Walking into the packaging workshop of a leisure food company in Zhejiang Province, Manager Zhang, the production line supervisor, was staring at three bag-feeding packaging machines running side by side and worried. "There are 8 specifications of packaging requirements for peak season orders, and it takes 2 hours for the equipment to change the model once, and the workers can't catch up with the delivery date even if they work non-stop." He recalled. This dilemma ushered in a turnaround in early 2023-the company introduced a flexible production solution based on the intelligent bag-feeding packaging machine, upgrading the traditional production line to an intelligent system that can flexibly respond to small batches and multi-specification orders.
The company focuses on nuts and puffed foods, and the proportion of customized orders from e-commerce has increased year by year. The original packaging equipment used fixed molds. Each time the bag type was switched, 12 sets of bolts had to be removed and 6 parameters had to be calibrated, which took more than 2 hours and the labor cost was nearly 2,000 yuan per time. During the peak production season, frequent mold changes resulted in an average monthly capacity loss of 15%, and a surge in customer complaints. "It's like 'embroidering' on an assembly line. The more anxious you are, the more chaotic it becomes." Manager Zhang said frankly.
In March 2023, the company introduced an intelligent bag-feeding packaging machine equipped with a modular mold system. The technical team completed the equipment transformation in just 3 days:
· Plug-and-play mold set: With magnetic positioning and standardized interface, operator Xiao Li demonstrated that he only used a hexagonal wrench to switch from 500g large bags to 80g small bags in 8 minutes;
· Intelligent parameter memory: The mold has a built-in RFID chip, and the equipment automatically loads parameters such as sealing temperature and filling speed after reading, and the debugging error is compressed from ±5% to ±0.3%;
· Supply chain collaboration module: The inventory of packaging consumables is synchronized to the supplier system in real time, and the packaging material arrival cycle is shortened from 7 days to 48 hours.
After the upgrade, the company's single production line can be compatible with 12 bag types, the changeover efficiency is increased by 80%, and the average monthly production capacity loss is reduced to less than 3%. More surprisingly, the modular mold system reduces the spare parts inventory by 60% - originally 30 sets of molds were required, and now only 8 sets of core components are needed to combine 20 bag types. "During the Double Eleven period, we processed 5 Internet celebrity customized packaging on one line, and the customer repurchase rate increased by 18%." Manager Zhang pointed to the real-time data on the electronic screen in the workshop and said.
At present, the company is deeply connecting the intelligent bag-feeding packaging machine with the ERP system, and plans to optimize the packaging material design through the energy consumption analysis module. The technology supplier revealed that the new generation of systems will also support 3D printing rapid mold making. Customers can get customized molds within 72 hours after uploading the design drawings, further shortening the new product launch cycle.
