Robotics in Industry 4.0 – five major challenges for the packaging industry

Industry 4.0 has the potential to alter radically all stages of the packaging industry with new efficiencies and unprecedented accuracy in data exchanges, creating a leaner, more responsive, more engaged supply chain.

Five Major Challenges for the Packaging Industry
Five Major Challenges for the Packaging Industry

The 4.0 challenge

Since it was first used by the German government in a 2011, the Industry 4.0 concept has been a buzz topic for many manufacturing sectors. Broadly, it can be understood as updated methods of production in which machines and products are digitally networked together.

Incorporating diverse concepts – like the Internet of Things, Cloud computing, and artificial intelligence – its goal is to change traditional industrial production plants into the smart factories. How to most efficiently adopt these concepts into the packaging industry remains a challenge, however.

In its new study The Impact of Industry 4.0 on Packaging to 2023, Smithers Pira pinpoints the nascent technologies that are enabling this fourth industrial revolution and highlights five major changes that will be witnessed in the next five years.

  • Automation & Robotics
  • Smart Packaging
  • Big Data & Cloud computing
  • Mass-customisation
  • E-commerce

Each is analyzed across five key stages in the packaging production and use cycle. This article examines key future developments in Automation & Robotics.

Smart factories 2018

The packaging industry is responding to increasing brand owner demands for shorter product life cycles and cost driving variation – leading to shorter runs, more line changes and more down time on traditional converting lines. A new generation of robotic systems and, in particular, improvements in data flow means package production can integrate and connect key processes – design, production, distribution, maintenance – into a single holistic approach. The most significant impacts of new robotic platforms will be felt in converting and distribution.

Bright Dairy, the third biggest player in China’s growing dairy foods market, has collaborated with Tetra Pak to design a manufacturing facility for yogurt. When fully integrated, it will be able to process 500 tons of raw milk daily. All processing and packaging operations in the plant and their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems will be integrated with the Swiss firm’s PlantMaster MES Suite.

The platform includes equipment, quality and utility management, a warehouse management system plus traceability analysis and reporting from reception of raw milk to warehouse handling using QR codes. Tetra Pak provided the PlantMaster MES Suite, a solution that connects processing and packaging in one system and on one screen.

In December 2017 BASF embarked on a digital transformation via partnership with Dutch start-up company Ahrma to approach the growing market for smart logistic solutions and a more transparent, reliable and efficient supply chain.

Market challenges

To further advance the Industry 4.0 concept for automation, there are five key challenges that Smithers Pira sees as essential across the next five years.

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