With its help, machine manufacturers and production companies can quickly adapt their production lines and machines to different formats, sizes, and types of products, as well as to seasonal needs. Siemens also supports users in the design phase with comprehensive industrial software for modeling and functional simulation of machine design. This makes it possible to create a seamless digital production chain, starting with product and machine design and continuing through engineering to production automation. As a pilot customer, Optima will use the multi-carrier system in its packaging machinery. The company will be able to apply its expertise and years of experience as a machine manufacturer to the development of this innovative machine concept. The multi-carrier system will allow Optima to increase production flexibility for its customers in industries such as food and beverage, non-food products, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.
In practice, machine manufacturers can test individual solutions or modular machine concepts based on 3D models and simulations, thereby accelerating machine commissioning. The multi-transport system allows transport vehicles to be moved and positioned freely and independently of one another according to the simulation. Vehicles can also be flexibly inserted into the system or removed and integrated into existing intralogistics systems. The result is that different product formats can be manufactured on the same production line.
The technical foundation of the multicarrier system consists of Festo linear motors for precisely moving and positioning the transport vehicles. Siemens, for its part, contributes its extensive expertise in automation to the development of the transport system: that is, using a comprehensive engineering approach and control of the motion functions, the transport can be precisely controlled and the different machine modules can be coordinated within a single system.
