a config platform that fuels growth in machine building

About

Company
Pattyn
Location
Bruges, Belgium
Competences
next level machine building

enhanced configuration platform drives Pattyn’s growth

1. the big picture

To support its growth ambitions, Pattyn, a leading manufacturer of industrial packaging solutions, enlisted the expertise of Vintecc to co-develop and professionalize a dedicated configuration platform. This platform now enables Pattyn’s software development team to accelerate their processes and increase output by improving operational efficiency.

With over 65 years of experience, Pattyn provides high-performance packaging lines for food and non-food companies, enhancing efficiency, improving packaging quality, reducing product giveaway, and lowering packaging costs. Leveraging Pattyn’s proven and reliable technology, the company delivers turnkey solutions – from case erecting to palletizing – that are entirely Pattyn-made, ensuring a seamless and worry-free packaging process.

“We wanted to develop faster and reduce coding time. That’s why we decided to shift our focus towards configuration rather than coding.”

Alexander Libbrecht

Alexander Libbrecht

Team Lead Automation

2. challenge - Sustained growth

1. from coding to configuration

  • Pattyn aimed to achieve continuous growth and increase its development output without significantly expanding its current workforce. To meet these growth ambitions, Pattyn recognized the need for substantial changes in the development team’s workflow. A key obstacle to growth was a process that required extensive customization and coding for each new project.
  • “We needed to be able to develop faster and reduce coding time,” says Alexander Libbrecht, Team Lead Automation at Pattyn. “That’s why we decided to shift our focus towards configuration rather than coding.”

2. consistency and predictability

  • Configuring software components is typically faster than modifying code. Additionally, emphasizing configuration over customization enhances consistency and predictability across development projects.
  • “As our workload grew, it became increasingly difficult to keep track of who had done what for each customer,” Alexander explains. “This created the risk of time-consuming duplicated work and reinventing the wheel for every new project. Shifting our focus towards configuration could resolve this issue.”

3. solution: Configuration platform

To meet the need for greater configurability, Pattyn had developed its own Central Pattyn Repository of Modules (CPRM), a platform that integrates all standard Pattyn software modules into a database and details their core elements: parameters, objects, messages and alarms. These modules serve as a foundation for building fully featured standard machines that can easily be configured for each new customer.

1. We are engineers, not software developers

  • “We were convinced that the CPRM was our way forward, but it lacked the necessary professionalism and usability. Moreover, since Pattyn is not primarily a software developer, we lacked the manpower and expertise to maintain the platform effectively,” says Alexander. 
  • Pattyn enlisted Vintecc to further develop and implement the CPRM according to industry best practices. “We knew that Vintecc has extensive expertise in both backend and frontend development, making it the ideal partner to drive the CPRM project.”

2. Building with standard software modules

  • Vintecc implemented a professional-looking CPRM – a central web portal where machine configurations can be simply created, managed and downloaded by the team for use in their development projects, complete with version control. This has enabled the team to speed up the development cycle compared to the previous approach of coding and customization. 
  • The CPRM also enables the team to design packaging machines from a higher functional level, which enhances efficiency and standardization across projects. Additionally, the CPRM allows the team to configure the operator HMI used alongside the machine.

3. Manage documentation and versions

  • In addition to the engineering team, the documentation team now also uses the CPRM to store and manage all versioned asset descriptions and translations. Automation based documentation is made available via the CPRM to the company’s customer portal, making sure there’s a single source of truth for all items. Database backups are fully integrated into a cloud environment.

4. result: Faster development, more consistency

1. operational efficiency through standardization

  • “The CPRM, co-developed by Vintecc has allowed us to increase our overall operational efficiency through standardization,” says Alexander. “This way, we can avoid double work and develop much faster. Moreover, our code is far more consistent across projects, enabling reuse and reducing the risk of errors. Before, we had to code everything. Now, we can configure a machine simply by sending a downloaded configuration to the machine control. That's a huge difference.”

2. Able to scale

  • “The new CPRM is helping our company to realize considerable volume growth. Vintecc has been an essential technology partner in this along the way. The Vintecc team is very responsive and hands-on, and their expertise and affinity with manufacturing projects have proven to be invaluable for us.”

3. Time savings on all levels

  • In the long run, the CPRM will also pave the way for virtual commissioning, eliminating the need to physically set up peripheral items (e.g. conveyers). This advancement will allow design, engineering and manufacturing processes run in parallel rather than sequentially, resulting in substantial time savings.
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