Yesterday at 3 pm, three buses suddenly stopped at the door of our workshop. The leader, Mr. Chen, grabbed my hand as soon as he got off the bus and said, "Lao Wang, take us to see the equipment that can make the packaging machine find faults by itself!" Only then did I remember that I had agreed to the inspection request of the South China Food Machinery Association last week. Seeing more than 30 colleagues pouring into the workshop, Mr. Li from our factory secretly wiped his sweat - this scene is more lively than the New Year's market.
As a veteran R&D team of domestic food packaging machines, we have long been accustomed to being "surprise inspected" by our peers. But this time, the delegation included both old engineers with 20 years of experience and young technicians wearing AR glasses, which is a rare combination. When showing the latest vertical packaging machine, Lin Gong from Shenzhen suddenly squatted down, took out a magnifying glass and looked at our transmission mechanism. Just when everyone was wondering, he stood up and patted his knees: "Is this anti-stuck material design based on the principle of aviation hydraulics? We saw a similar structure at a German exhibition last year!"
The on-site practical operation of intelligent packaging equipment is always the most eye-catching. When we started the adaptive temperature control system, the factory manager of a northern customer suddenly took out his mobile phone to record: "Can this heat sealing temperature automatic compensation function be transplanted to our existing pillow packaging machine?" This prompted five or six people to take out their notebooks at the same time. Xiao Zhang, who was in charge of the demonstration, had an idea and simply adjusted the equipment to the fault simulation mode to demonstrate on site how to predict mechanical failures through vibration sensors. Now even the members of the delegation who were originally standing in the back row squeezed in front of the operating table.
The tea break time became a temporary technical salon. Mr. Zhou from a machinery factory in Zhejiang came over with a coffee cup and asked, "How accurate is your AI visual inspection module in processing special-shaped packaging bags?" Mr. Liu from our R&D department took out a sample bag from his pocket and said, "The solution we customized for the pet food factory last week can even capture leaks at bends." This attracted several members of the inspection team who were tasting packaging samples to gather around and repeatedly observe the sample bags against the light.
During the negotiation of the production line upgrade plan, the list of requirements brought by the inspection team surprised and worried us. Mr. Ma from a group in Guangdong took the customized plan and compared it repeatedly: "Can the equipment with a production capacity of 6,000 bags per hour that we want be realized under the height limit of the existing workshop?" Mr. Yang from our equipment department immediately called up a three-dimensional simulation diagram, took the customer back and forth in the workshop, and finally found three spaces that could be transformed between two rows of old equipment.
When the inspection team left, the sky was full of stars. The secretary general of the association held our factory director's hand tightly and said, "Can we arrange a special seminar on intelligent packaging equipment next time? Many people said they didn't see enough today." On the way back to the office, I ran into the workshop director, Master Wang, who was packing up the demonstration materials. He raised the manual filled with notes in his hand and said, "These people are really hardworking. They even copied the English abbreviations on the equipment nameplate."
