Pro Mach

How well do you know Pro Mach? If you use packaging equipment in your business, you probably have some machinery from one of the Pro Mach companies, you might also use labels from ID Technology. Pro Mach is one of the fastest growing companies in the packaging industry.

While the Pro Mach brands include some of the top names in the industry, there is more to our business than individual pieces of equipment.

Pro Mach Integrated Solutions is our team for putting together packaging line projects, from integrating one or more machines to building complete lines. With access to the complete portfolio of Pro Mach products as well as third-party equipment as needed, Integrated Systems has the expertise and experience to handle just about every packaging project.

In most packaging lines, the core piece of equipment is the filler. That is why Integrated Solutions is part of Pro Mach’s Global Filler and Integrated Solutions business group. This team includes some of the leading brands in the packaging equipment industry such as Federal, Zalkin and Matrix.

Our Integrated Solutions team can handle just about any size project, from complete new processing and packaging plants to upgrades of packaging lines.

Do you need to add capacity and technology to your pharmaceutical packaging operations? With NJM Packaging joining the Pro Mach family, we have hugely increased capability in that market as well.

With over 100 years of packaging experience, NJM brings a new level of expertise to our team.

Common  Controls

Pro Mach has standardized on PackML for packaging machine controls, whenever possible. This means that the equipment on your line will have similar controls, making for a unified look and feel which can reduce training time and costs.

ProTech Remote Solutions

Packaging lines built by Pro Mach incorporate ProTech, Pro Mach’s portfolio of remote service and monitoring solutions. The ProTech suite saves money by alerting you to any problems that might need addressing, keeping track of the overall efficiency (OEE) of each piece of equipment as well as the complete line and also allowing remote service access, saving both the time and expense of on-site service visits.

Concerned about security? Don’t be – ProTech is designed from the ground up to be secure and to isolate the packaging equipment from your network.

Zipz Wine Packaging Line

Our recently installed packaging line for Zipz single-serve wine glasses is a great example of how Pro Mach Integrated Solutions can utilize the products and skills from within Pro Mach as well as leverage our relationships with other equipment and controls OEMs. This job was to package wine in a very unstable and difficult to handle package – see this short video:

When it is time to look at new packaging capability or to enhance existing operations, be sure to check out what Pro Mach Integrated Solutions can do for you. Contact me today – 603.845.9375 or  at dholliday@idtechnology.com. I can connect you with the best resources to help

You can read more about the ProTech remote solution by downloading the ProTech white paper. To hear a podcast from Pro Mach President and CEO Mark Anderson discussing Pro Mach’s remote solution, click the play button below:

Part of the ProTech solution is Customer Portal which keeps track of packaging operations in real-time. The data can be viewed on a computer as well as using our mobile application for smartphones and tablets.

The mobile portal provides real-time OEE data from just about anywhere via a secure web connection. Data and reports can be exported in standard formats and can be scheduled you automatic delivery.

Other highlights include:

Remote Service – if you are looking to improve the OEE of your packaging equipment, minimizing downtime is of crucial importance.

ProTech Remote Service is designed allow rapid troubleshooting and fixing of issues that might arise with your packaging machines. Many issues can be resolved on-line, but if a service technician needs to be dispatched, Remote Service ensures that the technician knows just what has to be done and has the right parts and tools ready. A big saver of time and money for a modest monthly fee.

Pneumatic Monitoring – with many packaging machines relying on pneumatic systems, the health of these is important to everything running correctly.

The ProTech Pneumatic Monitoring solution lets you know when components are getting close to their break points, allow for preventive maintenance, rather than costly and downtime creating emergency repairs.

ProTech Security – with any cloud based solution, security is of the utmost importance. ProTech by Pro Mach ensures the best possible security by isolating packaging equipment and our customer’s network form each other and from the Internet.

Want to learn more about how ProTech by Pro Mach can help improve your packaging operations? Just head on over to the ProTech pages on the Pro Mach website.

Introduction to OEE

Over the years there have been many methods used for measuring the efficiency of packaging equipment and complete packaging lines. Let’s face it, everyone wants to improve their processes and see where improvements can be made, but it isn’t always clear where to start.

This is where the concept of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) comes into play. OEE is a systematic method of measuring the effectiveness of both individual packaging machines and complete lines.

OEE is by no means a new idea. It was introduced way back in the 1960’s as a means of determining how effectively a manufacturing process was being utilized. At ID Technology, our labeling, coding and marking systems are important parts of our customer’s packaging lines and we find that OEE is coming up in conversations more and more frequently.

OEE uses defined measurable factors to calculate the efficiency of the packaging (and a lot other processes too) process. In a perfect world, there would be zero unplanned downtime, equipment would happily run forever at maximum speed (using perfect packaging materials of course!) and it would be unknown for us to every produce product with even a hint of a defect.

Since we have to make do with operating in the real world, the OEE concept gives us an advantage when it comes to managing and improving our packaging processes.

In putting together this introduction to OEE, I’m hugely in debt to the great oee.com website which provided a lot of the ideas and data. That site is a super OEE resource and I encourage everyone with an interest in the topic to check it out.

OEE Factors

One of the key features of the OEE concept is its simplicity.  OEE is calculated using just three key factors, Availability, Performance and Quality:

Planned Production Time

This is the starting point for OEE. It is the total time available for production and does not include any planned downtime, such as breaks or PMs. The role of OEE is to help eliminate any factors that stop or reduce planned production. These factors are generally referred to as “losses” and include Downtime Loss, Speed Loss and Quality Loss.

Availability

Availability takes Downtime Loss in account. Downtime Loss includes all the issues that cause the equipment to stop for a measurable amount of time. This can include many items such as:

• Equipment breakdown
• Changeovers
• Lack of materials

Operating Time is the remaining time after the Downtime Loss has been removed from Planned Production Time.

Availability is defined as the ratio of Operating Time to Planned Production Time.

Performance

The Performance factor takes Speed Loss into account. This includes factors that cause the equipment to run at less than i’s maximum speed.

Examples of Speed Loss factors include:

• Low quality packaging materials
• Poor equipment condition
• Operator problems

After taking Speed Loss into account, what remains is Net Operating Time

Performance is defined as the ratio of Net Operating Time to Operating Time.

Quality

Quality takes into account Quality Loss. This accounts for items produced that fail to meet the required standard, including items that have to be reworked.

After taking Quality Loss into account, the remaining time is Fully Productive Time

Quality is the ratio of Fully Productive Time to Net Operating Time. dividing the number of good products by the total number of products gives the same ration and might be easier to calculate.

Calculating OEE

To calculate the OEE over a period of time is actually quite simple:

OEE = Availability x Performance x Quality

Let’s take a look at calculating OEE for a sample shift:

 

Planned Production Time	= Total Time – Breaks
	= 410 minutes
Operating Time	= Planned Production Time – Downtime
	= 380 minutes
Good Items	= Total Items – Rejects
	= 30395 – 1232
	= 29163
Availability	= Operating Time/Planned Production Time
	= 380/410
	= 0.927
Performance	= (Total Pieces/Operating Time)/Machine Run Rate
	= (30395/380)/100
	= 0.8
Quality	= Good Items/Total Items
	= 29163/30395
	= 0.96
OEE	= Availability x Performance x Quality
	= 0.927 x 0.8 x 0.96
	= 0.712 (71.2%)

If my process was working with complete effectiveness, the OEE would be 100 – mine is closer to 70% and I can see that working on my machine’s Availability (why was there 30 minutes of unplanned downtime?) and Performance (clearly my machine was running at less than its optimum run rate during the shift)

By calculating OEE for equipment and lines over a period of time, areas of reduced effectiveness are highlighted so that improvements can be made. If you are just starting to implement OEE, a good place to start is with the piece of equipment that is the bottleneck on your line. What shows up as the factor that reduces the OEE the most? What can you change to improve it?

ProMach Performance Services – ZPI

While the OEE factors can be calculated manually, this is also a process that can be automated. Here at ProMach we have developed ZPI, a data collection and analysis solution for ProMach (and other) packaging equipment brands that allows a lot of production and equipment and production data to be captured in real-time from just about anywhere.

This solution automatically captures the OEE factor data and calculates, displays and saves OEE results. This is a great solution for businesses operating in a lean manufacturing environment, providing actionable data to enable continuous improvement to packaging processes. OEE can be a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) in a continuous improvement system.

 

ID Technology, along with the other ProMach companies, is dedicated to working with our customers to ensure their packaging processes run as efficiently as possible

Want to get started with improving your packaging processes? Call ID Technology  toll free at: 888-438-3242 Option#3 or you can contact me directly at dholliday@idtechnology.com We’ll get you in touch with one of our ID Technology or ProMach Performance specialists, right in your area.