Predictive maintenance has become more than just a catchword for the packaging and processing industry, growing to an impactful necessity for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, according to the Packaging and Predictive Maintenance white paper produced by PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. Of all the possible digitalization initiatives, including big data analytics, cobots, digital twins and others, predictive maintenance is far and away the most likely to be of interest for CPGs. As the newly released infographic, Predictive Maintenance: More Than a Buzzword, points out, 29.4 percent of CPGs are evaluating the technology, 21.6 percent are piloting it and 23.5 percent have already implemented it.
Avoiding downtime and preventing product loss are the major drivers pushing manufacturers towards implementing predictive maintenance. Due to the nature of packaging machinery, packaging lines are 30 percent more “slightly likely” to fail than other types of equipment. Some types of packaging machinery are more prone to downtime than others, as the infographic highlights, form/fill/seal machinery, labeling, decorating and coding equipment as the equipment types “extremely likely” to suffer downtime.