Festo Participates in the 2025 Shanghai International Packaging Exhibition
At this exhibition, Festo will showcase flexible production and the latest digital products and solutions across key packaging process stages such as lid covering and labeling, case packing, coding, box opening, heat shrink packaging, and film wrapping.
Flexible Solutions That Deliver Maximum Agility
With market development speeding up, how can companies keep up? Customers demand higher levels of customization, shorter product life cycles, and adaptability to these trends. To address these challenges, we need solutions that provide maximum agility and highest efficiency throughout the production process. This has been achieved through the Multi-Carrier-System (MCS).
This is what production engineers have long expected: a conveyor system that can effortlessly switch formats at the press of a button. Developed jointly by Festo and Siemens, the MCS® multi-carrier transportation system allows users to freely configure it to meet specific needs. It offers unparalleled flexibility and integrates perfectly with other innovative gripping solutions suitable for all sorts of packaging production lines. This new system can continuously produce different packaging formats on the same line. With one-touch software, users can select format settings. Thanks to freely positionable carriers, users can directly set box dimensions, number of boxes, and corresponding product quantities on the MCS®. The conveyor system can reach top speeds of 3 m/s and accelerate up to 40 m/s2 — impact-free and precise! It can start and stop at any position. Moreover, it synchronizes perfectly with current processes. This highly flexible and versatile conveyor system has many other advantages, such as short setup times, nearly lossless format changes, and reduced maintenance costs due to wear resistance.
There are many reasons for changing packaging specifications, such as special packaging sizes, promotional changes, or different regional requirements — sometimes several times a day. Traditional conveyor systems require significant time for reconfiguration during format changes, often leading to lengthy production halts. With the multi-carrier conveyor system, a single machine can handle multiple packaging formats. The line can run continuously, moving varying packaging quantities without the need for mechanical reconfiguration. One-touch switching between formats and batch sizes greatly reduces downtime, ensuring maximum productivity and optimal machine utilization.
Digital Solutions Make Packaging More Precise and Efficient
The launch of Festo's digital control terminal VTEM officially marks the transformational convergence of IoT and digital technology, genuinely bringing innovation to traditional pneumatic technology. As the world’s first pneumatic automation platform, VTEM combines mechanical components, electronic components, and software, featuring modular design, intelligence, multifunctionality, integration, networking, and information capabilities. It simplifies hardware setup, and complex actuator movements can be implemented through software, enabling highly flexible applications controlled via app, making pneumatic products truly intelligent and Industry 4.0-ready.
Thanks to innovative pressure control technology and sophisticated operating software, VTEM applies to electronics, automotive, food packaging, process handling, as well as emerging industries emphasizing intelligent control and high energy efficiency, fully meeting future demands for highly flexible and adaptive pneumatic automation control.
On the market, products of all sizes require precise yet convenient packaging. However, packaging these on the same machine is a challenge! This means packaging machines must have highly flexible and precise format switching capabilities. The Sigpack VPF flat-bag packaging machine by Bosch Packaging Technology, equipped with Festo's digital control terminal VTEM, runs smoothly. It is the world’s first small-bag packaging machine with freely adjustable size. Thanks to VTEM, food manufacturers can adapt production dynamically based on market demand. VTEM's modular design allows the machine to freely adjust line size and bag dimensions between 2-12 lanes and uses a decentralized allocation system so each lane has its own feeder and product storage, delivering unbeatable flexibility. The single key to independently adjust the strength of each lane significantly reduces the number of slices and peripheral components, simplifying and improving packaging efficiency. As a revolutionary digital pneumatic technology, VTEM gives Sigpack VPF a "power boost": only one piece of hardware covers all required packaging machine functions. VTEM applications support up to 50 component functions, and machine operators can receive real-time status info of each machine, line, or process, avoiding costly downtime and maximizing machine utilization.
Intelligent Packaging Key Promoter: Seamless Upgrade Communication Architecture
To raise equipment digitization to a new level, Festo’s modular control system CPX-E provides a solid digital foundation for equipment manufacture. As a central control system for gripping technology, CPX-E enables seamless and smooth upgrading before production line changes.
CPX-E focuses on data communication and handling requirements of current field devices, integrating rich data interfaces and powerful motion control functions, making it a high-performance automation control system. CPX-E uses modular design; abundant modules can be flexibly configured and adjusted according to site needs. Depending on combinations, CPX-E supports pure remote I/O systems, controlling Festo drives via IO-Link communication at very high cost-performance ratios. It can also act as a motion controller, paired with drives and motors to control complex motions such as conveying, gluing, coding, etc. Festo’s comprehensive software support greatly simplifies programming, helping users easily implement automation control and boost production line efficiency.
Additionally, Festo will showcase a series of products and applications adapted for various packaging process steps. This includes directional valves DFM, service drives and motors CMMT/EMMT, solenoid valves VUVG-L, control islands VTUG, small slide table cylinders DGST, rodless cylinders DLGF, vacuum generators OVEL, electric actuators ELGA, and other latest digital products and solutions from Festo.
