Stefan Aumann is responsible for engineering and new production systems as the Senior Segment Engineer in the European sector of Masterfoods. Stefan Kohl handles planning and operation of packaging systems in the plant at Verden an der Aller, Germany.

What strategies do you have for equipping future packaging systems?

Stefan Aumann: Flexibility of production is foremost for sure. And that requires modular machine concepts….Modularity also ensures a much higher degree of reusability compared with conventional machine manufacture.
Stefan Kohl: We are also putting increased efforts into automatic…motor-driven adjustment of format changes. Another aspect also plays a significant role here: Program controlled changeover procedures can be more consistently reproduced.

What attributes factor into your procurement of packaging machinery?

Stefan Aumann: Mainly cycle times…and whether the machine conforms with the basics of modular machine design. When procuring new equipment, modularity is a real focal point. Conformance with PackML as defined by the OMAC Packaging Guidelines is also an aspect, because the standardization helps us. And we consider short setup times to be of great importance, of course.

What benchmarks are defined?

Stefan Kohl: We give the machine manufacturer very precise times…when changing products with the machines. This also includes…the degree of manual intervention required for changing the machine from one product to another.

Is there already a wide range of modular machines available?

Stefan Aumann: Unfortunately not to the extent that we'd like. We are confident, however, that the range will increase in the future. We demand it from our suppliers anyway.

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