The versatile character of plastics has made them the material of choice for most industries, from packaging to food and beverage, construction, building, automotive, electrical, electronics and agriculture. Despite increasing global demand, the plastics industry is facing significant challenges from rising energy costs and restricted access to raw materials. To remain productive and competitive, plastics processors need to find creative ways of saving energy, conserving resources, improving recycling levels and developing new generations of materials.
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In recent years, European plastics companies have been facing additional pressures from their international competitors. The US, for example, has gone down the route of non-conventional fuels like shale gas, while Latin America is taking the lead in bioplastics production. India is constantly increasing its plastics conversion sector to respond to a growing population and rapid industry developments.
To remain competitive, European plastics and packaging manufacturers need a fundamental shift towards more sustainable processes and materials. In other words, they need to innovate.
Make more with less energy
Efficient manufacturing means lower production costs, as well as sustainable processes and products. Industrial automation is a good way of increasing productivity and reducing energy usage in a manufacturing plant.
However, you can’t just throw technology at a process and expect it to improve. The first step towards reducing production costs is an in-depth analysis of existing systems and processes. An objective evaluation of what savings can be achieved by modernising existing systems is crucial, before deciding on what investments should be made.
Clearly, not every plastics manufacturer will be able to completely redesign their production lines and immediately replace existing equipment for state of the art industrial robots or ‘done-in-one’ manufacturing cells. However, they should be able to take the first steps towards more energy efficient operations.
Intelligent measurement technology, smart sensors, process automation and electric drives technology are just some of the industrial automation solutions that can help plastics manufacturers reduce the amount of energy they use and implicitly reduce their operating expenses.
Induction motors, for example, are at the very heart of industry, but are also responsible for using 30 per cent of the total amount of electricity generated in the world. By replacing all of the obsolete motors in a plant with IE3 (Premium Efficiency) ones, or by retrofitting variable speed drives on older, inefficient motors, companies can reduce motor energy consumption by 60 per cent.
In addition to energy savings, variable speed drives also allow an additional level of communication between the motor and the control system. This results in valuable production and maintenance data that can be used to identify where further energy savings can be made.
The smart plastics factory
If the shift to industrial automation continues, machine-to-machine communication will become a common feature of plastics manufacturing and converting facilities in the next decade. Concepts like industry 4.0, the Internet of Things and big data explore the potential of connecting equipment on the factory floor to a central control system and using production data analysis to make processes more efficient by reducing energy usage, costs and waste.
In a smart factory, intelligent sensors and encoders collect and transmit data from equipment on the factory floor. Advanced systems like SCADA and DCS monitor, diagnose and control equipment remotely and can react in real-time to any problems that might arise in the system. With the help of user-friendly human machine interfaces (HMI) and remote data access, operators can identify any potential threats, minimise downtime and optimise processes, thus reducing costs and increasing efficiency. The large amount of data generated can also be archived, stored and analysed to make further improvements to the system.
In the future, cutting-edge industrial automation solutions like robotics, big data and additive manufacturing will play an even bigger role in the plastics and packaging industry, allowing manufacturers to design flexible production and conversion lines and even simplifying the recycling process.
In the short term, the most likely solution for industry players is to upgrade existing production lines and retrofit industrial automation equipment like variable speed drives and human machine interfaces to increase the control function. This, along with sourcing obsolete industrial automation components, can help reduce costs significantly. By repurposing existing equipment,
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capital expenditure can be kept under control and operation costs can be significantly reduced.
The plastics industry is a very fertile sector for innovation in terms of new materials like bioplastics or anti-counterfeit polymers. To keep ahead of the game, European plastic manufacturers and converters should apply the same creative lens to their production facilities and see how they can take advantage of innovative industrial automation technologies and concepts like the smart factory.
Words | Darren Halford, Sales Manager, European Automation
