Ipack-Ima has established itself as the most important event in the packaging industry in southern Europe, where Schubert has developed long-standing partnerships with several major producers of food, confectionery, pharmaceuticals and cosmetic products. Many Italian manufacturers are capitalising on the flexibility of modular packaging machines, which can pack a wide range of products – including croissants, ravioli and biscuits.
The Flowmodul flow-wrapping component exhibited at the Ipack-Ima exemplifies the outstanding flexibility Schubert technology offers. Manufacturers are now taking advantage of the integration of primary and secondary packaging processes with this flow-wrapping innovation. The component is fully integrated into a TLM picker line and can package both naked products and products in trays such as confectionery or snacks. Customers can benefit from a flexible, high-performance, space-efficient machine that delivers small batches, short product lifecycles and a high level of product versatility. In doing so, manufacturers can rely on a system efficiency of 99 per cent or more. The standard system component features a fully automatic change of carriers with exchangeable cassettes for further formats, thus enabling fast format changeover. Moreover, the possibility of integrating two Flowmoduls into a picker line can actually double production output.
Secure networking
In Milan, visitors to the fair will also experience the many opportunities that digital networking opens up, made possible by Schubert’s new GRIPS.world digital platform. The GRIPS.world customer portal is the comprehensive platform’s first step, where customers will soon be able to access their TLM system’s production data worldwide. In the future, the data will be used in the context of Predictive Maintenance to detect potential problems at an early stage and therefore avoid interruptions and unplanned service calls. The stated objective is that there will only be planned machine downtimes in the future. With GRIPS.world, the data sovereignty lies exclusively and entirely with the customer. Data transfer security is always guaranteed by the GS.Gate machine gateway. Developed jointly by Schubert System Elektronik GmbH and genua GmbH, a German Bundesdruckerei company.The gateway is equipped with a firewall that securely encrypts the data obtained and forwards it via the Internet to the respective analysis system or to the Cloud.
On the GRIPS.world customer portal, performance data of individual systems and even entire lines can be called up and analysed in addition to individual modules.