Italian machines using German technology earn my respect

There is a popular verse that says Heaven is where the police are British, the lovers French, the mechanics German, the cooks Italian, and the whole is organized by the Swiss. Another verse describes Hell, but we'll skip that one. From my observations at Interpack, there are some corollaries to this verse that relate to the building of packaging machines. It seemed to me that the most elegant and sophisticated machines came from the Italians using enabling technology from the Germans. These machines gained my notice and respect.

I've been around enough startups to know that you can't judge a machine from its appearance, but I've also been around enough machines to recognize some great and not-so-great design features. I was never much of a fan of Italian machines when the tendency was to take old mechanical designs and soup them up with some PLC's and servos (generation 2 design). But many of the Italian builders that I saw this year at Interpack have now fully embraced ground-up mechatronic design (generation 3) and have applied the same elegance to their mechatronic designs that was previously applied to their mechanical machines. Not only do the designs embrace mechatronic principles, but also principles of good industrial design and ergonomics. Many of the machines incorporated purpose-built robotic arms and machines were integrated in ways that added value for the packager.

Underlying these machine designs were standards-based technologies from German companies such as Bosch-Rexroth, Elau, Siemens and others. These companies have applied standards such as IEC61131, Sercos, Ethernet, PLCOpen and OMAC state and tag models to create highly functional, integrated motion, logic and communications capabilities that empower the machine builder to focus upon the machine design rather than the bits and bytes. All of these companies have developed special application expertise and packaging-specific function modules to ease the machine design burden.

It takes more than great technology and elegant machine design to have a successful packaging machine business. The Swiss and Germans get high marks for their organization, the French for their novel ideas, the British for their salesmanship and the Americans for their ability to cost justify the technology required. Perhaps that is why the verse describes Heaven as an international collaboration. But if you want to see some slick packaging machines, take a look at what a mixture of Italian and German heritage has produced.

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Comments There is no doubt whatsoever that the Germans (first always) and Italians are the leaders in building packaging machineries. But, with due respects to you sir, I would like to point out that you haven't looked closely at some of the Indian machines at this Interpack. Indians have come a long long way since their copycat days. They are building some new designs and these are not just mere adaptations. This, with the limited presence of the German technologies in India. Our companies Vectacraft and Subnil also believe in this completely and although we dont claim to be using Gen 3, its not too far away. Add to it, are the aesthetics and outer look, which have been never seen before in either German or Italian machines. I think Indians are being ignored here. Posted by: Rajesh Subramaniam on June 3, 2008 You state, "It seemed to me that the most elegant and sophisticated machines came from the Italians using enabling technology from the Germans." Possibly, but the most elegant and simple to use and simple to service machines are designed and built in the U.S. Posted by: Zsolt Toth on June 3, 2008 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)