IMA Schelling Consulting – supporting customers with investment planning and plant optimisations
Expertise across the entire process chain
IMA Schelling Consulting supports companies with comprehensive consultancy services along the entire process chain – from investment planning right through to plant optimisation. The team's primary focuses are digitalisation, automation and advanced planning systems.
The rising demand for the automation and digitalisation of business processes is also having a lasting impact on many manufacturing industries and trades. The market is in flux, and projects are taking on greater scale and complexity all the time. In light of this backdrop, it is all the more important when planning new projects to keep an eye on the big picture and take all relevant factors into account.
A partner for tailored solutions
In addition to the conceptual development of plant plans, IMA Schelling Consulting also employs a wide range of performance management tools. The experts analyse each customer's individual challenges and needs, and develop customised solutions based on market-leading innovations.
Successful projects through personalised support
Working in close collaboration with customers is key to the consulting services offered by the IMA Schelling Group. Through intensive support and ongoing communication across the entire project lifecycle, the consulting team ensures attainment of each customer's individual goals.
Sustainable packaging concept
What this means in specific terms is clearly demonstrated by a customer project involving the implementation of sustainable packaging solutions. "This changeover required extensive restructuring of the existing plants," reports Andreas Dahlmeier. "Through the targeted use of new technologies and planning strategies, we successfully replaced the polystyrene material with more sustainable alternatives while only incurring minor additional costs. Specifically, this was achieved through order-related cutting-to-size in the production sequence."
First of all, IMA Schelling conducted extensive analyses of the materials and packaging technologies available on the market, whereby the sustainability of the packaging and protective materials was evaluated and the required degree of automation was determined based on the production parameters. The functionality, performance and cost-effectiveness aspects of integrable technology alternatives and sustainable packaging concepts were analysed and assessed. Furthermore, the consulting experts looked closely at the possibility of implementation in several development stages.
The final concept encompasses:
- The use of software at MES level to optimise pack size, the number of packaged components and the packaging sequence.
- The use of a plant for the order-related cutting to size of cardboard packaging including edge protection.
- Automated feeding of the cardboard packaging to the packing station once cut to size.
- Packaging the components in a predefined sequence using robots.
- Automated folding and closing of the cardboard packaging.
- Automated forwarding of the packaging unit to the dispatch area via a transport unit.
"The customer now not only has a future-proof packaging strategy, but has also made their production processes more efficient," sums up Andreas Dahlmeier. "Thanks to a staggered development plan, they are now able to make flexible decisions on when and which investments should be made."
