Leading Packaging Machine Builder Reduces Machine Engineering Time

Bosch Packaging is a global leader in providing packaging solutions in the food and pharmaceutical segment. Bosch  Packaging, Goa, India supplies horizontal form fill and seal machines primarily to the bakery & confectionery industries, and plans to gratify the omnipresent and ever-growing demands from the Indian packaging market through Bosch Packaging’s Goa facility with its fully equipped R&D facility, engineering and after-sale support, and sophisticated assembly shop floor to build machines with advanced technology.

Accounting its wide range of products & global expertise, Bosch Packaging, Goa, India serves customers’ demands by providing complete line solutions, customized machinery and equipment which includes:

• Product feeding systems
• Flow wrapper Lines
• Collating machinery

With an extremely proficient engineering team, Bosch Packaging, Goa, India counters its constantly faced challenges, such as making extensive engineering efforts for delivering line solutions and meeting the tight delivery schedules on large projects, to accomplish their set goals.

Challenges

Often, for their customized line solutions, Bosch Packaging Goa, India is required to design a Product Distribution System (PDS) to feed product into down-stream wrapper lines. The time required to engineer these systems is a significant factor impacting project delivery schedules. The biggest challenge is to have a common engineered solution that can be re-used for various similar projects.

The challenges imposed due to the variability of customized project demands include:

1. Variation in line speed
2. Variation in total number of downstream flow wraps
3. Variation in each of flow wrap speed and dynamics of flow wrap
4. Protection of IP while automation applied to PDS solution

From similar requirements in the past, addressed by their previous automation solution company, Bosch Packaging, Goa, India found that while the engineering time spent for each project was huge, maintaining consistency in the application code over various projects was also a challenge, and thereby impacted maintainability.

Another area of concern was the high installation time. This drawback occurred due to the limitation of handling data over higher number of nodes (drives) which existed in the MODBUS communication network.

Solution

For one of their customized line solutions, Bosch Packaging, Goa, India worked with Rockwell Automation to deliver the automation system. Application experts (GOTC) from Rockwell Automation carried out detailed discussions & in-depth analyses with the aid of the efficient engineering team of Bosch Packaging. This yielded irrefutably positive results: it revealed the challenges faced in building a PDS and led to a broad definition of a system that Bosch Packaging, Goa, India wished to achieve.

KPIs of control system for PDS:

1. To engineer a configurable solution considering variability & functionality of the following:

• Main conveyor line speed & number of wrapper lines down the line
• Down stream wrapper line speeds and interruptions
• Creating a stand-by at wrapper line
• Scalability of architecture, based on line speed (VFD-based or motion-based)

2. To encapsulate application code in a template:

• Creating an application library, with section wise control, where machine builder can configure the code by using key selections
• Adopting a modular code structure, to ensure code re-usability, while addressing various custom variants
• Creating application specific function blocks (add-on instructions)

3. To ensure IP protection of application code by using different levels of protection in Studio 5000 Logix Designer®.

4. To adopt a strong communication network (Ethernet/IP) to leverage the benefits and lay the foundation for the future: Ethernet/IP is an industry standard and a popular choice across industries.

To achieve the defined objectives, Rockwell Automation proposed a solution based on:

• CompactLogix™ L3 controllers
• PowerFlex® 525 AC Drives, with an embedded Ethernet/IP port and Safe Torque-Off
• POINT I/O™ family of Distributed IOs
• Stratix® Ethernet switches

Results

Rockwell Automation application engineers worked with the Bosch Packaging Goa, India engineering team to deliver a solution which helped address the challenges enumerated by:

• Adopting an ISA-S88 based modular code, a widely accepted global standard
• Having leveraged the power of Ethernet/IP network - One network for IO, Drives & HMI
• Having enhanced diagnostics
• Reducing the installation & commissioning time and helping faster markets
• Simplifying the replacement of drive units by automatic configuration parameters from the controller with Auto Drive Recovery (ADR) functionality in PowerFlex 525 drives
• Protecting their application IP, ease of training & maintaining code consistency

Bosch Packaging, Goa, India reduced their engineering time by 50% on an average to deliver the similar projects, apart from greatly simplifying their architecture. Bosch Packaging, Goa, India is also excited as their latest solutions now help to position themselves better for the future, enabling them to deliver The Connected Enterprise®.

CompactLogix, POINT I/O, PowerFlex, Studio 5000 Logix Designer and Rockwell Automation are trademarks of Rockwell Automation Inc. Trademarks not belonging to Rockwell Automation are property of their respective companies.