The catchy beverage slogans we hear via commercials have already impressed our oculars and when we drink, it refreshes our mind and soul. But have we ever thought about the work that goes behind our beverage packs? These slogans are not only a promise to customers but they represent a brand’s entire mission. Each day the beverage industry produces lakhs of products from their single line of the production facility. It is believed they have the highest production profitability in any nation. This is because they have adapted to fast pace technological advancement, and they understand the consumer demands like no one.
The beverage industry is flexible. It is continuously looking into each technological innovation and adapting to it. The beverage industry emphasizes and spends a huge amount in every step of their manufacturing process citing from filling the package to printing labels. That is, the primary, secondary and tertiary packaging, all mark the same importance. They never leave any loose ends and to accomplish one’s mission, it takes a lot of effort. It’s an art to watch the industry giants create an image in front of their consumers by building trust and giving the best quality.
The building of a value chain
The beverage industry consists of bottled water, carbonated drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. The industry is huge and has great scope for technology implementation. All consumer-driven industry has seen growth vastly. Implementation of innovative technology in the beverage industry has never been a challenge, to be precise, because manufacturing units are well designed with trained workers and engineers. Production facilities are designed to work in microseconds – cutting-edge technologies are acutely utilized to fasten the manufacturing process.
What attracts a consumer? A consumer first interacts with the package. A great packaging marks the pride of buying one, a detailed content label marks the dependency on the product and similarly, the price breakup mark determines the product value for money. These are some of the primary features the beverage industry believes in. The beverage industry gives high importance to packaging to attract their consumers, enhance the shelf life, and maintain the taste at the same time whilst maintaining all the food grades and standards.
The exponential growth of this market assures a lot of hopes for the future, especially with the rise in market sustainability and expansion of the market each year. Thus, packaging is as important as the food itself – not just protecting the product and its shelf life but also displaying designs that catch consumers’ eyes and communicate well the brand mission including environmental awareness.
The whole manufacturing ecosystem of the beverage industry has in recent times strengthened the entire value chain. The entire evolution of the value chain is driven by three main factors – technology, manufacturers and consumers. The impact of consumers in this value chain is huge – it has influenced the manufacturers to shred the age-old manufacturing practices and move into smart and adaptive manufacturing processes. The discerning, selective and health awareness nature of consumers has evolved too with the recent western approach towards products. Thus, consumers are willing to pay more for products that meet their lifestyle needs – but they are still looking for value without skimping on quality.
Decade of innovation boom for beverage industry
It has been reported through various channels that in recent times beverage industry has reduced wastage and balances its go-to-market products as per needs only. Today, smart and adaptive are technology words creating a buzz in industries. A manufacturer rises when he actually understands how to drive its manufacturing process and maintain a healthy manufacturing ecosystem. Manufacturers of consumer goods need to accommodate different kinds of packaging and different stacking arrangements with multiple and different product content.
The main challenge for today’s machine builders is providing quick changeovers and extreme flexibility to the ongoing production facility. Conventional packaging lines are designed in ways that, firstly, they can be intermittent, with the product transported station to station i.e., filling, gluing cartages, wrapping, stopping at each step along the way. The disadvantage of this approach is that the cycle time is determined by the slowest station. Secondly, the challenge is to maintain continuous motion, where the stations move together with the conveyor.
It is seen with motion technology, you must pick one design or the other – we cannot mix them. Thus, the intelligent track system comes into the picture where B&R has added a new curve to adaptive manufacturing by introducing technologically advanced products with an edge by implementing innovation to the basket of trending product ranges – SuperTrak, ACOPOStrak and ACOPOS 6D.
B&R has a long experience of working with OEMs, thus understanding the core difficulties faced by the manufacturers during the production of their packaging lines is made easy through implementing innovations. Some manufacturers find it difficult to implement new technologies to their existing machines as they think this may disrupt their regular production line and require considerable time to integrate it into the system. But these systems negate it all and make it super flexible.
Also, for manufacturers, the implementation costs can be hard to predict but with B&R’s intelligent transport system, that’s not a problem. The simulation tool used in this case even takes synchronized robots into account. The B&R trak system provides cutting-edge technology that is flexible and adaptive, and has high production speed. But for the kind of flexible production and OEE improvements in consideration in today’s packaging facility, we need to combine it with rapid changeovers. This technology helps to simulate what the track will need to look like to implement the existing packaging process with an intelligent transport system.
Machine operators can now define exactly how long the track must be and how many shuttles are needed. The simulation tool can even be used to perform virtual commissioning. All these features make it very easy to improve asset efficiency with intelligent transport systems. Here, SuperTrak uses magnet technology to guide individually controllable shuttles along a track using long stator linear motors. ACOPOStrak is a revolution in adaptive manufacturing. This highly flexible transport system extends the economy of mass production down to batches of one. Parts and products are transported quickly and flexibly from one processing station to the other on independently-controlled shuttles.
The unique design of ACOPOStrak delivers decisive technological advantages for adaptive, connected manufacturing. It helps produce small batches efficiently and benefits from the higher margins of personalized products. With the latest innovation in the basket, ACOPOS 6D, B&R heralds a new era of manufacturing. Magnetic levitating shuttles move individual products freely through the machine. Gone are the days when conventional transport systems imposed rigidly defined timing on the production process. ACOPOS 6D is ideal for small-batch production with frequent changeover between products of different designs and dimensions.
