Industry Archives - Page 4 of 8

Covid-19 Pandemic Drives Manufacturers to adopt a Digital Transformation Strategy

By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT A study done by SYSPRO, a global provider of ERP software, is telling us that the covid-19 pandemic is accelerating the need for digital transformation among manufacturers. The study is called “The Inflection Point for the Factory of the Future” and you can find the report here. The survey was completed by 144 respondents at different managerial levels across different regions: USA, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific region. It gives us an overview into how manufacturers and distributors handled the shift caused by the pandemic. These actors have seen, overtime, an increased need for collaboration, supply chain disruptions and emerging trends to keep up with. Sounds interesting! Some key finding that are particularly interesting to look at: 47% OF BUSINESSES WERE UNABLE TO FUNCTION DUE TO OPERATIONAL STAFF RELIANCE ON-PREMISE. This comes to show us how unprepared the industry professionals were for a scenario where most of the workforce would have to work remote. Well, a pandemic came, unannounced and not a lot could be done to prevent it. The global lockdowns saw the rise of remote workforce and 47% of the businesses were not ready... the…

The Two Webinars On Transformation and Digitalization of The Packaging Industry You Can’t Miss

By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT Looking back at 2020, it was a year of new discoveries, challenges a lot of new trials and testing. In the midst of a global pandemic aligned with the uncertainty that comes with it, it feels daunting to try something never done before. Nevertheless, it felt right to take this time and try to connect different people from the industry for a higher purpose! It was time to elevate the bar, to try new ways of producing content, join different experts from around the globe and bring this directly to you. November and December of 2020 were busy months where we finally decided to go ahead and organize a series of webinars part of PackIOT Talks. This cycle was merely dedicated to debate the transformation and digitalization of the Packaging Industry. Joining different stakeholders from different countries and organizations, we wanted to try something new while bringing value to you and to everyone involved. And so it was! On the 24th of November 2020, we had our first ever webinar under the theme "Technology for Operational Efficiency in Packaging". The Packaging Industry has been at a crossroads with significant pressure…

Niched x Generic Solution: Which One Fits Best Your Factory’s Digital Transformation Journey?

By Fernando Pacheco, COO at PackIOT Find the right solution that really fits your digital transformation maturity/moment is not an easy task. But being honest, it neither does have to be a nightmare. First of all, we’ve been saying this for so long: industry 4.0. innovation and digital transformation are not only about technology but also highly committed and related to the culture of a company. After overcoming this stage of the cultural challenge, you will be able to pick the right suppliers to help you solve your factory's pain points. But should you choose a niched solution or a generically one? (no matter the service you are looking for). This is a simple question to answer. Always choose the company/technology that has experience in your sector. Most of the time, niched solutions are adapted to address your needs because they were created to solve those specific problems exactly, already familiar to you and your factory. #1 How to find out if a company is able to help your packaging factory? Check out their cases: does the company have experience in your sector? Do you know their clients? How are they positioning themselves in the market? Ask…

Deploying Industrial Analytics from Scratch (by Kudzai Manditereza)

Industrial Analytics has the potential to transform how organizations identify and eliminate operational problems that often arise in manufacturing plant-floors. Problems such as lack of visibility, unplanned downtime, low quality, and management of changeovers. Moreover, industrial analytics can help detect opportunities and/or issues that may have gone unnoticed. Examples include the detection of anomalous conditions in equipment and process data. If operating your factory with the highest possible efficiency is what you yearn for, then there couldn't have been a better time than now for you to start on the path of understanding how Industrial Analytics work, and how they can help you transform the way you run operations. In a nutshell, Industrial Analytics is a solution that helps you identify wastage in your factory. Wastage in the form of production defects, over-production, unplanned downtime, non-utilization of equipment, extra processing, inventory, transportation, and so forth. And once you've identified wastage, an analytics solution gives you the power to take action in order to reduce or eliminate that wastage. This article is meant to give you a guide on how you can go about deploying an analytics solution for your manufacturing plant. Let's first take a look at how…

Free Tool Guide To Help Your Packaging Factory Reach Its Highest Potential

Digital transformation, Industry 4.0, operational efficiency, production metrics, manufacturing dashboards and packaging manufacturing are topics that have been following PackIOT for a while now. Throughout all this time we have been trying to show you how technology can play a huge part in our lives and in our manufacturing businesses, specifically. It felt right to do a compilation of the main materials we have created so far that can help you on this journey to become more digital and efficient within the packaging manufacturing world. Below you will find list of the main free resources that PackIOT has created throughout the past months: 1_Free Guide: 15 Essential KPIs and Metrics For Packaging Manufacturers Plant managers and executives often feel the information overload about the production of their factories. This is a challenge as it becomes more difficult to analyze everything and decide which metrics should be used in their businesses to create better reports and analysis. These manufacturing metrics and KPIs will help you monitor, analyze and, consequently, optimize the production processes in your factory. This will obviously contribute to the improvement of the quality and quantity of produced goods. Our free guide covers everything from production…

Does Efficiency Go Hand-in-Hand with Sustainability in Manufacturing?

By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT Sustainability is based on the idea that the activities performed should “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. On an industrial level, this basically means growing the manufacturing industry making sure that we keep the environmental, social and economic impacts at a sustainable level. On the other hand, resource efficiency means improving efficiency and effectiveness of how we use resources (materials but also land, soil, air, water, biodiversity and ecosystems). This might be using less to produce more and causing less impact from the resources we are using. Measuring the levels of sustainability and (resource) efficiency are a first step to really understand where we stand and where we have come from. Only this way can we understand progress, its speed and direction. Consequently, we will be in the right place to adopt effective management strategies. In the manufacturing world we can all agree that AI is a big impulse to sustainable development, paving the way to a more eco-friendly, less waste and energy-efficient sector. This includes diminishing the impact of the industry’s main problems such as: Excessive use of…

How AI Drives Sustainability In The Manufacturing Industry?

It starts to become clearer and clearer the connection between artificial intelligence and sustainability. AI is on its way to help the world become more sustainable and that is no different for the manufacturing industry. Necessarily, the road implies addressing the three P’s of sustainability – people, planet and profit – and how AI is influencing each one of these levels in manufacturing. The millennial workforce is becoming disruptive, increasingly aiming to adopt long-term policies that will provide a more stable and sustainable environment. This is becoming part of a growing identity. The industrial actors that put aside sustainability goals have or will have a harder time to find a future workforce or customers. This is simply explained by the fact that these agents will not invest in products or services that do not meet nor represent their values. Interestingly, we can expected a future tendency to evaluate the companies less on their profit and loss statements and more on their commitment with the three P’s of sustainability. 1_People In order for you to be able to create the workforce of the future in your own factory it is essential to do two things: capture and transfer…

MES or Production Analytics: What Is The Best Solution for My Packaging Factory?

By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT Production Analytics is not the same as Manufacturing Execution System - MES. Both are different tools with different goals. We want to help you understand and spot the main differences between these two distinct systems and hopefully help you make better decisions for your factory in the future. The goal of any manufacturing analytics application is always to increase capacity, productivity and throughput. Basically, what all this means is doing more with the same already existing resources. This is achieved by using machine and operator data through which is possible to find and eliminate bottlenecks in the manufacturing processes. In this sense, MES software might present some limitations. While it is possible to identify common functionalities between production (or manufacturing) analytics and MES they are completely different tools used for different jobs. 1_MES - Manufacturing Execution System MES is an information system that leads the execution of manufacturing operations. The goal is always to achieve and maintain high performance. To meet these goals MES is able to perform and complete a group of tasks on the factory floor that are integrated with other systems across the organization: Monitor and enforce…

My Packaging Plant Already Collects Data. And Now What? Which Questions Should Be Answered?

By Fernando Pacheco, COO at PackIOT The situation described in the title is more common than one can imagine. And if you have come this far, it is likely that you have been facing this challenge in your factory. This problem can occur in several ways (they are not mutually excluding): Your machines are already factory-sensed and deliver general data, but you don't know what to do with it. Your data is stored in the PLC, but nobody could access it in an easy way and/or does not gets insights and information from there (you don't have a front-end tool, in the end). Your plant spends a giant amount of time manually collecting data, but it does not make any decisions. you already have a powerful MES in place, which helps you on a piece of the data journey, but you can't cross these numbers with real production information (actionable data). And after that, of course, these challenges can lead to other difficult situations, usually described by plant managers as below: "I wanted to automate everything. I have the data in different places, but every time we need to put it together, a person needs to sit down,…

The 4 Advantages of Adopting SaaS vs On Premises for the Packaging Industry

By Mario Ishikawa, CTO at PackIOT The IoT revolution is here and we cannot deny it. What is incredible for manufacturing is that with the IoT adoption on the shop floor, we saw the convergence of OT - Operational Technology with IT - Information Technology, creating the Industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT. It does not mean killing what is already out there, but bringing more connectivity and use cases for so much data that can be collected on a plant. But certainly, there is an overlap. If in the past the stack PLC + SCADA or dedicated gateway was basically the only option to collect data from the process, now there are many more possibilities. And when we are not talking about critical missions, it is certainly viable to think in a system on the cloud. One thing is when you need your operator to keep the process in control using an HMI. Another thing is when you want your manager to study past data to make better maintenance decisions for a packaging line. For that case, a cloud solution, presented as a SaaS (software as a service) offering can have several advantages: 1_Converting CapEx to…

Covid-19 Pandemic Drives Manufacturers to adopt a Digital Transformation Strategy

The Two Webinars On Transformation and Digitalization of The Packaging Industry You Can’t Miss

Niched x Generic Solution: Which One Fits Best Your Factory’s Digital Transformation Journey?

Deploying Industrial Analytics from Scratch (by Kudzai Manditereza)

Free Tool Guide To Help Your Packaging Factory Reach Its Highest Potential

Does Efficiency Go Hand-in-Hand with Sustainability in Manufacturing?

How AI Drives Sustainability In The Manufacturing Industry?

MES or Production Analytics: What Is The Best Solution for My Packaging Factory?

My Packaging Plant Already Collects Data. And Now What? Which Questions Should Be Answered?

The 4 Advantages of Adopting SaaS vs On Premises for the Packaging Industry

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