Business View Magazine | February 2020

45 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2020 was mostly hand packing; there wasn’t a whole lot of automation in that area. An operator would grab a bag off a machine and place it directly into a case; it was all manual.” Dave began by making a machine for Frito-Lay that helped flip bags of potato chips upright, so that they could be more easily packed. His semi- automatic case packing machines, over time, evolved into today’s fully-automated and robotic lines all the way from bagging to palletizing. According to Fallas’ VP of Electrical and Controls, Jacob Cox, the need for fully automated packaging equipment is part and parcel of what has become known as “Industry 4.0,” which is characterized by “smart factories” that contain cyber-physical systems that monitor physical processes and communicate and cooperate with each other both internally and across organizational services offered and used by all participants of the value chain. These machines are further augmented with wireless connectivity and sensors, and are part of a system that can FALLAS AUTOMAT ION, INC . visualize the entire production line and make decisions on its own, while simultaneously exchanging data over the Internet of Things (IoT). “IoT and Industry 4.0 has grown a lot and is a pretty important topic for a lot of our customers,” Cox explains. “That’s really driven us to focus a lot more on the software side to make sure that we’re being competitive and providing the information that the customer needs.” Maeyaert adds, “We really are focusing on fully automating the machinery; making our machines as simple to operate as possible, while helping the staff that’s there to maintain and run the machines without having to babysit them. So, the machine is able to say, ‘Hey, something is going to happen soon; check on this,’ as opposed to a maintenance staff saying, ‘We need to maintain this,’ or ‘That doesn’t sound right.’ We really need the machines to be able to tell maintenance staff that something needs to be addressed.” In addition to being a relatively small company