OMAC working group to meet at Pack Expo

Packing line integration to be covered at demo

By Plant Engineering Staff September 20, 2007

The OMAC Packaging Workgroup (OPW) will host a demonstration of its guidelines at Pack Expo 2007, October 15-17 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The OPW Booth, number C-953 in the Association Pavilion, will highlight the “Benefits of Packaging Line Integration.”

Nine companies will be participating with demonstrations of controller, HMI, and MES functionality using the OPW Connect-and-Pack Guidelines:

Acumence, B&R, Beckhoff, Elau, GE Fanuc, Iconics, Kepware, Siemens, and Wago. All of the demonstration units will be integrated together using OPC over Ethernet.

Seven of the companies (B&R, Beckhoff, Elau, GE Fanuc, Kepware, Siemens and Wago) will be implementing the OPW PackML State Model on their controllers. B&R, GE Fanuc, Iconics and Siemens will be implementing the PackML State Model on their respective HMI’s. PackTags will allow any HMI application to be able to display and control the state model of any of the controllers.

Three companies (Acumence, Iconics and Siemens) will be implementing MES functionality using PackML. These MES applications will be able to connect to any of the controllers through PackTags, calculate OEE, and pareto chart the times in the states of the PackML state model.

The OMAC Packaging Workgroup will also host a User Meeting on Tuesday, October 16, at 2:00 p.m. in Room S-232 in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The purpose of the meeting is to present an overview of the OPW Connect-and-PackTM Guidelines and their benefits to users, OEM’s, and technology providers. During the meeting, Rick VanDyke, Group Manager Controls & MES Systems at Frito Lay, will discuss how OPW Guidelines support “Transforming Manufacturing Packaging System Performance.”

On Wednesday, October 17, the PackML Group of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup will host a meeting at 2:00 pm. in Room S-225 in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. The purpose of the meeting is to update attendees on the progress of incorporating PackML into the

ISA88 Part 5 (Make2Pack) standard.

For additional information on the OMAC Packaging Workgroup’s demonstration at Pack Expo, visit

www.omac.org/packexpo2007 .