Lead speaker at the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute’s annual meeting, ELAU NA president Christopher Zei gave leaders of North America’s top packaging machine builders a road map to add value and reduce costs by adopting a systematic and modular approach to mechatronic engineering.

The numerous benefits are shared by OEMs and their customers alike and include reductions in engineering and testing time, better protection of intellectual property, faster delivery, smaller footprints, new profit centers and lower ongoing software maintenance costs.

PMMI has embarked on a multifaceted campaign to proactively support its member companies in the increasingly competitive world marketplace. PMMI leaders invited ELAU to brief its members on technology trends based on the company’s demonstrated abilities and global presence.

A sampling of Zei’s recommendations:

• OEMs should attack indirect costs, not only direct material and labor costs, to achieve ‘generational change’

• Don’t let control specifications turn OEMs into systems integrators, stifling innovation

• Look forward to new, distributed automation technology to shrink massive electrical cabinets – what Zei terms the Virtually Zero Cabinet initiative™

• Exploit newer technologies that are purpose-built for packaging to gain competitive advantages – as examples, Zei cited several new secondary packaging machines leveraging embedded robotics

• Embrace modular, reusable, pre-tested, standards-based control software architectures to reduce time-to-market, engineering & testing costs, and customers’ Total Cost of Ownership

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