As the 21^st century progresses and consumer tastes grow more sophisticated, the confluence of form and function seems more important than ever. Matching this elevated demand for aesthetics and usefulness is a new generation of software capable of conceiving and refining previously unattainable parts and products.

For example, at Sidel, a leading global provider of PET liquid packaging, “Bottle design is such an important factor in the commercial success of a product” that the company “collaborates with beverage manufacturers and provides the tools they need to create engaging, yet functional and sustainable packages,” says Vincent LeGuen, vice president of packaging. Some prime examples of Sidel’s packaging innovations are the Sidel Rightweight for water and the StarLite PET bottle-base designs for water and soft-drink applications.

“Sidel also created the first-ever pasteurizable lightweight PET bottle for beer,” says LeGuen. “This innovative bottle utilizes a non-petaloid base common among glass beer bottles, so that the bottle still resembles a traditional glass beer bottle easily recognizable by consumers, yet weighs only 28 grams—up to 86% less than an average equivalent glass bottle. It withstands the pressure of pasteurization, and is more sustainable,” he adds.

One key to creating such innovations is the process behind the package. “The characteristics of PET offer many design possibilities,” LeGuen explains. “Through Sidel’s advanced structural design capabilities and predictive simulation, packaging design can be modeled and submitted to virtual testing in order to predict design evolution according to end users’ needs—bottle handling, storage, attractive design matching with beverage attributes—and industrial specifications.”

Ultimately, LeGuen advises, “to create successful, functional, and convenient packaging designs, companies first need to understand consumers, their ever-changing needs, and the implications of these changing needs for manufacturers.”

Global Tastes

As global demographics shift, LeGuen says, “many popular, well-established brands from Europe and the United States are becoming an increasingly common sight in developing countries. However, countries are also becoming more racially and culturally diverse, and many consumers are looking for products customized to fit their specific tastes, cultures, and traditions.

“Despite these differences, consumers have similar expectations in terms of packaging, wanting it to be appealing, informative, and easily identifiable,” he adds. “They expect packaging to protect the quality and the integrity of its contents, conserving the freshness and taste of the beverages for as long as possible.”

Consumers also expect packaging “to suit their changing lifestyles,” Le Guen continues. “Smaller, individual formats are better suited to the lifestyles of today’s more mobile population, while larger multi-pack formats are ideal for the consumption habits of today’s larger families. As a result, beverage producers must increase the number of formats provided to satisfy these consumer needs”—and introduce new designs and products quickly and efficiently.

“Virtual Molding” Responds to Design Challenges

At Sigma Plastic Services in Schaumburg, Illinois, USA, the company’s Sigmasoft Virtual Molding is not just a plastic design software, but a mold and process-optimization software as well, the company says.

“We’ve made improvements to elastomer and powder injection molding material models, which allow our customers to understand specific molding quality issues,” says vice president Matt Proske. “These advanced developments were stimulated both by increased growth in these markets as well as the need to make it possible for certain products to be manufactured.”

Sigmasoft software “is capable of part-design review but is really implemented during the tooling design phase of a program to ensure a high-performance mold and a robust process,” Proske explains. “It is common for injection molders to run multiple molding trials and modify the mold several times prior to obtaining acceptance on part quality and process. Sigmasoft Virtual Molding moves the molding
trials from the physical injection molding machine into the computer, where trials are performed virtually.”

Simultaneous mold and process optimization reduces or eliminates physical trials and fits into the mold design phase, so it doesn’t add time to the design and development process, he adds.

How well is Sigmasoft working? “We had a phone call with a new customer last week,” Proske recounts, “and during the conversation, the lead engineer mentioned he had just sent a thank you letter to the VP who had signed off on the purchase. The letter included the following statement: ‘Please refer to the attached quality report from the first mold trial last week. We have never achieved this high degree of success in my 15 years of molding. No tooling adjustments were needed.’”

Numerical Simulation for Extrusion

France’s Sciences Computers Consultants has commercialized software for extrusion and industrial mixing processes, says the company’s Laurent Ratte. The software is aimed at anticipating material behavior evolution during those processes. The company’s Ludovic software is for co-rotating twin screws, while XimeX tackles mixing issues with a unique particle-tracking method.

The Ludovic software is geared to compounding and masterbatch or pharmaceutical production and formulation. It “is a very fast solution for analyzing materials/product evolution trends; we run simulation in a few seconds and perform experiments in a few minutes,” claims Ratte. “It really helps for feeling the material sensitivity—when testing a new formulation, for example. It avoids doing the first, sometimes bad, combination on an industrial machine.”

The latest version includes a model to predict the length of glass fibers during extrusion. Twin-screw extrusion is a continuous process that’s used more and more, Ratte explains, but it can break glass fibers. “With this new model, it is possible to check the size of glass fibers in each screw element and see the global distribution of the fiber size during the process.”

With Ludovic, “we tackle scale-up and the screw-design issues. It is also used for defining the best processing window for a product, in order to optimize the throughput on a given machine.”

Generally speaking, “our successes are linked to the time savings,” Ratte stresses. For example, in starting a production line of polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) for compounding, “the goal was to find an adapted window of processability, taking into account machine characteristics—maximum torque, engine power, and free volume—and the PBT’s limits—temperature and shear. This target was achieved in a few hours by performing hundreds of computations. 

“The process included 15 minutes for data setup in Ludovic, 30 minutes for designing experiments, [and] 300 computations and two hours for analyzing the data and optimizing the process conditions and screw design.” 

By comparison, he says, it would have taken at least two days for testing two screw designs on a real machine, with about four hours for cleaning the machine and changing the screw, and at least two days for performing the trials with measurements and samples. Characterization of the samples would have taken still more time.

Process Monitoring

According to IQMS—which has been offering process monitoring software since 1993—the “Internet of Things” revolution is changing the manufacturing industry. Workflow design is as critical to success as product design.

“It is almost like the Internet of Things was designed for the manufacturing environment,” says Glenn Nowak, vice president of sales for the California-based company. “The ability to connect everything imaginable to a network so that information can be quickly and easily shared with everything else is resulting in a vast collection of data that can be analyzed, communicated, and acted upon.”

In the manufacturing environment, he adds, this “has allowed IQMS to refine the process-monitoring module to deliver even greater benefits. IQMS’s RealTime Process Monitoring solution is a two-way communication system that operates using IP-based connectivity. Through sensors, programmable logic controllers, and PC-based controllers that talk with your robots, work centers, and high-value equipment,” the system “exchanges information, controls parameters, and monitors production in real time.”

After collecting critical production details from an array of different devices, Nowak says, Process Monitoring then sends the data to the ERP system for thorough analysis in a Statistical Process Control (SPC) module or through user-defined graphs, gages, and reports. IQMS’s Process Monitoring is also available via mobile devices, delivering shop-floor information “right to your fingertips” for faster response times.

While the manufacturing industry has grown more optimistic of late, there’s still some hesitation in adding floor space, equipment, or personnel to expand capacity. IQMS software aims to tackle this hurdle of increasing capacity in many ways, “but we have found that process monitoring has the greatest return on investment,” says Nowak. He says the benefits of process monitoring include the ability to:

• collect every important variable that relates to production: temperature, pressure, dimensions, weight, thickness, fill rate, and more;
• auto-populate that collected data into a SPC module for accurate analysis and improved decision-making;
• track whether a job is running too fast or too slow;
• catch and respond to rejects and parts trending out of specification as they occur—not hours after receiving a production report;
• increase accountability throughout the organization; and
• better track unscheduled downtime, employee labor, parts produced, and more, as they occur.

“The bottom line is that you can’t hide from real-time process monitoring,” Nowak says. “It always exposes the truth about what is actually happening on your shop floor.”

For example, Nowak says Tessy Plastics recently implemented the IQMS Process Monitoring module at its facility in Lynchburg, Viginia, USA. “They created custom podiums for each work center that hold tablets displaying the IQMS software. These intelligence centers have allowed Tessy Plastics to go completely paperless because operators can remotely access up-to-date work orders and documents—including revisions and changes—right from their machines.”

Before Process Monitoring, he says Tessy Plastics had to manually measure parts at the end of every shift and enter all the data by hand. With the module, Tessy has improved quality control from automatically tracking and measuring parameters such as fill pressure, fill time, back pressure, cycle time, and injection pressure.

After implementing the module, “Tessy has experienced reduced labor requirements, reduced scrap, higher-quality parts, and a reduction in machine downtime,” Nowak reports. “Return on investment for this initiative was 166% in the first year, with savings growing incrementally each year as the program continues to expand.”