Era insights: The CSIA on 3-d imaginative and prescient era

The Control System
Integrator Association cites a member’s work in a vision-based robotic
packaging installation for packaging and that’s demonstrated in a video link.

By Bob Lowe, guest
columnist and Executive Director of the Control System Integrator Association
(CSIA) 

When it comes to technology, everyone seems to be waiting
for the “next big thing” to change the way companies do business. In the world
of control system integration, it’s not always the latest design, but taking an
approach that works in one industry and applying it to another.

Ed Diehl, of
Concept
Systems, Inc., headquartered in Albany,
OR, and a CSIA-certified control
system integrator, has used 3D-vision technology with the food & beverage
industry for years, but never on the upstream packaging end of integration (for
a downstream application of the vision technology,

see this Youtube video of bean bag depalletizing).

In-line sorting of variable-sized boxes and mixed
products is a common challenge for automated packaging on production lines. So
when a customer who had been using a conventional camera system for box sorting
asked Concept Systems how to improve business operations, Diehl looked to a 3-D
scanner already used as a reliable solution in other industries and developed
the In-line Box Sorting 3D-Vision System.

“With this new application, the boxes moving down the
line are sorted into one of three stackers, which is designated by the dimensions
of the box and their coordinating labels,” says Diehl. “The biggest value of
this system is accurately detecting whether the flaps are down or bent with a
high degree of reliability. The 3D-Vision System identifies and sorts with a
99.9% accuracy rate, inspecting seven boxes a second. I haven’t seen a faster
system more capable of handling this process.”

Interest from food and beverage
packagers

Diehl says customers in the food and beverage packaging
industry are especially interested in the latest automation technologies. More
production managers, directors of quality and other packaging leaders want to
eliminate manual intervention of sorting and stacking boxes.

  “Once we
prototyped and demonstrated the effectiveness of the 3D-Vision System, our
customer recognized that his previous development teams had not provided a
solid assessment of how to improve his operations,” says Diehl. “Our customer
didn’t know the imaging and scanning technologies existed. Now he is spending
money for a much higher degree of reliability and certainty by automating to
the fullest extent possible.”

The demand for innovative technology is expanding among industry end-users
and control system integrators are responding with measured results. Our CSIA
members, like Ed Diehl and the Concept Systems team, are designing and
implementing solutions to help customers increase production, reduce cost, use
less energy and minimize their environmental impact. To find a qualified
control system integrator or learn more about the Control System Integrator
Association (CSIA), visit
www.controlsys.org.

Bob Lowe is the executive director of the
Control System Integrator Association (CSIA), a global non-profit professional
association for control system integration companies to advance system
integration for the success of members and their clients. Prior to becoming CSIA executive director,
Bob spent 19 years in plant automation focusing on the metals industry. He
co-founded a control systems integration company where he was president and
managed the technical staff. A founding member of CSIA, Lowe has served on the
Best Practices and Benchmarks committee and was instrumental in designing the
initial audit for CSIA Certification.