The first impression is the last impression. Packaging of the product is the first thing that we are drawn towards. Knowing this fact, manufacturers create beautiful packaging to attract the consumer market and build a steady brand among consumers. In between all of these, a manufacturer has strict guidelines to adhere to bring the best manufacturing practices and provide a sustainable packaged product that will reach the market.

Over the past few years, packaging has improved not only in terms of product protection, but manufacturers are relying more on sustainable and innovative solutions that provide production accuracy, material consumption mapping, ease of operation, and flexibility. It is seen to achieve higher per capita production function, and products that provide accurate results and helps production facility run seamlessly has gathered more recognition lately. With the demand growing among the urban population in India, production challenges surge every year. To tackle such unforeseen demands, products that are innovative, flexible, sustainable, and adaptive at the same time are the need of the hour.

Resilience with adaptive manufacturing

Customers have specific requirements in terms of aesthetics, performance, and specifications. To cater to customer demands is the way a customer-driven market operates, and manufacturers are highly relying on this fact. All of these are necessary but at times it becomes very expensive as mass production is not the way of modern manufacturing. Here, moving to a single batch or as we say customized production is a better solution. To succeed in a world of mass customization, e-commerce, direct-to-consumer and omnichannel strategies, you need machinery that’s built to adapt.

Today’s consumers expect to get products personalized to their individual tastes and preferences. To meet this challenge, progressive machine builders are delivering machinery that adapts to the products being made and packaged, rather than forcing products to conform to a rigidly sequential process. Adaptive manufacturing plays a key role here in catering the manufacturing processes smoothly without much human intervention or errors.

B&R enables adaptive manufacturing through track-based and planar product transport systems integrated with robotics, machine vision, and digital twins and controlled with in house core automation platform. B&R’s versatile industrial transport systems are a revolution in adaptive manufacturing that extends the economy of mass production down to batch one. Highly acclaimed SuperTrak, ACOPOStrak and ACOPOS 6D products are a crisp example of a new generation of adaptive manufacturing. The unique design gives manufacturing systems unprecedented powers of adaptability.

Process on the go with adaptive manufacturing

Conventional transport systems consume a lot of floor space in plants without making any real value-addition to the production processes. B&R Mechatronics system provides products that have less footprint and higher performance. With the introduction of ACOPOS 6D for use in multidimensional manufacturing, the traditional model of linear product transport is now dissolving to reveal a multidimensional processing space. A space where the boundaries between transport and processing disappear.

In addition to carrying products, the transport system also executes multi-axis processing tasks – adding essential flexibility in a fraction of the space. Not just this – Acopos6D also has the possibility to integrate with ACOPOStrak and SuperTrak to provide more flexibility and extend the economy of mass production down to batches of one with help of independently controlled shuttles.

The unique design of ACOPOStrak and SuperTrak delivers decisive technological advantages for adaptive and connected manufacturing. Produce small batches efficiently and benefit from the higher margins of personalized products. With adaptive manufacturing, manufacturers can increase their overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), shorten time to market and generate better ROI in their machines.

The independently controlled shuttles allow the adaptive machine to change product format on-the-fly with no lost productivity. Changeovers are fast and fully automated, with no tools or human intervention. A production line can even be readily reconfigured to run new products because the modular design and the digital twin help to simulate the new operations. Tight synchronization of independently controlled shuttles leads to higher throughput and greater productivity. Thus, with the adaptive machine, there’s no compromise between flexibility and performance.

B&R will demonstrate adaptive machines live in action at Hall 6 Stand E62 at interpack 2023 in Düsseldorf. For more details click here.