The majority of surveyed companies are currently considering, planning, or implementing predictive maintenance systems in some form, according to PMMI Business Intelligence’s 2022 report “Challenges and Opportunities for Packaging and Processing Operations.”
PMMI asked attendees at October’s PACK EXPO International to participate in a pre-show survey about plans for predictive maintenance in their operations. The results showed a variety of technologies sparking interest among consumer packaged goods companies, and a corresponding response among equipment manufacturers to meet demand.
The State of Predictive Maintenance
Current predictive maintenance activities among CPGs included implementing thermography solutions, full equipment monitoring and computerized maintenance management system software. OEMs noted an interest in adding predictive maintenance to their systems and testing it with customers.
PMMI Business Intelligence, 2022 Challenges and Opportunities for Packaging and Processing Operations
“We are considering adding this as an optional feature on equipment,” one OEM said, noting their company is curious to learn how this would benefit packagers’ daily line operation and maintenance staff and budget.
Vibration analysis, thermography and holistic solutions such as equipment health monitoring sensors were popular among companies as potential technologies to implement in the next three to five years.
Other technologies popular among respondents included:
- Parts room setup and organization
- Oil monitoring analysis
- Risk and reliability software
- Machine level fault codes
- Tracking hours of use until downtime
- Outage planning and scheduled total productive maintenance
- Risk minimization
- Best practice information
- Mean time between failures data
With such a broad range of interests among CPGs, OEMs have a challenge ahead to meet all their needs.
In response to the question about plans over the next three to five years, OEMs stated they are looking at areas such as prediction and recommended maintenance, and component failure.
One OEM said their company expected to provide “dashboards and algorithms related to predictive maintenance and aligning preventive and predictive diagnostics.”
Participants perceived the best opportunities within operations for predictive maintenance to be critical, high tech and high value machines, and continuous production equipment.
Areas that minimize downtime and assistance with proactive maintenance, production, processing and packaging operations, trend monitoring, mixing and water systems were also cited as prime for predictive maintenance solutions.
Predictive Maintenance Trends at PACK EXPO International
Surveyed packaged goods companies said they planned to use the PACK EXPO show to scout for computerized maintenance management system software, total productive maintenance, machine reliability, and products that deliver value.
As one respondent claimed, “we are open to any and all industry solutions to increase machinery reliability.”
For their part, OEMs had the chance to promote the benefits of their predictive maintenance systems to interested companies at the show.
OEM participants said they would also use PACK EXPO to “understand customer requirements and expectations as well as insight into security and data requirements.”
Future Looks Bright for Predictive Maintenance Tech
PMMI Business Intelligence, 2022 Challenges and Opportunities for Packaging and Processing Operations
Among CPGs specifically, 43% are currently using some form of the technology, while an additional 45% plan to implement predictive maintenance in the next three years.
Most packaging industry companies are in the early exploratory stages with predictive maintenance, but the results of this survey show a significant and growing group adopting the technology.
Source: PMMI Business Intelligence, 2022 Challenges and Opportunities for Packaging and Processing Operations.
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