In the workshop at six in the morning, the hum of mechanical operation has long replaced the hustle and bustle of the city. In the core assembly area of the ply-pack packaging machine factory, commissioning engineer Zhao Wei is bending over to calibrate an intelligent packaging production line that is about to be delivered. The laser locator in his hand projects a fine red light on the metal guide rail, "The error must be controlled within 0.03 mm, but the customer wants to use it to encapsulate precision electronic components." Such a scene is a microcosm of the technical battle that this packaging machine factory performs every day.
As the first packaging machine factory in China to achieve flexible production, ply-pack has ushered in a critical stage of intelligent transformation this year. Production Director Li Ming revealed that the factory recently reorganized the traditional assembly process into modular operation units, and the assembly time of each intelligent packaging production line was shortened by 18%. "It's like installing a thinking neural network on the robot arm," said Wang Fang, the assembly team leader who is operating the collaborative robot. Behind her, six packaging robot arms equipped with visual recognition systems are being debugged synchronously, and the sensor indicator lights weave a sea of stars in the dim workshop.
Behind this technological breakthrough is the "dual-track training system" unique to the packaging machine factory. During the lunch break every Wednesday, the old masters in the machining workshop will sit around the CNC machine tools with young technicians. Master Zhang, a 57-year-old fitter, gestured with his calloused fingers: "The positioning pin design of this intelligent packaging production line is the improvement plan we discussed at the canteen table last year." Today, this adaptive positioning system born through employee collaboration has been successfully applied to customized packaging equipment in six major industries such as food and medicine.
When Suharto, a customer representative from Southeast Asia, visited the factory last month, he deliberately used his mobile phone to record the working scene of the quality inspectors. "The way they test the sealing of packaging machines is very special - using a stethoscope to identify the sound of airflow when running at high speed." This experience and wisdom from old technicians is a wonderful complement to the Internet of Things monitoring system on the smart packaging production line. It is with this unique model of "human-machine integration" that the ply-pack packaging machine factory has maintained an annual growth rate of 23% in the highly competitive packaging machinery market.
As dusk deepens, the lights in the R&D center are still bright. The engineering team is testing the prototype of a new generation of environmentally friendly packaging machines. This equipment, which integrates biodegradable material processing technology, is expected to be put into mass production next spring. "We want every device to be warm when it leaves the factory," said General Manager Chen Li, standing in a corridor full of patent certificates. Outside the window, the last logistics truck loaded with packaging machinery is slowly driving towards the port. The ply-pack logo on the rear of the car is glowing under the street lights, like a beacon in the dark night, guiding the future direction of smart manufacturing.
