Design of a Packaging Machine: General Description and Conceptualization

Abstract

This Chapter is devoted to the description of the conceptual design of an industrial product, the SASIB ALFA Packer (Sasib S.p.a., Bologna, now part of the COESIA Group, Italy), an automatic machine for the packaging industry, developed in the eighties, under the direction of one of the authors. The Dante Alighieri motto “It is true that, as a form is frequently discordant with the intention of an art, because its matter in response is deaf”, reminds us that in any human activity a gap always exists between theory and practical implementation. Design of artifacts shows a deep gap between conceptual phase and realization inside a business oriented organization. While theory gives guidelines for the design of a product, industrial practice is product oriented, i.e. its goal is to “develop a new product” taking into account any related activity “from cradle to grave”; while theory takes into account essentially “physical” constraints, a real mass production must consider human and social constraints such as time, expenditure, human resources, customers, and stakeholders, psychology, etc.

Vero che, come forma non s’accorda molte fiate all’intenzion de l’arte, perché a risponder la materia è sorda,

Now it is true we all too often find his finished work belies an artist’s purpose, when his matter is deaf and won’t respond,

(Dante Alighieri: La Divina Commedia, Paradiso I, 129. Translated by J. G. Nichols)