Application Solution‌

Industry Background

Inkjet coders are critical equipment for product marking and traceability, widely deployed across food & beverage, pharmaceutical, personal‑care, electronics, cable and other packaging‑related manufacturing sectors. By printing production dates, batch numbers, serial numbers, barcodes and QR‑codes, inkjet coders assign unique digital identifiers to every product, forming the foundation for brand protection, quality traceability, channel control and regulatory compliance.

KGK inkjet coders deliver stable printing performance with rich product portfolios. The CCS‑R and CCS3000L series are two widely‑adopted mainstream models on production lines.
As manufacturing digitalization advances, MES (Manufacturing Execution System) has become the core management platform for most factories. End‑to‑end data connectivity is essential for lean operations. However, most KGK coders still run as standalone, disconnected devices, creating a major break in the digital production chain. This gap cannot satisfy refined and flexible production requirements, making digital upgrade for marking processes urgent. Closed proprietary machine protocols are the primary technical bottleneck preventing data collection and MES integration.

Core Industry Pain Points

1. High Barriers from Proprietary Protocols Complicate Data Acquisition

Both CCS‑R and CCS3000L series apply KGK native proprietary communication protocols. Third‑party systems cannot directly read internal machine data. Most factories treat inkjet coders as “data black boxes”, and MES cannot obtain real‑world marking‑process information.

2. Decentralized Equipment & Delayed Response to Abnormalities

Inkjet coders are distributed across multiple production lines. Limited maintenance manpower makes full‑time round‑the‑clock monitoring difficult. Failures, poor printing quality and consumables exhaustion are often discovered only after large batches have been produced. This may lead to full‑batch scrap, direct financial losses and non‑compliance risks. Centralized equipment monitoring and automatic alerting are strongly required.

3. Low Change‑Over Efficiency & Insufficient Data Support

Under high‑mix, low‑volume production, operators must manually set printing content and adjust parameters on each coder during batch switching. Manual setup is time‑consuming and error‑prone, resulting in wrong, missing or duplicated codes that hinder flexible fast‑paced manufacturing. Manual paper‑based logging also causes latency and inaccuracy. Without real‑time data feeding into MES, output calculation, work‑order review and performance uation lack reliable foundations for fine‑grained management.

WideIOT Integrated Solution

Drawing on more than ten‑year expertise in industrial protocol parsing, WideIOT has developed dedicated protocol drivers for KGK CCS‑R and CCS3000L inkjet coders to resolve protocol barriers and MES‑connect requirements.

Deploy WideIOT WG‑series industrial intelligent gateways on‑site. With built‑in exclusive KGK protocol support, the gateway connects to KGK coders via RS‑232C serial port. It reliably collects full‑range data including equipment status, process parameters, production counts, fault alarms and remaining consumable levels. After edge‑computing‑driven standardization, data is securely transmitted to enterprise MES platforms over Ethernet, Wi‑Fi, 4G/5G networks.
The solution eliminates data silos for marking workflows, enabling unified access, centralized monitoring and remote command delivery for all plant‑wide inkjet coders, and accelerates digital transformation for marking processes.

Note: The gateway also supports standard protocols such as Modbus‑TCP and OPC UA for collecting data from other brands and models of inkjet coders.

Core Functional Modules

1. Multi‑Protocol & Multi‑Interface Compatibility to Break Data‑Collection Barriers

WideIOT industrial gateways integrate serial, Ethernet and expandable IO interfaces. Rich built‑in industrial protocol libraries plus exclusive KGK driver support accommodate inkjet coding equipment of different generations and models for fast data acquisition.

2. Bidirectional Communication to Support Work‑Order‑Linked Production Change‑Over

The gateway uploads real‑time coder status, yield figures, quality indicators and fault information to MES. Meanwhile, it receives printing templates, batch information and process parameters issued by MES and remotely pushes them to target production‑line coders for automatic execution. Authorized staff can release printing templates with one click within MES, drastically cutting change‑over waiting time and improving line throughput.

3. Edge‑Computing‑Powered Efficient Data Processing

Powerful on‑site edge capabilities support adjustable sampling cycles, data filtering & cleansing, alarm‑threshold calculation, change‑trigger detection and custom formula computation. Raw data is standardized, outliers are filtered and logical calculations are completed locally before uploading to MES. This reduces invalid bandwidth consumption and eases computing‑ & storage‑load for upper‑level systems.

4. Multi‑Dimensional Intelligent Alerts for Fast Incident Response

Multi‑level configurable alert rules can be defined for different scenarios. When anomalies are detected, alerts are triggered and distributed via pop‑up window, SMS and email. Maintenance teams receive precise information on faulty units and root causes to accelerate troubleshooting, minimize downtime losses and secure stable production.

5. Open Standard Interfaces for Flexible Enterprise‑System Integration

Standard open APIs support mainstream industrial protocols: MQTT, Modbus TCP, OPC UA and HTTP. Collected inkjet‑coder data can be formatted and uploaded to MES, ERP, PLM and other IT platforms. The solution fits existing enterprise IT architectures without large‑scale reconstruction to realize seamless data interoperability.

6. Full‑Lifecycle Data Analytics for Lean Manufacturing

Within MES, inkjet‑marking data can be automatically bound to production work‑orders. Marking identifiers are associated with raw‑material batches, production shifts, process parameters and quality‑inspection records to build a complete end‑to‑end product traceability chain. When quality incidents occur, full‑process historical data can be rapidly retrieved for root‑cause analysis and process improvement, supporting continuous production‑management optimization.

Solution Benefits

Through deep adaptation to KGK proprietary protocols, WideIOT converts CCS‑R / CCS3000L inkjet coders from isolated data silos into real‑time data nodes connected to MES. Marking workflows are fully incorporated into plant‑wide production management, realizing end‑to‑end digital control for coding‑related operations. It delivers solid data infrastructure for lean manufacturing and smart‑factory initiatives and accelerates overall factory digital transformation.