At three o'clock in the morning at a baking factory in Hangzhou, production supervisor Lao Yang stared at the alarm prompt on the monitoring screen, and the coffee in his hand had already cooled down. The two traditional packaging lines were paralyzed again due to switching to new products, and the operator was dismantling the cream-stained conveyor belt with his bare hands. This scene repeated itself during the peak season of the Mid-Autumn Festival in previous years, until the introduction of ply-pack's multifunctional packaging machine this year, and this annual "production battle royale" was completely ended.
The company is famous for its handmade pastries, and its main products include seven forms such as iron box cookies, lava moon cakes, and sliced cakes. Every year on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, traditional packaging equipment needs to undergo up to 36 hours of disassembly and transformation to adapt to different products. In 2022, due to the delay in mold replacement, 30,000 boxes of mooncake gift boxes missed the golden sales period, with a direct loss of over one million. "It's like asking a sprinter to dance ballet in leather shoes." The metaphor of Director Liu of the Production Department reveals the sharp contradiction between rigid production lines and flexible needs.
After a field investigation, the ply-pack technical team proposed a flexible production line transformation plan. The core equipment adopts the third-generation multi-functional packaging machine, whose modular architecture decomposes the production line into 12 standard units: from the filling positioning module to the laser coding component, all are connected through a magnetic quick-connect interface. When it is necessary to process the flow-core mooncake, the robotic arm automatically replaces the anti-leakage suction cup; when switching to the cookie iron box packaging, the right-angle push rod unit and the vacuum fixture are called.
"The most shocking thing is to witness the 'transformation' of the production line with your own eyes." Quality inspector Xiao Zhou recalled the first test scene: the engineer entered "mode 07" on the touch screen, and the production line that originally processed cake slices reorganized its structure like a Transformer, and began to handle mooncake gift boxes 18 minutes later. The fast changeover technology not only reduces the switching time by 96%, but also eliminates the risk of food contamination caused by manual disassembly, and the entire process complies with the food-grade safety standards .
The changes brought about by the transformation far exceeded expectations. The purchasing department found that the modular architecture reduced the spare parts inventory by 70% - in the past, 20 special molds needed to be reserved, and now only the core module library needs to be maintained. When the customer temporarily increased the order for the starry sky quicksand mooncake, the R&D department called the existing anti-leakage module and superimposed the 3D-printed star-shaped heat sealing head to complete the production line adaptation in 48 hours.
"Now when the salesperson takes the order, he finally doesn't have to ask 'Can the equipment do it' first." The sales director pointed to the real-time data on the monitoring screen: five flexible production lines simultaneously processed seven types of products, and the minimum production batch was reduced from 5,000 boxes to 300 boxes. This flexibility allowed the company to try the "weekly throwaway" Internet celebrity product strategy for the first time, and the trial and error cost of new products that month was reduced by 82%.
Now, if you walk into the workshop of the company, you will see a scene that subverts your cognition: the interface cabin of the multi-function packaging machine contains both baking-specific modules and daily chemical packaging components for cross-border OEM. This scalability enables it to undertake high-end soap gift box OEM business in the off-season, and the equipment utilization rate has increased from 43% to 91%.
"The modular architecture does not bring machine upgrades, but the reconstruction of business logic." The company's CEO said at the year-end summary meeting. While peers are still anxious about the production line transformation for next year's Mid-Autumn Festival, their technical team has begun testing the space grain packaging module - this is a customized fast changeover technology extension project for a space food supplier.
The city of Hangzhou in the twilight is filled with the fragrance of osmanthus. Lao Yang leisurely sips Longjing tea, and the five production lines on the monitoring screen are quietly switching to tomorrow's production plan. He suddenly remembered the chaos at this time last year, as if it were a lifetime ago. Those modular interfaces shining with metallic luster, in his eyes at this moment, are clearly the master key to open the future market.
