Page 47 - Packaging News magazine July-August 2022

July – August 2022 | www.packagingnews.com.au
| SMART FACTORY 47
Hart lists the following scenarios where small process deviations could derail automation:
• Factory lighting may not be optimal
for machine vision equipment to perform its deemed task. The light- ing may change over the course of the day, creating a variance in performance;
• Printing on packaging may vary between print batches;
• Print may vary between product types;
• Print quality may change due to temperature variants; and
• Product colours may span a wide palette – from dark to light shades. These variants are often too slight
for the naked eye to notice. It isn’t until trained professionals run tests that production anomalies come to the fore, and solutions can be customised from there.
“We pride ourselves on working from factual content – we’d rather let the data tell us what needs to be tweaked for automation success, than work off our own assumptions,” Hart said.
TRUST FOR PROJECT SUCCESS
Hart believes that world-class factory automation is a multi-dimensional process, and that trust and confidence play a significant role.
“First, the customer must feel con- fident about trusting the deployed team. Then, the deployed ASC team leader must have the confidence in their ability to make project-positive decisions – this is crucial, because it is common for on-site challenges to crop up,” he continues.
Indecision and inexperience can result in lost time, lost production, and worst of all, a loss of trust in
MAIN: The ASC stand at AUSPACK 2022.
BELOW: Ryan Hart, manager – deep learning and machine vision solutions at ASC.
the supplier from the customer. End- to-end factory automation can often be a daunting process, and requires significant changes and expendi- ture from the customer, so they must have complete trust in the suppli- er’s ability to deliver on the intended project outcomes.
IN IT FOR THE LONG-TERM
To ensure that trust is maintained and expectations are met, ASC conducts pre-, mid- and post-project meet- ings, which include all parties for transparency.
“What makes us different is that we’re in it for the long-term. We want customers to have the confi- dence to suggest changes, so that we can deliver a solution that fully caters to their needs. It’s all part of the continual improvement process,” Hart concluded. ■
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