Cavanna Group anticipates 4th Industrial Revolution

Cavanna Packaging Group is an Italian industrial group specialising in flowpack packaging systems. Since 1960 the Group has designed and manufactured flow pack packaging machines for food and non-food applications. Their product range includes automatic chargers, transport and pulping systems, and secondary solutions designed to group and package multiple individual items like biscuits.

To date, Cavanna have installed more than 5,000 global lines and single machines, and have more than 900 customers around the world.

Driven by their philosophy of continuous improvement of food packaging performance, Cavanna Group use technological development to offer customers significant advantages in terms of cost reduction and quality. The Group relies on dynamic simulation to test the validity of ideas and insights to create a worldwide competitive edge for the Company.

Why did the Cavanna Group choose predictive simulation?

“When designing high-complexity systems, you need to prove the validity of the proposal to the customers before they will commit to buying. Customers can then correlate the value of the investment required with the available gains, optimizing solutions to find the right balance between cost and performance,” says Cavanna's R & D Manager.

“In simple systems, with few operations, high volumes and stable and predictable production rates, traditional techniques such as spreadsheet calculations are sufficient. But as the system becomes more complicated, traditional calculation models make it more difficult to accurately predict performance. The new models must accept variability of inputs and outputs, and the effect of interconnected rules of governance and control.

Effective modelling using Lanner’s WITNESS simulation software helps to decide between taking or losing a contract, based on the probability of achieving customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Ultimately, this will define the difference between profit or loss ".

In 2015, the Cavanna Group's research team was working with Studio Zeta, applying dynamic simulation techniques to existing complex systems. By separating the economical choices from the technological content of proposed manufacturing facilities, they were able to calculate the precise performance:cost ratio.

This approach, developed in close collaboration with Lanner’s partner Studio Zeta, enabled the Cavanna Group to be at the forefront of the use of predictive techniques, and to develop unique engineering tools in the field of highly complex plant design.

The Cavanna Group employs a full-time engineer, dedicated to predictive plant simulation and modeling, forming the core of a virtual competence center made up of multiple engineers throughout the organization.

Simulation software of choice

Lanner’s WITNESS simulation software was chosen by Cavanna Group for all its custom predictive simulations modeling requirements.

Cavanna's Design Manager explains: "Even at the advanced stages of pre-deployment discussions, we are able to communicate to our customers with speed, clarity and precision the performance gains available from alternative deployment scenarios, and to provide them with the objective basis required for making informed decisions.

In the case of more advanced and complex systems, this simulation technique allows us to try the most innovative logic to contain the risks of innovation and start-up times without affecting “live” systems.This allows our customers to make "difficult decisions" with increased confidence in the results generated by Cavanna products, and their own ability to reduce time to sales."

Cavanna anticipates Industry 4.0

Paolo Ravizza, Partner at Studio Zeta, comments that, “Well ahead of the "Industry 4.0" hype, Cavanna Group argued that, to remain competitive on the global market scene while at the same time increasing the efficiency of the design cycle and the sale of complex plants, it was necessary to revise the traditional design practice.”

Before industry 4.0 guidelines were formed, Cavanna decided to invest in predictive technology, allowing them to:

• Perform 3D modelling, simulation, and experimentation
• Virtually simulate the new packaging environment to avoid test hours and machine stops along real production lines.

By doing so, at the height of the 4th Industrial Revolution and in the face of a rapidly evolving global business models and digitisation of manufacturing operations, Cavanna Group ensures a leadership position in terms of:

• Reduced design times
• Increased design quality
• Increased efficiency of the entire design-sales-realization cycle
• Reduction of starting times of the plants
• Improved quality of communication to its customers
• Increased overall competitiveness on world markets.