Showing Some Flexibility
How food production is adapting to the need for more consumer choice
By Sean Riley, senior director, Media and Industry Communications, PMMI
This is truly the era of expanding consumer choice. Consider spaghetti sauce. A few decades ago, there were just a handful of spaghetti sauce brands on the shelves and all were pretty much the same. But then manufacturers began to give consumers more choice—chunky, spicy, plain, you name it—and soon, all this choice became the norm. Once exposed to all the different possibilities, consumers never went back. Today, the choices of spaghetti sauce seem to be virtually endless.
This trend toward greater choice continues to revolutionize the food and beverage industries. Virtually any product category now offers more variety for consumers than it did even a decade ago. But this new reality brings some real challenges for food and beverage manufacturers.
Greater Choice Yields Challenges
All of this new choice means processing lines are working overtime to produce a larger variety of products—and in many cases, more of them are necessary. While the obvious solution might be to build new lines, these options are exceedingly costly and challenging due to space constraints. As a result, most food and beverage manufacturers try to make do within the confines of their existing footprints.
Furthermore, this shift from fewer, longer runs on production lines to many shorter runs can require more changeovers—and more skilled operators to efficiently complete those changeovers. However, these workers can be very difficult to find and retain.
All of these factors contribute to a production floor that can look vastly different from factories established decades earlier. Compact and flexible machines are on the rise as well as demand for equipment that minimizes changeover times and simplifies operator interfaces. Machinery suppliers—including those exhibiting at the inaugural ProFood Tech (April 4–6, 2017; McCormick Place, Chicago)—are responding to these demands, engineering adaptations that enable flexibility without sacrificing productivity.
Smaller Footprints & Moveable Parts
Today’s food and beverage production solutions are able to do more in less space. For example, the Combox from packaging solutions provider Serac (Booth #1303) is a blowing-filling-capping machine for dairy producers with a compact footprint that replaces standalone blow-molders for PET bottles. The equipment allows for the use of 10 different tooling types to handle 10 different products. Handling the bottles by the neck instead of the body enables the flexibility.
“Neck gripping instead of body gripping makes it possible to do this without significant changeover time and without requiring the expertise of operators,” says Alan Bonanno, Serac’s marketing manager. “This is because neck grippers can go from 20ml to 60ml bottles and there is no tooling underneath the gripper. So the changes are minor.”
An additional advantage provided by the Combox is the ability to shape lightweight bottles as tiny as two-to-three grams, allowing for environmentally friendly packaging solutions. It also uses pulsed light to decontaminate the packaged caps, eliminating the need for—and cost of—chemicals. Lastly, the Combox offers a tankless option. A tankless design provides a seamless flow of liquid from production to packaging, reducing the risk of contamination.
Key Technology, Inc. (Booth #1213), a provider of conveying and process automation technology for food companies, is also adjusting to today’s increasingly flexible market needs. One way it is doing so is putting its conveyors on casters so that they can be easily moved around the production floor as needed.
Grading, sizing and separating are essential functions in any processing line. Key’s conveyors are built with the company’s unique VectorLock clamping system that securely holds screens, yet allows for quick removal. “We design our systems for fast changeover and easy cleaning,” states John Kadinger, market manager, Key Technology.
Intelligent Solutions
Any food manufacturer will tell you that it’s getting harder to find employees who fit the needs of today’s environment. As the number and type of food and beverage products have multiplied, so have the skill-sets required of employees to keep production running smoothly. The real challenge is that there are fewer employees out there today with the skills needed for an increasingly complicated job. Machinery manufacturers are doing their part to remove some of that burden by engineering solutions that are more user-friendly, intuitive and automated.
“Especially when the technical labor force is small, customers want easy maintenance and changeover. That is the demand we are responding to. It’s not easy to have a machine that you can completely changeover,” points out Emmanuel Cerf, vice president, sales and marketing at packaging equipment supplier, Polypack, Inc. (Booth #2430).
At the upcoming ProFood Tech, Polypack will showcase a fully integrated shrink wrap, casing and palletizing system controlled by a single Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). Just one Polypack machine is capable of running 52 different products without the need for a highly trained worker.
Polypack machines also come standard with automatic splicing systems, a feature that reduces changeover when rollstock runs out, thereby minimizing downtime. The company also has the capability of remotely handling some of the most technical issues that arise with its machinery, via its Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, eliminating the need for a highly specialized employee onsite.
Key Technology is also designing solutions for ease-of-use and speedy changeovers. For example, its Veryx Digital Sorting Platform, introduced in 2015, consists of a suite of belt-fed and chute-fed sorters. With unprecedented all-sided surface inspection, multi-sensor Pixel Fusion and the highest-resolution cameras and laser sensors available in a digital sorter, the company says Veryx achieves new levels of detection and discrimination of foreign material and product defects. Additionally, advanced auto-learn, self-adjusting capabilities and recipe-driven operation offer ease-of-use and an intuitive user experience.
“In the design of our Veryx system, we took into consideration the need for quick changeover in the interface, too,” explains Kadinger. “The Veryx system is also very open, so it is easy for operators to get into the areas that need to be cleaned and it stays cleaner than traditional systems.”
Discovering Solutions
With the rate of new product development on the rise, suppliers are seeing little evidence that the need for more flexible food and beverage manufacturing solutions will slow down anytime soon.
Attending a trade show that brings all of the flexible production solutions together in one place is a good way to tackle this growing complexity and find some simple solutions. ProFood Tech, powered by PACK EXPO, Anuga and the International Dairy Foods Association (IFDA) will be the most comprehensive food and beverage show in North America, featuring 6,000 processing professionals, more than 400 of the world’s top suppliers, 150,000 net square feet of exhibit floor and 45 hours of educational programming.
Attendees will also have the chance to learn and experience hundreds of additional solutions, leaving them with the knowledge—and the flexibility—to meet the needs of the modern consumer.
For more information or to register, visit www.profoodtech.com.
Exhibitor/Source Websites:
Serac – www.serac-group.com
Key Technology – www.key.net
Polypack – www.polypack.com
About PMMI
PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, represents the voice of more than 750 North American manufacturers and suppliers of equipment, components and materials as well as providers of related equipment and services to the packaging and processing industry. We work to advance a variety of industries by connecting consumer goods companies with manufacturing solutions through the world-class PACK EXPO portfolio of trade shows, leading trade media and a wide range of resources to empower our members. The PACK EXPO trade shows unite the world of processing and packaging to advance the industries they serve: PACK EXPO International, PACK EXPO Las Vegas, Healthcare Packaging EXPO, PACK EXPO East, EXPO PACK México, EXPO PACK Guadalajara and ProFood Tech, launching in April 2017. PMMI Media Group connects manufacturers to the latest solutions, trends and innovations in processing and packaging year-round through brands including Packaging World, Automation World, Healthcare Packaging, Contract Packaging, ProFood World and Packaging + Processing OEM. PMMI Business Drivers assist members in pursuing operational excellence through workforce development initiatives, deliver actionable business intelligence on economic, market and industry trends to support members' growth strategies, and actively connect the supply chain throughout the year.
Learn more at PMMI.org and Packexpo.com and PMMIMediaGroup.com