When it comes to items that are inexistent and ubiquitous in life, paper bags are probably one of them.
From small milk tea bags to shopping tote bags… After “buy, buy, buy”, in addition to the favorite products, people often have paper bags of various colors.
In recent years, with the increasingly strict environmental protection policies and policies of “plastic restriction” and “replacement of plastic”, 100% recyclable, degradable and reusable paper bags are becoming the “mainstay” of the packaging industry. However, the small paper bag looks ordinary, but it is not an easy task to manufacture. There are various details such as flat rope, round rope, inner fold, and outer fold just by holding the rope in one hand, not to mention catering to the voice. Increasing demand for personalized customization.
Founded in 1997, Nanjing Zhuoneng Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd. (Zhuoneng) is an “expert” in the field of paper bag machines. With the technology empowerment of Siemens, this company has achieved a compound annual growth rate of sales in the past three years. over 30%.
Small paper bags achieve big things
Headquartered in Jinling, the ancient capital, Zhuoneng is an innovative enterprise starting from the production of precision parts. Since 2008, it has focused on the research and development, manufacturing and sales of automatic paper bag machine series equipment. high-tech enterprises”.
The development of China’s paper bag machine industry is relatively late. In the early years, it was restricted by the technical level and the environment. There were many small and medium-sized enterprises in the industry, the scale was small, the independent research and development ability was limited, and the product competitiveness was insufficient. After the first “plastic restriction order” was put forward in 2008, local governments have continuously increased plastic pollution control for more than ten years to curb “white pollution”, and the paper bag machine market has gradually bid farewell to “small and scattered” and embarked on “high-precision”. The “top” Industrial transformation and upgrading road. Zhuoneng is a representative enterprise in this process.
On the road of development, Zhuoneng also faced confusion: how to make digitalization come true? How to stand out from the competition and go international? With a series of questions, Zhuoneng found Siemens, and the two sides conducted full exchanges and discussions based on transformation ideas and new product development, and finally officially joined hands in 2018 to “chasing the deer” paper bag machine market.
“It is Zhuoneng’s mission to make paper bag machines special and refined, and to be world-renowned. With the increasing popularity of low-carbon environmental protection and the continuous upgrading of plastic restriction and plastic ban policies, the demand for paper bags around the world is growing rapidly. The machine industry has also entered the fast lane of development. Siemens’ high-performance and modular motion control solutions, digitalization and low-carbon concepts based on the entire product life cycle are exactly what Zhuoneng’s mission requires and will help us compete in international competition. Another step up.”
——Cheng Rongwu
Chairman of Nanjing Zhuoneng Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd.
Two “keys” to the goal
In Siemens and Zhuoneng’s view, there are two “keys” needed to solve the problem: first, favorable policies attract more “players” to enter the market, the industry competition is becoming more and more fierce, and product differentiation and high-end development have become the key to getting rid of the price war Second, the demand for paper bags from industry terminals and consumer terminals is increasingly diversified and personalized. Paper bag machines need to take into account production efficiency, stability, ease of operation, low carbon and environmental protection, flexible production, and personalized customization… The key to meeting market demand is to introduce leading digital and motion control technology into the manufacturing process.
“From China to the world, with the advancement of the “dual carbon” goal, it is the only way for companies to win the opportunity by quickly responding to market demands through a practical path of low-carbon and digital integration, and bringing innovative products to the market as quickly as possible. Siemens has accumulated rich Industrial application experience in the field of packaging machinery and has proven technical solutions, which will become an important driving force for Zhuoneng to release its green development potential and enhance its international competitiveness.”
——Zhu Peng
Siemens (China) Co., Ltd.
GMC Industry Business Director of Motion Control Division
Developing a product that the market finds hard to refuse doesn’t happen overnight. Generally speaking, the selection and debugging of paper bag machines will be a work with high investment and long payback period. It requires drawing, building physical equipment, repeated trial and error, and incremental iteration, which not only becomes a bottleneck restricting product innovation, but also Cause a lot of waste of time and resources. The application of Siemens Mechatronics Concept Design Solution (NX MCD) solves this problem.
NX MCD topology
With the help of NX MCD’s digital design, verification and virtual commissioning solutions, Zhuoneng can build a digital twin in the virtual world that is indistinguishable from the real-world paper bag machine production, and optimize the mechanical structure on this basis. Taking the installed power of the equipment as an example, the engineer can make the motor run according to the set parameters by importing the motor torque, load curve and other data into the software system, thus completing the motor configuration efficiently. In addition, the one-key debugging function of NX MCD also makes equipment debugging more professional and fast, effectively avoiding mechanical design errors, reducing trial and error costs, and improving design quality and efficiency.
The application of digital technology has greatly improved the prototype development efficiency of Zhuoneng. The prototype debugging work that took several months before can now be completed in about a week. The newly developed paper bag machine also takes into account the performance and green low carbon to the greatest extent. The NX MCD optimization solution helps Zhuoneng to achieve precise motor selection. The newly selected motor power is 37.7% lower than the previous one, which not only saves the procurement cost of servo motors and drives, but also reduces the energy consumption of the motor itself. It also helps equipment 20% increase in stable production speed.
If NX MCD has played the role of “from 0 to 1” on the road to the goal of Zhuoneng, then the combination of Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500T-CPU high-end automation system and SINAMICS S210 high-performance servo system allows “from 1 to 1″ 100” is possible. The solution can accurately realize the functions of electronic shaft synchronization, electronic cam, rotary cutting, color mark tracking, etc. of the paper bag machine, and generate a reusable standardized core process package. The paper bag machine developed on this basis can not only complete the “basic operation” efficiently, safely and stably in the production process, but also meet the needs of end users for flexible production and personalized customization. One model can easily achieve a variety of Paper bag manufacturing process. It is worth mentioning that the unique common DC bus scheme of SINAMICS S210 can rationally utilize and recover the regenerative energy generated by the system during the braking process, thereby effectively reducing the power consumption of the whole machine and realizing low-carbon operation.
The proven high-end SINAMICS S210 motion control servo drive system combines high-performance hardware with efficient engineering and innovative software.
The SIMATIC S7-1500 technology controller convinces with its outstanding performance for outstanding productivity and efficiency.
From “Made in China” to “Made in China”
So far, Zhuoneng has cooperated with Siemens to develop a variety of different types of round rope automatic paper bag machines, round and flat rope automatic paper bag machines and flat rope double-purpose automatic paper bag machines. All of these new products have received bulk orders and have become the word-of-mouth products of Zhuoneng in the international market. At present, about 60% of Zhuoneng’s orders come from overseas, and its products are exported to Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, South America and other markets.
The “paper bag friendship” between Siemens and Zhuoneng is also moving forward steadily. In addition to developing more high-end models with the help of NX MCD, the two parties also further explored the comprehensive digitalization and intelligence of paper bag production. Under the planning of Siemens and Zhuoneng, through the development of new functional modules of the paper bag machine such as automatic feeding, online detection, automatic rejection, automatic receiving, automatic packing, and automatic storage, the unmanned production of paper bags is just around the corner.
“The field of paper bag machines is promising. We hope that through cooperation with Zhuoneng, we will gain insight into the frontier needs of the industry, continue to develop ‘appealing and popular’ paper bag machine products for the market, and jointly create a ‘golden age’ for China’s paper bag machine industry.” Zhu Peng said .
The big waves wash the sand, and the real gold is bright. In the tide of opportunity, Siemens and Zhuoneng have joined hands to ride the wave.
The Links: 3HAC029024-001 3HAC7998-2