Ever tried wrapping a box in transparent plastic? Wrinkles and uneven corners were likely the result, putting your patience to the test. All the more astonishing are the machines from Sollas Holland – a world player in the development of high-end packaging machines, which can wrap 160 boxes in plastic per minute – with perfectly smooth surfaces and crisp corners every time. This attention to detail makes Sollas’ machines a favorite among producers of high-end cosmetics. But the benchmark of 160 boxes per minute is new; until recently, the machines were able to wrap “only” 120 boxes per minute. To go from 120 to 160 boxes per minute was a challenge. The machine’s mechanics could handle it, but not the packaging foil.  The objective of this Sollas–Siemens co-creation project was to use AI to create a function block in TIA Portal to better control the packaging machine.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is used to optimize the control of a Sollas packaging machine. But first, the AI was trained on a Digital Twin of the machine.
• An AI module independently and quickly built a logical function block to optimize the control of a packaging machine. 
• The neural network that was trained by the AI can be deployed on a Simatic S7-1500 through the TIA Portal directly. Simatic S7-1500 then sends the setpoints to the Sinamics Servo Drives that Sollas relies on.