In the workshop of a snack processing factory in Qujing, Yunnan, the aroma of walnuts and macadamia nuts permeates. The robotic arm at the end of the assembly line lightly grabs the finished box, and the infrared sensor weaves a fine detection network between the boxes. The green numbers jumping on the electronic signboard are fixed at "daily production capacity 103%" - this is the answer sheet handed in by the company three months after the introduction of the ply-pack snack packaging machine.
In late autumn last year, this company, which mainly engages in deep processing of plateau nuts, was struggling with production capacity bottlenecks. General Manager Yang Haibo recalled the scene at that time: "The manual packaging line can process up to 800 bags per hour. When there are peak season orders, the workshop is full of semi-finished boxes, and the workers have difficulty even turning around." Traditional equipment is not only inefficient, but also has problems such as sealing wrinkles and gram weight deviation, which make quality inspectors exhausted.
The turning point came at the first contact with the ply-pack technical team. Engineers brought the third-generation intelligent snack packaging machine into the workshop and customized and developed a flexible vibration plate and dynamic weighing compensation module for pain points such as brittle walnut kernels and irregular macadamia nuts. Technical supervisor Wang Gong pointed to the running equipment and explained: "The AI vision system of this snack packaging machine can automatically identify 128 abnormal forms, just like installing a never-tired "quality inspector" on the production line."
The most thrilling part of the transformation process occurred during the debugging stage of the heat sealing system. Traditional octagonal packaging bags frequently wrinkled during high-speed sealing. The engineering team stayed in the workshop for 48 hours in a row, and finally solved the problem with ±0.5¡æ temperature control accuracy and air pressure compensation device. Nowadays, the correction sensor with cold light on the stainless steel machine can correct the film material deviation of 0.2 mm in real time, and the sealing strength is stable at more than 8N/15mm.
Li Wei, the production supervisor, is most impressed by the changes brought about by the automated packaging equipment: "In the past, 12 workers were needed to watch the assembly line during the night shift, but now only 3 people can complete the whole process monitoring." He touched the control screen to call up the real-time data. The AI system was analyzing 2,000 sets of packaging samples for the day, and batches with a weight error of more than 1% had been automatically isolated.
Intelligent transformation brings more than just efficiency improvement. Quality inspector Xiao Liu opened the latest report: "The packaging damage rate dropped from 2.3% to 0.5%, and the customer complaint rate dropped by 82% year-on-year." What surprised the management even more was that the new equipment reduced the unit energy consumption by 18%, which allowed their organic walnut kernels to obtain a 15% premium space on the cross-border e-commerce platform.
Standing in the warehouse aisle, Yang Haibo pointed to the neatly stacked boxes and looked into the future: "We plan to transform the nitrogen-filled packaging line for green plum products into intelligent ones." The workshop was brightly lit in the twilight, and the sound of the robotic arms and the low hum of the conveyor belts intertwined into a song, as if telling a new chapter in the intelligent manufacturing of plateau food.
