Industry 4.0 and Autonomous Control for Plastics Manufacturing

Optimizing the performance of plant operations and reducing quality variations is crucial in plastics manufacturing, and includes proactive and accurate process control. Smart technology and the digital transformation in manufacturing reduces the consumption of raw materials, and process variability, drives down costs, increases throughput, and gains a competitive edge with customers.

The ProcessMiner AI-enabled platform delivers process improvement recommendations and optimal control parameters in real-time to your plastics production line. Through our predictive machine learning and artificial intelligence systems, online recommendations are sent for autonomous proactive control. Our platform ensures reductions in cost, scrap, and defects commonly encountered in plastics manufacturing processes.

Read our case study: Business Case for Artificial Intelligence in the Plastic Injection Molding Business.

Artificial Intelligence in the Plastic Injection Molding Business

ProcessMiner is the industry-leading artificial intelligence platform that recently completed a pilot, which helped our client improve OEE using the latest in science and technology. The ProcessMiner platform is a cloud-hosted application that interoperates with existing technology and infrastructure already deployed at our client’s factory.

Access to the machine data is granted through a VM application called PM Agent. Machine data is collected then pushed into the cloud for analysis, advanced monitoring, root cause analysis, and automated process control optimization. This approach lessens the requirement for machine operators to make process control changes to set points and mission-critical machine settings like temperature and pressure. The ProcessMiner corrective action change control signals are digitally driven directly back to the machine automatically. The end result has been a measurable reduction in scrap rates for the 80cc round medical vial MLX machine we piloted.

In April 2020, ProcessMiner and our client entered into a pilot agreement to focus on applied artificial intelligence to machine data, using proprietary technology to help reduce scrap and improve product quality, productivity, and throughput. After running this pilot on an MLX Machine for a two-part medical vial, the MVP success criteria were achieved based on the pilot results and to the satisfaction of our client’s operation.