PMMI and OMAC Packaging Workgroup should start dating

OMAC's brief marriage to ISA's Automation Federation is over. The divorce settlement is worked out and soon to be finalized. OMAC will be single again, and as an independent organization, will spend the coming months evaluating its future and may start dating again. My suggestion is for the OMAC Packaging Workgroup to seriously date PMMI.

The Packaging Workgroup's deliverables are too important to stop working on them. For the benefit of packagers and packaging machine manufacturers, OPW needs to continue its work. Its volunteers may be able to handle the technical deliverables, but the administrative burdens are more than an all volunteer organization can deal with in the present world where engineering organizations have been downsized.

OPW's work is aimed at packaging machine suppliers with the benefits accruing both to them and to their customers. PMMI has been an active participant in OPW. Like ISA, they are an ANSI standards body that can promulgate the OPW work as standards. PMMI has been expanding its scope to include technology providers and materials suppliers. It has been engaging end users to better understand their needs. OMAC has been well known as a user-run group that collaborates with OEM's and technology providers. It seems to me that the goals for the two groups are very similar.

I've been an ISA officer having served as a Division Director of the Food and Pharmaceutical Industries Division. I was the founding Director and later the Executive Director of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup. I've worked with many of the staff and members of PMMI as Chair of the Mid-Atlantic Mechatronics Partnership as we've tried to improve technology education for packaging machinery technicians. I think that I understand enough of the cultures of each group to conclude that PMMI and OPW would be compatible.

A close relationship between PMMI and OPW would help to galvanize support of the North American packaging industry for the PackML standard. Hopefully this would not create a impediment for adoption by machine builders in other regions of the world.

The OMAC machine tool group is not an obvious fit with PMMI and OMAC would like to keep its total organization intact. The final nature of a PMMI / OPW alliance could take many forms with or without the Machine Tool Group. The problems are not insurmoutable, so I encourage the parties to explore mutually beneficial solutions. I think that PMMI should take on an increasing role in collaborating with and supporting OPW going forward.

TrackBack

Comments !, OMG, I don't know all of the ABCs from the acronym city where you work. 02 WITW using something that looks like I need a decoder ring to know what ISA, OMAC, OPW, PMMI, PackML, P&G, CPG's SAB and all other alphabet soup letters mean. I am not a 13yo girl with a smart phone. Obviously, AAMOI, I am not impressed. For basics, not everyone knows what PackML stands for. AAR, maybe the IoPP or PMMI needs to hire a bithead out of California to convert the machine language into something that will work like cat 5e using 1XbaseT duplexing technology which has been communicating WALO computer based hardware for a 10-20 years or so. BTW an abreviation/acronym dictionary just MBN? I believe locating it right next to the index would work. EOM 10Q. 4NR in your world BWL Posted by: Warren on February 26, 2010 Keith, Great idea, only wish I had thought of it. PMMI is expanding their influence from just OEM's like you said. Thanks, hope they go steady. Dan Throne Sales & Marketing Manager Bosch Rexroth Corporation Electric Drives and Controls Division 5150 Prairie Stone Parkway Hoffman Estates, IL 60192 www.boschrexroth-us.com PH# 847-645-3749 Fax# 847-645-6201 dan.throne@boschrexroth-us.com Posted by: Dan Throne on March 9, 2010 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) Type the word 'packaging' (required):