Mr. Li from a nut processing factory in Guangdong brought a technical team to the factory for inspection, and the multifunctional packaging machine that was being tested in the workshop instantly became the focus. Watching the equipment smoothly process the metal cover packaging of canned cashews, and then seamlessly switch to the shrink film packaging of mixed nuts in plastic boxes, Mr. Li's eyes lit up: "Our factory now has seven lines for seven types of packaging. If we can switch to this machine, we can save more than half of the site and labor!"
This sounds familiar. This year, more than one customer has mentioned similar needs. Today's production lines are increasingly paying attention to "flexible production", especially in industries with a wide range of categories such as food and daily chemicals. Traditional single-function packaging machines are indeed a bit powerless. Take a spicy snack company we cooperated with last month as an example. They have both bagged bulk products, boxed gift boxes, and creative snack boxes for packaging special-shaped materials. The packaging line alone occupies half of the workshop. After our engineers moved in with the multifunctional packaging machine, they merged the three lines into one through the rapid mold change system and modular design. Now their workshop director always says to everyone: "This machine is like a Transformer. It can be put into use after changing its 'skin'."
Speaking of packaging special-shaped materials, it has been a tough nut for our R&D team for three years. Last year, a customer in Zhejiang wanted to package zongzi gift boxes. The conical products wrapped in zongzi leaves always "somersaulted" on the conveyor belt, and ordinary packaging machines could not hold them steadily. We added an adaptive robotic arm to the multifunctional packaging machine, and with the visual positioning system, now even octagonal spice bags and gift bags with handles can be steadily caught. Lao Liu in the workshop likes to joke about this: "This machine is smarter than new employees. No matter how tricky the packaging shape is, it can remember it after teaching it once."
The core of flexible production is not only strong compatibility, but also "fast". In the past, customers were most bothered by the half-day downtime required for production changeovers. Now, our rapid mold change system can achieve "changing lines in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee." Last week, I went to Yunnan to see a coffee bean packaging project. The customer demonstrated the full process switch from 500-gram bags to 1-kilogram cans on site. The mold change and parameter debugging took less than 20 minutes. Their production supervisor pointed to the memory bank on the touch screen and nodded: "128 preset parameters, all our niche packaging needs are stored in it."
Intelligent integration is also a point that customers pay more and more attention to. The multifunctional packaging line delivered to a pharmaceutical company last month is a typical example. The equipment can not only automatically identify the size of the drug plate, but also interact with the upstream cartoning machine and the downstream inkjet printer in real time. The customer's technical director specially tested the emergency stop and restart function during acceptance: "After the assembly line suddenly loses power and then restarts, all equipment can automatically synchronize to the breakpoint state. This is true intelligence."
Recently, colleagues in the marketing department reported that the needs of cross-border e-commerce customers are becoming more and more diverse. There is a customer who makes holiday gifts. The same batch of goods needs to be packaged in both Christmas-themed special-shaped materials and conventional e-commerce paper boxes. We adjusted the plan overnight and added a dual-channel feeding system to the multifunctional packaging machine. Now their production line can handle both iron box chocolates and paper box biscuits. On the day of customer acceptance, the scene of two kinds of packaging coming off the line at the same time in the workshop was like a magic trick.
Standing on the second floor of the assembly workshop and looking down, more than a dozen multifunctional packaging machines waiting to be shipped are undergoing final debugging. Xiao Zhang, who is in charge of quality inspection, said honestly: "In the early years, customers asked 'how many pieces can be packed at the fastest' when buying equipment. Now eight out of ten will ask 'how many kinds can be packed at most'." This is true. A few days ago, customers from Northeast China came to discuss the transformation of the pet food production line, saying that they had to handle both square freeze-dried boxes and cylindrical sausage packaging.
At present, the trend of "small batches and multiple batches" in the industry is becoming more and more obvious, and our R&D team is thinking about new tricks - I heard that some customers want to realize the whole process of folding, filling and sealing packaging boxes on the same equipment, and several engineers have been soaking in the laboratory for two weeks. If this system is really developed, our multifunctional packaging machine will refresh the industry's perception!
