Packing Line Management System for CONSTAB

Concetti, have supplied a bag filling line with integrated SCADA management system to the market leading plastic masterbatch company CONSTAB at it’s Rüthen, Germany, plant. CONSTAB is part of the Kafrit Group, a leading producer of customized compounds for the plastic industry.

Producing masterbatch is a complicated and technically demanding business characterised by a wide product range and short job runs. Great emphasis is placed on cleanliness and avoiding the smallest trace of cross contamination between products and colours. All of which presents unique challenges to manufacturers of bagging equipment.

At CONSTAB, two silos store products which gravity feed into the Concetti system. The bagging line itself comprises a gravity fed gross weigher featuring a brushless-motor driven dosing gate, the bagging machine “FFS-E” that forms fills and seals bags made from a reel of tube-stock material with corner sealing and a device to partially vacuumize the bags, and a Concetti PS-4A turnarm robot palletiser, for a capacity of approx. 300 bags/h. The palletiser can pick from two pallet sizes and place a paper sheet over the pallet. With two pallet build stations, it can also handle bags from a second, manual filling line.

Pack size is normally 25Kg and the film reel is either plain co-extruded film or aluminium foil with the CONSTAB logo only, product specific data is put on the filled bag by a print and apply label applicator. This minimises packaging costs and reduces changeover time by allowing one reel to be used for many different products.

However, the real innovation is in the supervisory management system, which Concetti designed after collaboration with CONSTAB engineering staff. The result is a powerful management tool that allows centralised control of the line, giving great flexibility while avoiding the need to repeatedly enter bagging and palletising parameters each time one of the many different products is packed, so eliminating the risk of operator set-up errors.

The Supervisory PC, with Siemens SIMATIC WinCC Flexible operating system controls the complete line communicating with the FFS and palletiser PLCs (Siemens S7 300) and other devices such as the print and apply labeller, via an Ethernet network. Data is stored in various tables using MS Access.

From the supervisory HMI, the operator can:

-View the real time status of the FFS machine and Palletiser

-View the status of the current order being packed

-View the stock position in the two storage silos (product code and level)

-Create and edit the production orders programme

-Create and edit product codes for each different product made

-Create and edit the print and apply label (product name, code and customer name, etc)

-Initiate, pause or stop the bagging line

The product code is unique for every specific product made by CONSTAB and is used to select the appropriate program on the FFS and palletiser and to identify the correct film (coextruded or aluminium) , the correct bag weight, pallet size and other parameters.

Production orders is a schedule of jobs to be progressed and the operator can enter and edit this schedule, setting the product code, the silo (one of two) total order quantity in Kg and the number of bags per pallet. On a single HMI page (see picture) the operator can view all the orders in colour-coded format. These include all new orders waiting to be produced, any partially finished incomplete orders, the current order being packed and all orders already completed that day or shift.

Each order can be either for a specific number of bags or the silo can be emptied completely. The taking of an automatic quality assurance sample, the sample frequency and timing is set for each programme. Operators have a unique ID, to identify the initiator of each production order.

Although the packing line is automatic, the operator must manually start each new order. He is responsible for ensuring the line is cleaned where necessary and all bags/pallets from any previous orders have been removed from the line. From the HMI, the operator can pause or resume an order, override the sampling parameter and take a manual sample, force an end or reset an order to the original values.

The main HMI page shows a synoptic of the complete line as well as displaying details of the current order (product code, name, batch quantity, pallet and film type, sample frequency and time, label, etc) together with alarms and status information of the FFS and palletiser enabling him to monitor the whole line easily from a single point. Various reports can be viewed and printed through the MS Access database.

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