machinery access and machine performance analysis and analytics. MQPack used Insights Hub, the industrial IoT operations X solution for improved operational decision making and the Simatic® suite, which are part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services, to achieve these goals.

When MQPack started working with Siemens in 2019, it was looking to reduce operational losses in material waste. This involved understanding package waste at a machine level and using that data to develop solutions for overall waste management. Another issue it faced was remote access of machines for customer remote services. Aggregate data was available on a few sites but the lack of machine-level transparency in the majority of the sites didn’t allow employees to deploy full remove services solutions for customers.

Across its deployment sites, MQPack had varying degrees of connectivity and machine data access and that wasn’t optimal for it to deploy remote support services or agree to service-level agreements (SLAs) with customers. “During digital transformation, it is challenging to
connect various machines quickly, affordably and securely from disparate sources into a central location,” says Marcos Queiroz, chief executive officer (CEO) for MQPack. Between waste management and connectivity issue variations across sites, customers faced business challenges and were looking for a new solution.

Using Insights Hub and Simatic to increase machine packing production

MQPack used Insights Hub with its multiple connectivity solutions regardless of brand, model or age. With Insights Hub connectivity solution, MQPack connected data directly from PLC S7-1500 to Insights Hub via MQ telemetry transport (MQTT). In the meantime, it can also provide a map with locations of every connected machines. It facilities to unlock the full potential of unused data on the shop floor and provide actional business insights.

The customer already had four machines in different cities connected to Insights Hub and they intend to connect at least more eight machines within a year. The customer then extracted variables from each machine and analyzed them in Simatic Performance Insight dashboards to give them critical information. MQPack made three major analyses to improve customers’ experience: machine production, machine setup and machine usage for new leads. MQPack used Insights Hub and Simatic to help the customer improve machine efficiency by reducing the packaging weight variation from 10g to 0.62g on average.

To provide its customers with productivity information, MQPack gathers information about run time, number of packages produced and accumulated weight values to present a unique overview of instantaneous machine operation. Also, historical data is stored to compare productivity between different operator’s shifts.

Pack collects data from each cycle time to improve and optimize machine setup and compares them to the desired calculated values, so operators can determine whether a machine configuration is set to its optimum performance. It also measures weighing tolerances to indicate any need for setup changes and improves the quality of the packaging process.

Finally, machine status is constantly being monitored so the customer can identify unplanned stops or bottlenecks. For MQPack, this information provides insight as to whether a customer needs maintenance support or new machines to fulfill a business expansion demand.

“As a manufacturer of machines, we hope to continue increasing machine productivity and services as well as develop new revenue-generating business models,” says Queiroz. “Using Siemens IoT solutions has made this possible for us.” MQPack plans to continue using Insights Hub and Simatic to help customers reduce waste in their packing operations.