Spare Parts for Food Filling Machines: we care!

Spare parts play a key role in ensuring high productivity and long life for food filling machines. They are also one of the major expenditures in the life cycle of a packaging machine.

Here are some of the actions we have taken to improve the efficiency of spare parts and to reduce the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for Galdi's filling machines.

Standardising components has become a regular feature in Galdi's design guidelines.

Universal and "simplified" components have been the preference of choice for many years, but the current challenge plays out at an entirely different level.

While putting their efforts into constantly improving system performance, our designers also aim at reducing the range of mechanical components:

● on the same filling machine, a component used in one area, e.g. a pneumatic cylinder, should be used for other machine systems as well

● on different filling machines, the tendency is to prefer the same components for several models

Clearly, the main goal here is to enable our customers to optimise their spare parts inventories, especially if they installed two different machines.

The risk of accidental breakage can be minimised by implementing our Planned Maintenance Plans (PMP), but over the years we have also done a lot to make systems and components last longer.

Factors that have significantly contributed to this outcome include:

● exchange of know-how between designers, After Sales technicians, engineers and testers

● optimisation of our claim resolution procedure, with the goal of constant improvement

● thorough quality control and performance tests on new solutions

● computer simulations to understand the size load of important components - such as the main drive shaft, – to then adjust the whole system according to collected data.

Reducing component wear is another important goal we have been, and are still, working on.

Often small refinements can significantly extend the life of a component. A simple example is the carton forming area in model RG270, where, thanks to the photocell system, the arms of the suction cups only get activated when cartons are available.

Less waste, more efficiency - following the principles of Eco Design - and, of course, lower operating and maintenance costs!

We have recently taken another step forward with the development of MaSH, our advanced monitoring system, which enables the analysis of alerts and anomalies on fillers, preventing downtimes due to premature component wear.

The Internet of Things (IoT) also shapes our current studies and prototypes in the field of predictive maintenance. In the future we will have a clearer picture of the health status of single components and we will be able to adjust maintenance to actual conditions.

Galdi's spare parts management portal, which has been online for several years, was created to:

● simplify and speed up order processing

● avoid entering wrong data, thanks to the machine's 3D vision

● provide the latest version of our maintenance manuals

Further developments were aimed at saving our customers even more time and money.

We will soon publish an article about recently added features – such us parts availability and lead time for each piece - to optimise order management and spare parts inventory.

Stay tuned for more!