Engineers, IT unite for success

If a company wants to succeed today it needs all departments to join forces to capitalize on all strengths and eliminate any weaknesses.
Just ask Rob Schlafer, director of engineering, PepsiAmericas. The second largest Pepsi bottler in the world, the company’s mission was to be the best suppler of fun food and products in the world.
“Convergence for us was supported by IT,” Schlafer said during the Manufacturing Perspectives event at Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair in Nashville, Tenn. “Our organization is designed where there is a gatekeeper between our organization and IT.”
The company also wanted to achieve greater profitability and sustainability.
“If we can utilize our technology to become more predictable, it will continue to make us more profitable,” Schlafer said.
Jim Wetzel, director, control and information systems, General Mills, agreed. His company has been at the convergence thing since 1994, only they didn’t call it convergence. They just did it.
“We adopted IS standards in 1994 and in 1996 we formed a new department and integrated IT and engineering. In 2001, engineering had a seat at the IS table.”
That meant the company was on its way to standardizing across the board.
“At General Mills we believe in the power of one. When it gets to business processes we standardize as one. The business demanded it and the technology enabled it,” he said.
Open systems were also a major part of the equation.
“Common off the shelf products helped out,” Wetzel said. “That meant all people were using the same technology. Our challenge was to educate our IT friends what mission critical meant.”

Rockwell: Convergence is the word

The goal moving forward is to squeeze as much profit out of the plant floor as possible. To do that, it will mean change and that will necessitate converging plant floor technologies and know how with IT’s expertise.
“A tough environment like this is where leaders separate from the pack,” said Keith Nosbusch, chairman and chief executive of Rockwell Automation, during his keynote address Wednesday at Automation Fair.
Rockwell’s message during this year’s Fair is all about convergence. The company feels if the plant floor and the IT department unite into a team, there will be far greater overall advantages.
“We do have an opportunity during this downside to be leaders of the pack,” said Paul McNab, vice president of enterprise and mid-market solutions marketing at Cisco, during his portion of the keynote. “Information has changed from just data to data, voice and video. This is an opportunity to not only analyze the data, but to put it in context.”
McNab went on to say the PDA, his information vehicle of choice, can do just about anything he needs to get his job done. The technology loaded onto the PDA is able to put everything in context, he said.
That is change that manufacturing can adopt, he added.
“We are going through massive unprecedented change, with regulations, globalization and virtualization. The big issue ends up being what is the threat and what is the opportunity?
He went on to say, the combining of the plant floor and IT is going to happen whether people like it or not, so it might be wise to embrace it.
“It is your choice, you can be the disrupted or the disruptor.”

Connect-and-Pack standard strives for recognition, users, followers

“If you tell the customer that the packaging machine they’re buying is ISA88 compliant, they like that, they understand that, they respect that,” said Mike Lumping to a gathering of OMAC users at 2008 Pack Expo International Tuesday.
The problem is the users would have to be from the process side of the business.
ISA88 and its newly incorporated technology the Connect-and-Pack standard (including Pack and PackTags) does not resonate as well with the packaging crowd gathered for this event in Chicago.
The ISA88 standard provides a software model for effective operations and control at the process cell and master recipe level.
Lumping is technology leader at Proctor & Gamble. He has led the PackML group for several years.
PackML is an implementation that enables Connect-and-Pack.
Connect-and-Pack standards make packaging operations more effective by simplifying customization and integration, which enables world-class packaging operations.
When implemented, packaging companies and their partners gain a competitive advantage as they leverage an integrated supply chain to optimize operations.
The OMAC Packaging Workgroup (OPW) is here at Pack Expo to spread the word and gather a following.
They have demonstrations from six different companies that highlight the ease of integrating the various packaging line functions (control, HMI, MES) when utilizing the Connect-and-Pack standards.
The companies participating with the deomonstration units include B&R Automation, Elau, GE Fanuc, Rockwell Automation, Wago, and Wonderware.
Each HMI (human machine interface) and MES (manufacturing execution systems) function in the demonstrations can communicate with every controller in the demonstrations using the PackTags specification.
All of the PackTags communication takes place over Ethernet using OPC (OLE for process control). Some of the functions implemented in this integrated demonstration include controlling the machine states and modes, tracking production and reliability (including OEE), and alarm monitoring.
The just approved ISA88 Technical Report on Machine and Unit States documenting how PackML and PackTags follow the ISA88 standard is available on the ISA standards website (www.isa.org/standards).
OMAC is Organization for Machine Automation and Control and it supports the machine automation and operational needs of manufacturing.
-- Nicholas Sheble

Move sustainability to plant floor

“Efficiency and the greening of manufacturing go hand-in-hand because they’re both about avoiding waste, stopping waste,” said Trevor Cusworth, director, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Cusworth gave a keynote at 2008 Pack Expo International in Chicago. He titled his talk “Sustainability in manufacturing: From boardroom to the break room.”
Deloitte and PMMI (Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute) have put a study together addressing the pressing issues facing the packaging industry.
Cusworth said C-level executives are very much on board with the trend toward sustainability and most see it as an opportunity and financial must. “The disconnect right now is between management and the plant floor. We need to move the culture to the operations level and get those folks on board, too.”
Deloitte uses the UN/Brundtland definition of sustainability to its analysis of sustainable manufacturing.
“Sustainability, in a general sense, is the capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely. In recent years, the concept has come to apply specifically to living organisms and systems. As applied to the human community, sustainability has been expressed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
It can be an idea, a property of living systems, a manufacturing method, or a way of life.
“Sustainability is a financial incentive, too,” Cusworth added. “Though, most of the drive is of a non financial nature now, including a company’s reputation and customer demand, we expect the incentives to become more financial in the future.”
Sustainability rests on a three-legged stool. The three pillars of the concept are economic, environmental, and social values.
Manufacturers can take three approaches to sustainability. They are:
• Do nothing, whereby one misses out on about 40% of the market that wants green
• To perform incremental gains in the area, which is to say sustainability takes place on an ad hoc basis and where it’s convenient but it’s not a corporate strategy
• To adopt a “significant gains scenario,” which ties sustainability to corporate strategy and it’s looked at first and throughout the process of manufacturing and product lifecycle
“This third strategy is much like the one that many manufacturers have been using for years as regards to safety. It’s the first and a constant concern,” Cusworth said.
Fundamentally, the consumer will get what he or she wants so education is enormous part of the sustainability process.
-- Nicholas Sheble

Sustainability or packaging madness

“Food-and-pharma producers face a tug-of-war when it comes to packaging their products,” said Betsy Cohen, vice president of sustainability at Nestle, during this morning’s keynote address at PACK EXPO 2008 International at the McCormick Center in Chicago.
“The marketing people want an exciting package that will move the consumer. The food safety people don’t want to change anything about the package that already serves its purpose and is safe and tamper proof. The corporate people want to a good margin and sales,” Cohen said.
She discussed the challenges, conflicts, and competing values packaging professionals face everyday and will deal with ever more intently in the future.
Cohen points to the data showing we can’t package and operate using the same model we presently have. World population is growing too fast and will be nine billion people in fifty years.
“We’d need three planets to support our present marketing and packaging ways,” she said, “there’s not enough water.”
Cohen’s expertise is sustainability. That means green, recyclable, recycled, nano-technological, biodegradable, even edible packaging.
Frankly, the choice on packaging rests with the consumer so education on environmentalism is paramount. “In the end, if the product doesn’t sell, we’re not in a good place,” Cohen said.
Sustainability (greening of packaging), containers & materials, upgrading operations, and brand protection (counterfeiting) are the primary concerns of the industry and the technical tracks at this enormous (1.2 million square feet) technology and exposition for 2008 Pack Expo International.
Sustainability was also the topic of Sunday’s day-one keynote by Amy Zettlemoyer-Lazar, packaging director of Sam’s Club and co-manager of the Wal-Mart Sustainability Value Network.
Wal-Mart introduced “the sustainability scorecard” in 2006. It is part of the company’s program to:
1. Be supplied by 100% renewable energy
2. Produce zero waste
3. Offer sustainable products to its customers
The tool is how Wal-Mart and its vendors, suppliers, and partners intend to improve the environmental friendliness of product packaging.
Zettlemoyer-Lazar said while it is hard to ask suppliers to innovate in research and development in these tough economic times, the global economy would eventually turn around.
“These social and environmental challenges will be here for decades,” she said. “It’s a social, economic, and environmental imperative that we continue with our efforts on the ‘scorecard.’ ”
-- Nicholas Sheble