Whether it’s a pretzel, cookie, chip or cracker, greater process control often results in a better snack. At packaging, the growing adoption of digital controls ensures that product quality isn’t diminished at the final step. 

“Digital controls allow for precise control and automation of packaging machinery,” said Bernardo Zermeno, marketing and customer development director, Rexfab. “This enables accurate filling, consistent sealing and labeling, real-time monitoring, and the adjustment of manufacturing parameters (temperature, speed, pressure, etc.), reducing errors and increasing efficiency.”

If packaging parameters vary even slightly day to day, the result can be an inconsistent, lower quality final product, noted Dennis Gunnell, president, Formost Fuji. The use of digital controls, however, promotes a high degree of repeatability so that snacks are packaged the right way every time.  

“In the old days, you’d scale things and if it was close, it was good. And that’s not the way it is anymore,” he said. “You don’t need it close — you need it where it needs to be set, and then you repeat that every time you come back to it.”

Josh Becker, product manager, bakery/confection, Harpak-Ulma, echoed this, observing that increased product weight control is perhaps the greatest benefit digital controls provide to a packaging operation.

“Whether it’s a snack bar or a mixture of multiple or single products into a package, understanding how to best control that package weight to me is one of the most important factors,” he said.  

Jeff Almond, industry manager, snack food packaging, Heat and Control, said the company aims to reduce the decisions operators must make on its equipment, as well as how often they must adjust packaging parameters, both of which introduce opportunity for error. 

“Ishida has optimized the equipment settings for all the snack products and uses a software algorithm and optical sensing combination to make further adjustments as conditions vary from hour to hour or from shift to shift,” he said.

He added the controls eliminate mistakes such as using the wrong seasoning, erroneous packaging material or incorrect code dating. 

Digital controls have become more beneficial as producers struggle with less available labor, especially skilled labor, to operate their lines, said Bill Kehrli, vice president of sales and marketing, Cavanna Packaging. 

“As the skill sets in bakeries diminish, there is less left to thought [by using digital controls],” he explained.

 Kehrli said Cavanna’s machines today are built to better accomodate this lack of skilled labor.

These controls also facilitate predictive maintenance, said Mukul Shukla, vice president, TNA North America, helping snack makers identify and resolve issues on the line before they lead to equipment failure and costly waste and downtime.

The flexibility of a packaging line may also be improved, allowing snack producers to make a wider range of products and more easily introduce new ones. 

“With the ability to easily adjust parameters for different products or packaging sizes, manufacturers can quickly adapt to market demands or product innovations without the need for extensive manual reconfigurations,” Shukla said.

This article is an excerpt from the April 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Snack Packaging, click here.