When Zhou Min, the quality inspection supervisor, stopped the production line for the fifth time, the workshop director looked at the skimmed milk powder scattered all over the floor, and fine beads of sweat oozed from his forehead-800,000 yuan worth of raw materials were disappearing due to frequent failures of the packaging machine. The predicament of this leading dairy company in North China has undergone a dramatic change after the introduction of ply-pack's flexible packaging production line.
Equipment brain replacement: intelligent deviation correction system is put into operation
When the original packaging line produces whipped cream powder, materials always hang on the wall during the filling process. The technical team disassembled and found that the mechanical vibration of the traditional weighing module caused uneven distribution of powder. Ply-pack engineers replaced the core component with a suspended metering bin, and the built-in 32 sets of pressure sensors captured weight deviations of more than 0.5 grams in real time. When the AI vision system identifies material accumulation, the double screw feeder will automatically adjust the inclination within 0.03 seconds, just like installing a dynamic balancer on the equipment.
Sealing Revolution: From Physical Isolation to Dynamic Protection
During the trial operation stage, the quality inspector found that the 400-mesh whey protein powder still had a trace of leakage. The project team transformed the sealing structure overnight, upgrading the single-layer silicone pad to a triple composite system: the memory metal frame is responsible for rigid support, the nano-coated isolation net intercepts ultrafine particles, and the outermost positive pressure air curtain forms a dynamic barrier. This combination solution reduces the dust escape of the equipment by 97.6% compared with before the transformation after 72 hours of continuous operation.
Flexible Magic: The conversion time is compressed to 8 minutes
What amazes the workshop staff most is the agility of the equipment in dealing with multi-category production. In the past, it took 4 hours to switch the whole milk powder and probiotic powder production lines. Now the operator Wang Lei touches the HMI interface, the robot arm automatically replaces the mold component, and the parameter template takes effect synchronously in the cloud. The modular design of the flexible packaging production line allows 25kg large-package industrial raw materials and 300g infant formula milk powder to share the same production line, and the time required for conversion is sharply reduced from the industry average of 45 minutes to 8 minutes.
Capacity fission: a leap from stop loss to value-added
Three months after the implementation of the project, the company's average monthly milk powder packaging volume exceeded 450 tons, and the product complaint rate dropped to 0.3 per 10,000. More importantly, the production capacity space released by the flexible production line enabled it to successfully undertake OEM orders from an international brand. At the year-end strategic meeting, the group's production director defined this system as the "Industry 4.0 model for dairy packaging" and planned to fully replicate the model in the newly built smart factory.
