Burst snack bags were causing downtime on the secondary packaging line, and cases with too few bags led to customer complaints at a major production facility. Our engineers solved these issues through both software and mechanical improvements.
Secondary packaging often looks deterministic on paper: a defined bag size, a defined case, a defined pattern. In daily production, the variation is rarely that tidy. At a customer’s plant a customer pattern challenges became a useful case for how Tronrud Packaging’s specialists approach improvements in the field.
The core issue was linked to fill level and bag height. If the bag is outside a certain “height window,” the pattern that was designed to fit neatly inside the case can become unstable. When several bags are built into a row, a few millimetres of extra height can make the group effectively “too big” for the case geometry.
In practice, that can cause bags to be pushed against case edges, and in some cases, bags can end up outside the case during the push-in sequence.
The impact is not limited to the packaging cell. Missing bags in a carton becomes a downstream quality issue that may first be detected by the customer’s customer through complaints about cartons containing too few bags.
The customer has a high-volume site with many lines and many operators. In that environment, the level of experience varies amongst the operators, and small deviations in upstream settings can become frequent enough to matter.
Our improvement approach was to work on the software where patterns are created, and on the mechanic conditions where physics takes over.
The pattern builder for the TCP G3 relies on multiple belts working together to present the pattern before it is pushed into the case. How those belts coordinate has a direct effect on the pattern’s repeatability.
One part of the upgrade was therefore a software improvement to pattern building. In simplified terms, the change increased the system’s ability to calculate where bags should “land” and how a selected pattern should be presented.
The operator interface was largely familiar, i.e. there was no new operating “burden”. Quite the other way around: The machine handled more of the optimization automatically, reducing the need for manual fine-tuning to get a clean pattern.
TCP G3 automated packing machine by Tronrud Packaging
The second part addressed the failure mode that software alone cannot fully remove: when a bag is slightly out of spec, physics still wins. The team developed a mechanical arrangement around the push-in area described as a roof and side walls, plus a back wall created with flaps forming a physical tunnel that guides the bags during transfer.
The tunnel is stationary; only the pusher moves. The result is that the bags are constrained and gently forced into the case even when they are a bit too large.
At the customer, the change was initially validated on one machine. After it proved effective, the solution was adopted more broadly across the installed base at the site.
More to read: Scaling Secondary Packaging Across Sites
Pattern instability is often discussed as a quality topic, but it is also a maintenance and efficiency topic. When bags are lost or burst, product can spill in and around the machine. That adds cleanup time and can introduce secondary issues if residue remains in the equipment.
Improved pattern stability therefore contributes not only to fewer “missing bag” cases, but also to less cleaning-related downtime and a smoother operator routine.
Also relevant: How to Reduce Packaging Line Downtime
The case describes a tight collaboration model at Tronrud Packaging, including frequent customer touchpoints and a structured list of improvement points collected from real operation.
This case shows a pragmatic engineering principle: pattern stability improves most when software logic and mechanical guidance are developed side by side based on what production actually looks like, not only on what it should look like.
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