Automating the Simulation Process at AMCOR: A Case Study
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Virtual Private Cloud
Applicable Industries
- Packaging
- Plastics
Applicable Functions
- Procurement
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Intelligent Packaging
- Manufacturing Process Simulation
Services
- Testing & Certification
- Training
About The Customer
Amcor Rigid Plastics is a leading product supplier for food, beverage, healthcare, personal and homecare packaging segments. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan with over 59 manufacturing plants in 13 counties and over 6,000 employees. Working within the rigid plastics industry, the demand for sustainable practices are high. The company is continually looking for innovative and lightweight container designs which would be aesthetically pleasant and have an ease in handling for the consumer without compromising the quality, performance or safety. Simulation plays a major role in ensuring Amcor’s lightweight packages meet the functionality requirements.
The Challenge
Amcor Rigid Plastics, a leading product supplier for various packaging segments, was facing challenges in maintaining a balance between packaging performance, environmental impact, and shelf appeal while keeping costs to a minimum. The company was under pressure to create more environmentally friendly products. Amcor was also looking for innovative and lightweight container designs that would be aesthetically pleasing and easy to handle for the consumer without compromising on quality, performance, or safety. The company was using Altair’s HyperWorks suite to create accurate finite element models of the concept designs from the CAD teams to assess their performance in the virtual world. However, they wanted to explore ways to accelerate the engineering and analysis tasks associated with the development of new packaging products. The virtual test process used to investigate the performance of new packaging designs under various loading and impact scenarios was consuming a large amount of the simulation team’s time.
The Solution
Altair ProductDesign’s Enterprise Solution Group (ESG) worked with Amcor’s simulation specialists to identify where time and costs could be saved within the design process. They suggested that Amcor could take advantage of the Impact Simulation Director (ISD), which automates the laborious, manual tasks associated with model setup, analysis, postprocessing, and reporting. Altair ProductDesign worked closely with Amcor’s team to understand the existing impact simulation process in order to identify how the ISD could be best implemented to avoid disruption to the ongoing product development cycle. On-site training sessions were organized to help achieve a quick and effective adoption of the solution. Once implemented, the ISD was able to accelerate the modeling process by allowing the user to define mesh criteria for each part, automatically mesh the model and then quickly check mesh quality and status. The solution guides the analyst through the impact simulation process, creating solver decks from CAD geometry for a wide variety of analyses.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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