Remarkable Award for MULTIVAC

The X‑line, a new gen­er­a­tion of ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machines, has been giv­en the Gold Inter­na­tion­al FoodTec Award 2018. The ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machine sets a new bench­mark in the mar­ket thanks to its range of inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy. As a result of its seam­less dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, com­pre­hen­sive sen­sor sys­tem and net­work­ing with the MULTIVAC Cloud, the X‑line cre­ates a new dimen­sion, when it comes to pack­ag­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty, qual­i­ty and performance. 
The DLG (Ger­man Agri­cul­tur­al Asso­ci­a­tion), togeth­er with its trade fair part­ners, gives the Inter­na­tion­al FoodTec Award to ground­break­ing devel­op­ments in inno­va­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and effi­cien­cy in the sec­tor of food tech­nol­o­gy. A jury, which is made up of inter­na­tion­al experts from the world of sci­ence and research as well as from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of indus­try, is respon­si­ble for select­ing the most pro­gres­sive con­cepts. The renowned Tech­nol­o­gy Award is giv­en on a three-year cycle in the form of gold and sil­ver medals by the DLG in coop­er­a­tion with its indus­try and media part­ners at Anu­ga FoodTec in Cologne.
The X‑line, which has been award­ed the gold medal, has a lev­el of sen­sor con­trol nev­er achieved before, where­by the Mul­ti Sen­sor Con­trol cap­tures all the rel­e­vant parts of the process. Using closed con­trol cir­cuits, the sen­sor sys­tem con­stant­ly cap­tures a wide range of process val­ues, such as for exam­ple for form­ing, evac­u­a­tion and seal­ing. Even the form­ing and seal­ing dies are inte­grat­ed into the sen­sor con­trol via elec­tron­ic sen­sor mod­ules. All the process stages are coor­di­nat­ed to the opti­mum lev­el, while prod­uct- and sys­tem-relat­ed dis­crep­an­cies are auto­mat­i­cal­ly com­pen­sat­ed as much as pos­si­ble, and even faulty set­tings by oper­a­tors are inde­pen­dent­ly detect­ed and dis­played. Thanks to this, the X‑line works con­stant­ly at the opti­mum oper­at­ing point.

MULTIVAC Pack Pilot enables the machine to be set up to the opti­mum lev­el using machine con­trol sup­port. When new recipes are cre­at­ed, the machine para­me­teris­es itself to the opti­mum oper­at­ing point, using the die set data and the fea­tures for pack, prod­uct and pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al that have been select­ed. This means that the machine can be used even with­out spe­cial oper­a­tor knowl­edge. Pack Pilot has access to com­pre­hen­sive expert knowl­edge, which ben­e­fits from process data from over 1,000 new pack­ag­ing solu­tions per year. The X‑line pro­duces packs with max­i­mum pack­ag­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty, con­sis­tent qual­i­ty and very high out­put with­out pro­duc­tion loss dur­ing machine start-up.
A new die gen­er­a­tion called X‑tools guar­an­tees the low­est oper­at­ing costs in the mar­ket. The X‑tools have an exten­sive range of inno­va­tions in their design, sen­sor sys­tem and actu­at­ing fea­tures. They enable short­er evac­u­a­tion times to be achieved and there­fore con­tribute to high­er cycle out­puts. As an option, the X‑tools can be designed with a nar­row­er edge trim width. This means that the film trim can be reduced by up to 30 per­cent. All the die ele­ments are cod­ed and can be iden­ti­fied by the ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machine. When a die is cor­rect­ly installed, the machine para­me­teris­es itself auto­mat­i­cal­ly, which ensures that there is opti­mum process con­trol. This means that oper­at­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty is increased, par­tic­u­lar­ly for machines with fre­quent for­mat changes.
And last but not least, the X‑line has been equipped with an inno­v­a­tive oper­at­ing con­cept. The intu­itive HMI 3 Mul­ti-Touch user inter­face is high-res­o­lu­tion and is equiv­a­lent to the oper­at­ing log­ic of today’s mobile devices. It enables the oper­at­ing process­es to be con­trolled even more eas­i­ly and reli­ably, and it can be indi­vid­u­al­ly set to the par­tic­u­lar oper­a­tor. This includes dif­fer­ent access rights and oper­at­ing lan­guages. User login is con­tact­less by means of RFID chip cards. All the rel­e­vant machine para­me­ters are dis­played on one screen page.