Packaging and material handling strategies in 2026 The VarioFlow belt conveyor from Bosch Rexroth ensures smooth transport with high adaptability, reliability, and easy integration. (Photo: Bosch Rexroth) Pack Expo East drew more than 7,300 attendees and 2,700 exhibitor personnel to highlight the latest advancements in automation, smart manufacturing, sustainable materials, and AI-driven solutions. The regional event provided new machinery, breakthrough materials, advanced automation, and smart manufacturing technologies transforming the industry in 2026. These meetings led to in-depth discussions on automation strategies, conveyance factors and how software helps manufacturers make well-informed decisions about productivity, maintenance, and efficiency. PTE was able to discuss these strategies with key personnel from Bosch Rexroth, Motion AI, and Siemens Digital Industries Software during the show. Building an Automation Strategy with Bosch Rexroth I had the pleasure of sitting down and discussing automation with Krupa Ravichandraan, sales product manager, assembly tech, at Bosch Rexroth during Pack Expo East. Most of the conversation involved where (and how) small to mid-sized manufacturing companies should begin their automation strategy and deployment. Ravichandraan said not enough personnel understand the variety of processes taking place on the shop floor. They need to walk the entire floor, study each process, and manually observe how each machine operates. Where can automation improve production? How can automation eliminate bottlenecks? “Once you understand your processes, you can begin to pinpoint the areas on the floor where improvements can help efficiency, throughput, and productivity. That is the first step for small and medium-sized organizations. It is simply seeing where an automation strategy fits,” Ravichandraan said.

If an organization needs to hire several people to meet their throughput demands, it is time to zero-in on the real bottlenecks in the production line. These are typically high ROI, low capital investments that organizations first look towards when automating the plant floor. “Then you ask more questions,” he added. “What areas can I automate today? Do I have the money for this upgrade? If I do not, then typically people go for end of line automation because it is high ROI, labor intensive, injury prone assignments, and you can easily take liability away from the process. This is where someone might automate case packing with a robot or gantry system—the low hanging fruit that companies first think about in automation.” Next, they examine the overall structure of the production line. Will they be running multiple types of products, shapes, and formats? What is this going to look like from both a financial and operational perspective? Are they considering what the production line will look like five years down the road? “Is the space optimized for your production floor? Sometimes you draw up a useful design for your automation needs, but it uses a lot of floor space. Now, you are unable to add more capacity in the future. So, having that holistic view at the beginning will save the organization money in the future. How can I get rid of certain equipment, rearrange the manufacturing cell, and capture all the valuable floor space?” In my previous job I was doing application engineering system integration. I was drawing the lines from end to end for all these big and small end-users for food and beverage companies. We would draw the whole layout, even for five years down the line. What would they need? What will it cost? In the future, when they thought about adding new products, they simply needed to give us a call and we already had a planned layout,” he added. Flexible machines is another growing area of interest across packaging applications and a major talking point on the trade show floor at Pack Expo East in Philadelphia. Ravichandraan said most manufacturers are asking about flexible machines today. They do not want to get tied up with a “one off” or buy a dedicated machine for a single process. Flexible machines combines automation with adaptability giving manufacturers the ability to manage multiple product types, batch sizes, and process sequences without extensive reconfiguration. This allows for quick adjustments to product design, volume or production orders, a perfect complement to areas like packaging and material handling where variety is key to success. “In 2026, this should also be something manufacturers consider as they are designing or upgrading their production lines. Where can flexible machines add value to the production?” Ravichandraan said. For conveyor technology, the topic of sustainability and energy efficiency continues to be an important subject. Although conveyors have not really changed in 40+ years, the industry is attempting to build more with less components. Can we run a large system with twenty motors instead of thirty? If we focus on energy efficiency when choosing conveyor designs, can we increase service time between maintenance intervals?

“Flexibility is important here as well,” Ravichandraan said. “This ties back to looking at your system and asking how flexible it can be moving forward. Can we change the size and scope of the framing construction? Modular aluminum framing, for example, allows you to have different width connectors to go from a narrow conveyor to a wide conveyor, using the same side frame. If you are using a stainless-steel model, you would have to redesign the whole conveyor system.”

In addition, AI was a significant part of the discussions at Pack Expo East. Many people involved in packaging and material handling are not getting requests from the end users to incorporate AI into their machines quite yet. It is more hype rather than a real feasible solution on the plant floor, but they are executing it on the software side (Google, Meta, etc.). There is a feeling that AI could be extremely valuable in PLC programming to make real-time changes on the production floor. This could involve retrofits or intricate changes to a manufacturing cell. The biggest use of AI in packaging and material handling might be all the data collected from sensors across production lines. “These companies are pulling so much data right now and have not found the best way to make sense of this information. AI will be able to process this information faster and produce floor strategies to get the most out of our analytic tools,” Ravichandraan added. “On the production floor itself, one day we will have an AI-assistant on each packaging machine to address maintenance or productivity issues. It will not only collect data but produce an action plan at the machine level and solve the problem.” With the addition of AI expansion, Ravichandraan noted other areas where technology will advance in the coming years for packaging applications. “Everything we are currently seeing in 2D bar coding will be incorporated in other areas like food safety, for example. People will have all the information they need from production to point of sale. This is already taking place today,” he said. The use of vibration, temperature and vision sensors will expand across the board incorporating AI and helping to solve maintenance challenges in real-time on the production floor. Plant managers will receive instant updates on equipment—this conveyor needs to be upgraded, or this motor is going to stop functioning in six months. You will get a detailed predictive analysis report when a chain is worn down or a manufacturing issue you may need to take back to the original vendor. “The power of predictive maintenance will expand exponentially. Instead of spending money on next day/overnight shipping for conveyor replacement parts, companies will invest in technologies that will catch potential maintenance challenges six months before they take place. There’s real power in having a detailed roadmap and an action plan in place before something goes wrong on the shop floor,” Ravichandraan said. At the beginning of the year, Ravichandraan said the conversations he was having with manufacturers included predictive maintenance, digital twins, 3D visual simulation, and the ability to utilize flexible machines in the future. “There’s technology coming into these markets that will make packaging applications more efficient. They will help drive the industry using software, AI, and sensors to make value-added decisions before upgrading machines or expanding shop floors.”