With the vigorous development of the packaging market demand, driven by factors such as the enhancement of technology level and the gradual emergence of import substitution effects, China's packaging machine industry has also ushered in a good development period. With the continuous improvement of equipment requirements in the entire industry, intelligent packaging equipment began to gradually replace traditional equipment into the mainstream of the future.

How do parallel robots “have to avoid evil” in the packaging industry?
 
In intelligent packaging equipment, industrial robots have gradually emerged. In particular, some manufacturers have combined automated packaging equipment with traditional palletizing robots, greatly improving work efficiency. In the past two years, parallel robots have also entered the field of packaging. For this "new face", how should we play to advantage and avoid shortcomings? What are the opportunities and potential threats of parallel robots in the tide of packaging automation?
 
The advantages of packaging demand upgrade
 
The current consumer demand for packaging is getting higher and higher, but China's demographic dividend is gradually disappearing, the automation of the entire packaging process has a large number of vacancies, and packaging products, especially bagged products, due to various aspects of materials. The reason is not conducive to the material of the traditional tandem robot. In contrast, the advantage of the parallel robot is that through the material identification in the front section, the product can be placed at a specified position with high precision and high speed, and a large number of substitute labors.
 
"More and more packaging tasks are no longer simple packing in the past. Some gift box packaging processes are more complicated. It is very difficult for ordinary people to completely replace robots with robots. However, this kind of refined packaging. More and more robots have been used, and some technical difficulties have been well overcome.” Wu Hongxu, assistant president and director of strategic planning department, said, “The prospects in this field are very broad.”
 
“In many industries today, especially in the food industry, the production in the previous stage has been automated. The palletizing robots in the latter stage are now also in good use, and the middle section of the material packing needs labor.” Chairman of the Birkent Robotics Wang Yuechao said that parallel robots are mainly aimed at this industry, so Birkent has to form a good match with all upstream and downstream customers, which can empower customers' products and help them improve their quality and market competitiveness.
 
Wu Jiangfeng, deputy general manager of Astro Boy Robot, said: "To sum up, parallel robots have three advantages in the packaging industry - one, automatic material management; second, faster, 4 to 6 times that of traditional six-axis robots Third, the flexibility is stronger, can adapt to the switching between different types of products, avoiding the shortcomings such as large size and inconvenient adjustment of traditional material handling equipment."
 
Macroeconomic constraints
 
The “cold encounter” of the industrial robot industry in the second half of 2018 made the industry outlook for the new year somewhat less clear, and the macroeconomic environment was not optimistic. For many enterprises with automated upgrade requirements, the shortage of funds is tantamount to “blocking the road”, and the original plan has to be postponed.
 
“From the perspective of upgrading and upgrading the packaging industry, there are two short-boards for parallel robots.” Wu Jiangfeng said: “The first is the higher price. The development time of parallel robots is still relatively short, and the degree of batching is small, standardization. The low degree and poor interchangeability result in high cost of core components. We believe that the cost of core components of parallel robots will drop significantly in the future, close to the level of SCARA. The second is the technology of familiar parallel robots in the entire packaging industry. There are few engineers. The original design for serial robots can not adapt to the characteristics of parallel robots, which greatly affects the promotion of parallel robots in the packaging industry. These two short plates greatly hinder parallel robots and six-axis, SCARA Even the competition of the special plane."
 
Wang Yuechao also said that many packaging equipment is still concentrated in the low-end and mid-end areas, and the price is relatively cheap, which brings certain constraints to its cooperation with robots. “Many packaging manufacturers have begun to realize that the combination of packaging equipment and robots must be a trend, but funding at this stage is a big constraint.”
 
Great opportunities in a labor-intensive industry
 
In Wang Yuechao's view, labor-intensive industries, including the food industry, are the biggest opportunities for parallel robots, while Birkent is “specialized in the food industry.” There is a view that food and FMCG are close. The two-year growth shows a downward trend, and the industry behind the robot will affect its own development. Wang Yuechao said that the food and FMCG industries have sufficient capacity. "China has a population of 1.4 billion, and even if it falls again, it must have a normal diet."
 
Wang Yuechao said that the current food factories are all in a lot of money. If you want to use robots and other automation equipment, you must make rational use of the effective space. “Either new equipment is being developed, such as the new disc-crawling robot from Birken, or the speed of the equipment is increased. Only in this way can the added value of the product be improved.” Many people in the industry feel that parallel robots do not need Too high speed, and Wang Yuechao believes that speed is crucial. "If a food factory originally planned to purchase 8 units, but only need to purchase 6 units after the speed increase, this can save a considerable space for the manufacturer. And the corresponding expenditure."
 
Wu Jiangfeng also expressed a similar point: “Automation was originally started by the automotive industry, followed by the automation of the front section of food, dairy, and pharmaceuticals. The most used part of the entire factory was in the latter stage of testing and packaging. It is also the most imperfect of the current automation transformation. The place is therefore very beneficial for the application of robots. In addition, the traditional SCARA and six-axis robots have short plates in speed, which is also an opportunity for parallel robots."
 
"The 3C, daily chemical, food, pharmaceutical and other fields have developed very rapidly in the latter part of the past few years. These areas are inevitably the opportunities for parallel robots." Wu Jiangfeng added.
 
In addition to the food industry, logistics is also a labor-intensive industry, so the parallel robot manufacturers are also full of opportunities. At present, the equipment of Birkent has been tested in a logistics company, and it is believed that it will be officially put into use soon.
 
Huge threat stems from itself
 
Just as the most powerful bastions are often disintegrated from the inside, the biggest threat to parallel robots in the packaging field is also coming from within the industry.
 
Wu Jiangfeng said that when people make products, they regard competition as too heavy, instead of focusing on products with advantages. "Like Huawei will not deliberately compete, but carry out long-term technology accumulation. The robot industry likes to follow suit, and what products market will be good, many manufacturers have neglected the accumulation and inheritance of technology. When foreign companies enter the market At that time, these enterprises quickly "disarmed and surrendered" and changed to a new direction." Wu Jiangfeng said that this "escape" is not right, and the Chinese people are now very lack of concentrated resources to engage in research and development and technological innovation. “Many people laugh at the Chinese people, ‘small copying, slow development,’ because R&D needs to be sustained, and continuous investment is needed. When there is no technology accumulation, don’t think about surpassing foreign first-line brands.”
 
He also holds a similar point of view. He said that the competition in this industry is still very fierce, especially when someone discovers a new blue ocean, each company will swarm and turn the blue ocean into the Red Sea. Yan Hongxu gave an example: "In 2006, Wadi Intelligent began to develop smart palletizing programs. In 2008 and 2009, there were only a handful of domestic research-related technologies. However, in 2010, this kind of palletizing scheme suddenly mushroomed. This made Wadi accelerate the development of other application scenarios.” He believes that only by taking the lead can maintain its own advantages. “When others start to follow suit, it is unprofitable.”
 
“Be sure to be fast,” Yan Hongxu emphasized. “According to the actual needs of customers, we must quickly find the right point, and quickly do technical research and development, and solve the difficult problems of customers before the opponent.”
 
In addition, domestic robot companies seem to be keen on blind price wars. “After the price war, the whole industry began to develop unhealthyly. The company has no extra funds to carry out technological innovation and research and development, resulting in products getting worse and worse, prices are getting lower and lower, and the gap with foreign first-line brands is getting bigger and bigger.” Wu Jiangfeng The biggest threat comes from the short-sightedness of many companies in the industry. "I hope that all manufacturers will retain reasonable profits and invest some of their profits in research and development, because one day we will compete against foreign first-line brands, not price confrontation."