In 2022, a well-known Southeast Asian food company faced severe challenges: traditional packaging equipment was inefficient and difficult to meet the stringent requirements of the European and American markets for environmental certification. At the same time, frequent order fluctuations led to a surge in production line switching costs. After in-depth research, the Ply-Pack team tailored a set of upgrade solutions that integrated intelligent packaging systems and sustainable production practices, successfully promoting customers from "passive response" to "active innovation".
Breakthrough: From "people watching equipment" to "data-driven"
The company's original production line relied on manual monitoring, equipment failures were frequent, and energy consumption remained high. Ply-Pack first digitally transformed its 12 packaging lines, implanting IoT sensors and edge computing modules. By collecting equipment operation data in real time, the intelligent packaging system can automatically identify abnormal working conditions - for example, when the sealing temperature is detected to deviate from the set value by 0.5¡æ, the system will adjust the parameters autonomously within 30 seconds to avoid batch quality problems. After the transformation, the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) increased by 27% and the frequency of manual intervention decreased by 65%.
Breakthrough: Make environmental certification a competitive advantage
In response to the ISCC sustainable certification requirements that customers need to meet when exporting to the EU, Ply-Pack has designed a dual-line parallel packaging production line upgrade strategy:
.Material adaptation innovation: Develop an intelligent deviation correction device that is compatible with bio-based packaging film to solve the film jam problem caused by differences in ductility of degradable materials;
.Dynamic optimization of energy consumption: Embed energy management algorithms in the intelligent packaging system to automatically allocate equipment loads according to order priorities, reducing unit product energy consumption by 22%.
After the transformation was completed, the company not only passed the certification audit, but also successfully entered the high-end supermarket channel with the "low-carbon packaging" label, and the product premium space increased by 15%.
Expansion: A "seamless puzzle" of the global supply chain
With the surge in overseas orders, the delay in the response of customers' original supply chain has become prominent. Ply-Pack has taken three measures to clear the bottlenecks:
·Equipment and supply chain data intercommunication: Directly connect packaging equipment with the ERP system to achieve minute-level synchronization of raw material inventory and production plan;
·Modular spare parts library construction: Set up regional spare parts centers in Malaysia and Germany to ensure that the emergency repair response time does not exceed 48 hours;
·Localized process adaptation: In response to the European customers' fine requirements for packaging appearance, customized packaging equipment has added laser marking and 3D visual inspection units.
This series of actions has shortened the customer order delivery cycle by 33%, and the overseas customer complaint rate has dropped to below 0.8%.
Results: From cost center to value engine
18 months after the project was implemented, the company's packaging department has transformed from a bottleneck link that "holds back" to a core competitiveness:
· Daily production capacity has jumped from 320,000 pieces to 480,000 pieces;
· Packaging material loss rate has dropped from 6.3% to 1.8%;
· With the production data report output by the intelligent packaging system, it has successfully obtained green credit support from international banks.
Conclusion: This case confirms the core value of Ply-Pack - we not only provide equipment, but also help customers transform the packaging link into a driving force in the value chain through intelligent packaging systems and sustainable production practices. In the future, we will continue to deepen our global supply chain integration capabilities and allow more companies to experience the acceleration of the transformation of "intelligent manufacturing as a service".
