Smart Manufacturing Today

Applying circular economy principles to global plastic packaging flows could transform the plastics economy and drastically reduce negative externalities such as leakage into oceans, according to the latest report by the World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation, with analytical support from McKinsey & Company. The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics provides for the first time a vision of a global economy in which plastics never become waste, and outlines concrete steps towards achieving the systemic shift needed. The report, financially supported by the MAVA Foundation, was produced as part of Project MainStream, a global, multi-industry initiative that aims to accelerate business-driven innovations to help scale the circular economy. The new report acknowledges that while plastics and plastic packaging are an integral part of the global economy and deliver many benefits, their value chains currently entail significant drawbacks. Assessing global plastic packaging flows comprehensively for the first time, the report finds that most plastic packaging is used only once; 95% of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80-120 billion annually, is lost to the economy. Additionally, plastic packaging generates negative externalities, valued conservatively by UNEP at $40 billion.[1] Given projected growth in consumption, in a business-as-usual scenario, by 2050 oceans are expected to contain more plastics than fish (by weight), and the entire plastics industry will consume 20% of total oil production, and 15% of the annual carbon budget.[2] In this context, an opportunity beckons for the plastics value chain to deliver better system-wide economic and environmental outcomes, while continuing to harness the benefits of plastic packaging. The New Plastics Economy, outlined in this report, envisages a new approach based on creating effective after-use pathways for plastics; drastically reducing leakage of plastics into natural systems, in particular oceans; and decoupling plastics from fossil feedstocks. Achieving such […]

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is furthering its reach into engineering and design. Connected machines will give plant engineering operations the opportunity to identify points of inefficiency, improve upon those points, and in turn, improve profitability. To further discuss how IIoT is impacting work for design engineers, Mark Duncan, segment manager of material handling and packaging machinery for Schneider Electric’s industry business. In the future, Duncan believes engineers will have to focus on existing machine designs and their communications standards, and monitor those standards as they progress. Some examples of this include Internet protocols such as Ethernet, which promote machine-to-machine connectivity, more plug-and play-use, and a smoother transition into a plant environment. Duncan also believes that, as they look to the future, design engineers must be cognisant of the developing standards in machine-to-machine communication. “We have a customer that makes a machine for the coffee industry, and that machine is really built to be modular, connected, and is also built to be self-aware of its own capability and how it’s performing,” he said. “It’s also a safe machine, designed with safety built in. It communicates with other machines in a production line.” An example of this would be the material and product that comes into the machine, such as the one Duncan describes. That product would be processed by the machine, put into a package, and then moved to another machine, with the product cartons eventually taken to a palletizer. Using communication standards, this complete process is simpler than previous practices, where end users would have to reprogram each machine, allowing the machines to work together. Duncan expects that because of machine language standards (such as those for packaging machines using a language called PACKML) machines will be able to instantaneously communicate information in consistent data sets that could be operated by a central […]