Packaging and Filling Line HMI: 2026 Benchmarking Review

This article draws on Creative Navy's project work in industrial and embedded interface design, spanning industrial robots, plant floor equipment across food, pharmaceutical, chemical, and materials manufacturing, industrial automation and control software, CAD/CAM systems, IoT platforms, and simulation software. Our work in this sector covers control room environments, plant floor operations, clean room manufacturing, and field deployment conditions: designing for process engineers, plant operators, maintenance technicians, and automation engineers. We work within the standards frameworks that govern these environments, including ISA-101 for HMI design, ISO 13849 and IEC 62061 for machinery safety, and IEC 61508 functional safety requirements, treating these as structural inputs to the design process rather than compliance checklists.

Key Statistics

Five packaging and filling system HMIs are reviewed here against a single question: does this interface help an operator run the line, or does it require the operator to already know how to run the line before they can use it?

That distinction now has a cost attached to it. As of late 2025, 95% of CPG companies report difficulty hiring skilled operators and technicians (PMMI, December 2025). Forty-three percent take four to six months to fully onboard a new line operator. The interface sitting between that operator and a running filler is part of the labour economics of the production line. It was always a design decision. Now it is also a commercial one.

This article evaluates Krones Connected HMI, KOCH easyControl, SIG Cruiser NEO, Pester Pac Tangius 4.0, and Fogg Filler using the Operational Legibility Standard: five criteria for whether an interface encodes operator workflow or encodes machine architecture. Evidence is drawn from benchmarking research conducted in March 2026, supplemented by the PMMI workforce research corpus published in late 2025. Where new entrants have shifted the competitive frame, those are noted.

The audience is product directors and senior PMs at packaging OEMs and CPG companies. The question is not whether your interface could be improved. The question is what the current state is costing your operation.

Poor packaging and filling system HMI design has a measurable workforce cost. As of late 2025, 43% of CPG companies take four to six months to fully onboard a line operator, and PMMI links this directly to complex, poorly designed interfaces. In a market where 95% of CPG companies report difficulty hiring, onboarding time is a production variable the interface controls. A two-month onboarding curve is recoverable from throughput. A four-month one, compounded across attrition, is not.

The Operational Legibility Standard organises the review around five criteria. They are not design preferences. They are the conditions under which an operator can function independently on a packaging line without extended personal instruction.

State transparency. Does the home screen convey machine status without navigation? An operator arriving at the HMI mid-shift should read current production state, speed, and fault condition without a tap.

Changeover efficiency. Can a format change be completed with minimal steps, clear parameter visibility, and immediate feedback on what has changed? Product changeover is the highest-frequency high-cognitive-load task on most filling lines.

Fault differentiation. Does the interface distinguish actionable faults from informational alerts? An interface that assigns equal visual weight to all alert types trains operators to treat all alerts as ignorable.

Embedded guidance. Does the interface carry sufficient contextual information that an operator can complete unfamiliar tasks from within the HMI? This criterion was secondary when experienced operators were reliably available. It is not secondary now.

Line-level navigation. For multi-machine systems, can an operator locate a fault or parameter in the physical line from the interface, without memorising machine topology?

Scores in the reviews below are qualitative and derived from publicly available evidence. This is not a controlled usability trial.

Strongest performer across all five criteria.

The Krones Connected HMI platform won an iF Design Award and a Red Dot Best of Best. Both awards cited the same design properties documented in 2024: clean visual hierarchy, generous whitespace, operator-customisable widget layout, and a top-bar timeline that keeps production state present without navigation. The platform has not been redesigned; it has been extended, and the extensions are consequential.

On state transparency, it performs at the top of this group. A production counter, availability metrics, and a timeline of upcoming tasks are present on the home screen. The customisable second screen allows individual operators to surface the parameters most relevant to their role, reducing navigation load at the moments it compounds most.

On changeover efficiency, the drag-to-activate format change model is the most operationally legible product-change workflow in this review. The "Frequently produced" tab reduces search time to the formats that actually recur. This is constraint respecting: the design acknowledges that operators repeat a narrow set of formats and builds the workflow around that operational reality rather than the complete format library.

The most significant development since the 2024 benchmarking is the Dynafill AI, launched for field testing in 2024 and awarded in the "Intelligent Control" category by the Business Intelligence Group. This integrates machine-learning-driven fill-level adjustment directly from the Connected HMI, removing a category of manual parameter interventions that previously required operator judgment. A 2025 Process and Data Automation case study documenting the first Modufill Dual installation with the Connected HMI noted that the line's MES team updated their SOPs to reflect the new interface. The predecessor HMI created enough of a procedural gap that the difference required formal documentation.

That finding is worth attention. An HMI that is more legible than its predecessor generates its own documentation pressure: when operators actually use it as designed, the gap with prior practice becomes visible. The Dynafill AI also raises a question this benchmarking cannot settle, addressed in Limits and Gaps below.

On fault differentiation, the timeline-based notification structure provides temporal context that lifts this above the sector median. On embedded guidance and line-level navigation, Krones performs well. The platform's sophistication also means its onboarding surface for new operators is wider than simpler alternatives.

Precise, stable, and less recognised than it deserves.

The easyControl platform, designed by CaderaDesign and implemented in HTML and CSS, has not been materially redesigned since the 2024 benchmarking. That is not a weakness. The core design decisions have not required correction because they were grounded in operator workflow from the start.

The standout feature remains the "Compare values" function in format management. When changing between product formats, the operator views current and target parameter sets side by side, copies values selectively, and sees which parameters have been modified. This is the right design decision for the most cognitively demanding regular task on a packaging line. It does not simplify the task; it makes the task's structure transparent.

On changeover efficiency, KOCH's format management screen is the most carefully constructed workflow in this review. The format manager is reachable from both the main menu and the top bar. That is a small decision and a correct one: operators arrive at format management from different starting points depending on what interrupted them, and the interface accommodates both.

On state transparency, the circular gauge chart and colour-coded speed indicator perform well above average. On embedded guidance and line-level navigation, KOCH's digital twin offering addresses both in principle, shortening the gap between unfamiliar and operational during commissioning. Whether that guidance is available to operators during production is not established in public materials.

The risk for KOCH is not in the HMI itself. It is in accumulation over time. The easyControl platform is adding auxiliary modules and digital extensions without revising its base interaction model. As additions accrue, the question is whether the coherence of the original design survives the scope. The current approach is sound; the trajectory is worth monitoring.

Platform expanding; interface evolution not independently documented.

SIG launched the SIG Neo Slimline 15 Aseptic at Gulfood Manufacturing in November 2024, extending the NEO platform to 15,000 packs per hour at 25% higher throughput than standard family-size machines. Across 2024, speed-up kits were deployed across ten existing lines in India. The NEO platform is growing.

What is not documented is how the Cruiser HMI has evolved to match that growth. No independent account of interface changes, revised navigation structure, or new workflows corresponding to the Slimline 15's operational contexts has been found in publicly available materials. SIG describes the Cruiser as "state-of-the-art" and "intuitive" without the evidence that would make either claim assessable.

From what the existing benchmarking established: state transparency is above average. The SIG NEO dashboard deploys multiple data visualisation tools, and the beverage carton visual centred on the screen provides a spatially grounded reference for setup parameters. Recipe management is clear: target quantities, the operator who loaded the current recipe, and modification timestamps are all visible. The last item, modification attribution with a timestamp, is a genuine distinction. Most interfaces in this review do not provide it.

On fault differentiation and embedded guidance, the evidence base is insufficient to rate. The expansion of the platform to new machine types without documented interface evolution creates operational risk. Operators running the Slimline 15 in contexts the Cruiser HMI was not originally designed around will encounter edge cases the interface may not have been updated to address. That is not a finding; it is a gap in the public evidence that SIG should close.

Differentiated on line-level navigation; efficiency claims unverified.

The Tangius 4.0 takes a different primary design bet from Krones and KOCH. Rather than organising around the dashboard, it organises around a 3D model of the physical line. Operators rotate the model to any orientation, tap into component-level detail, and navigate to a fault or parameter by locating it physically.

For multi-machine systems, this is a meaningful structural choice. When a fault sits on a specific conveyor segment or seal unit, physical location anchors the operator's attention in a way a fault code in a list does not. On line-level navigation, Pester is the standout in this review.

On instant production KPI visibility, the 3D view is less legible than Krones or KOCH. The physical geography model is strong for fault location and multi-machine oversight; it is a less efficient primary surface for moment-to-moment production monitoring. That is a trade-off, not a failure: the design serves a different primary use case.

Pester claims the tangius 4.0 delivers 50% faster machine operation. No third-party validation has been found. The claim is included for completeness and should not inform purchasing decisions.

The platform is being extended with the adjuTOR Assistant and adjuBATCH Batchmanagement modules. These are functional additions; the 3D navigation model remains the centrepiece. No successor platform is in evidence.

The failure case. No updates since April 2024.

No evidence of interface changes to the Fogg Filler HMI has been found in any public channel since the 2024 benchmarking. The original observations stand: an array of unlabelled or minimally labelled buttons on the dashboard; no system-level visualisation; no production status overview accessible from the home screen; visual representations of machine functions present only multiple navigation levels deep, absent at the whole-system level.

Operators arrive at the Fogg interface and are required to already know what to do. The interface does not carry its own logic. Against all five Operational Legibility Standard criteria, Fogg scores at the bottom of this review.

The commercial consequence is not aesthetic. In a workforce environment where 43% of CPG companies take four to six months to onboard a line operator, an interface that extends that timeline by encoding machine architecture rather than operator workflow is a measurable overhead. That overhead accrues on every hire, across every shift where an operator encounters an unfamiliar task the interface cannot guide them through.

This is what Flexible Packaging Insider described in November 2024 as OEMs "inadvertently" creating HMI applications that "may seem 'normal' to that OEM, but not to the end user." The Fogg interface fits that description precisely. The problem is structural, not cosmetic.

The temptation when reading a benchmarking review is to treat visual quality as the primary lever. Krones and KOCH perform well and their interfaces look clean; the inference is that investment in visual design produces the outcome.

It does not. Fogg's interface does not fail because it lacks polish. It fails because it was organised around the machine's internal architecture rather than around what an operator does during a production shift. The button array reflects the software model. The operator's workflow is not in it.

KOCH's "Compare values" function is not a visual feature. It is a decision about what the format changeover workflow requires at the moment of highest cognitive load. The result happens to look clean, but that appearance follows from the functional clarity. Design the function correctly for the operator's actual task and the visual organisation tends to follow.

What separates Operational Legibility Standard leaders from laggards is a different answer to the same foundational question: what is the operator doing at this moment, and what do they need to know to do it correctly? The interfaces that answer that question are legible. Those that answer a different question, about what the machine is, are not.

Packaging machinery purchase decisions are increasingly driven by HMI capability, according to PMMI's 2025 State of the Industry assessment of the $11.3 billion US packaging machinery market. In high-turnover environments, buyers are looking for equipment that shortens operator onboarding. The competitive vector here is not styling. How standardised, reusable embedded GUI systems affect both engineering cost and OEM profitability across this market is documented in this analysis.

The table pattern is cleaner than individual scores suggest. Krones and KOCH share one structural characteristic that none of the other systems fully match: they both encode the most frequently repeated high-stakes task. For Krones, this is format change via drag-and-drop with a priority tab for recurring formats. For KOCH, this is format management via side-by-side parameter comparison. Both decisions treat operational recurrence as the primary design constraint.

Fogg encodes none of the operator's recurring tasks in the interface. The design process does not appear to have included an account of what operators do repeatedly under time pressure.

SIG and Pester occupy middle ground in different ways. SIG's dashboard is above average in state transparency but its interface evolution relative to its platform expansion is undocumented. Pester's 3D navigation is the clearest differentiator for fault location across multi-machine lines, but the production monitoring surface lacks the immediacy of Krones or KOCH.

The arrival of Feige Filling's ELEMENTRA 26, announced for Interpack 2026 with a 15.6-inch multi-touch web-based HMI explicitly claiming a reduced training period, introduces a competitive forcing function. A new entrant leading with onboarding time reduction as a primary HMI marketing claim shows how significant workforce pressure has become at the point of capital equipment purchase. The established vendors in this review have not yet had to make that claim verifiable.

Three principles follow from the benchmarking.

The dashboard is the line's first responder surface. An operator arriving at the HMI under time pressure, after a fault, mid-changeover, should read machine state without a navigation tap. If the home screen requires interaction to surface production status, the interface has added cognitive overhead to the moment it should be removing it.

Format changeover is the design test that matters most. It is the highest-frequency, highest-cognitive-load task on most filling and packaging lines. The interfaces that handle it well have built the workflow around what the operator needs to know at each step: what parameters are changing, what the delta is, what requires confirmation. Interfaces that handle it poorly require operators to carry that structure externally, in their heads or in a printed reference.

Embedded guidance is no longer optional. Only 14% of CPG companies consider manuals effective for onboarding. The workforce arriving at packaging lines no longer includes a reliable cohort of experienced operators to shadow. The interface needs to carry enough contextual information that an operator can complete an unfamiliar task from within the HMI. Interfaces designed on the assumption of trained operators are structurally misaligned with how plant floors operate as of 2025.

In projects across industrial and embedded GUI contexts, the finding that consistently surprises engineering-led product teams is not that beginners struggle with poor HMIs. It is that mid-tenure operators are the ones most disrupted. They have partially internalised the interface's logic, built personal workarounds for the parts that do not function correctly, and stopped noticing that those workarounds exist. The workarounds are invisible in any formal training record and they leave with the operator. Understanding when the accumulated cost of interface workarounds exceeds the cost of structural renewal is the subject of this analysis.

For packaging OEMs, the commercial argument for HMI investment is most direct when framed as a sales differentiator rather than a development cost. In the current market, an HMI that demonstrably reduces operator onboarding time is a verifiable claim at the point of capital equipment purchase. The operations director, the HR function, and the procurement lead all have a stake in that claim in a way they do not for throughput figures they cannot independently test. What evidence-based embedded GUI design delivers across this class of equipment is documented here.

A packaging line HMI that reduces operator onboarding time does four things: organises the home screen around machine state; treats format changeover as the primary workflow design problem; makes faults locatable in physical context rather than abstract alert codes; and carries embedded guidance sufficient for operators to complete unfamiliar tasks without external instruction. Systems that do all four produce shorter onboarding timelines. No system in this review has independently verified that its design produces the operator outcomes its marketing claims.

This review is based entirely on publicly available evidence. No hands-on testing of any system was conducted for this article. Ratings are derived from vendor documentation, award citations, trade press, operator forum threads, and industry association research. None of the scores should be read as findings from a controlled usability evaluation.

The most significant evidence gap is for Fogg Filler. No post-April 2024 interface documentation was found, which means the critique cannot be confirmed as current. It also cannot be refuted.

SIG's platform expansion creates a second genuine gap. Whether the Cruiser HMI has been updated to address the operational contexts the Slimline 15 Aseptic introduces is not established from publicly available materials. SIG's descriptions of "state-of-the-art" interface quality are not verifiable from what is available.

The arrival of AI-driven fill-level control through Krones Dynafill raises a question the Operational Legibility Standard was not built to address. When the HMI mediates access to machine-learning-controlled machine behaviour, what the interface needs to communicate changes. A fill-level adjustment made by an ML model rather than an operator-entered parameter creates a different accountability question when something goes wrong. An interface designed for static parameter control may not carry the contextual transparency that AI-driven parameter variation requires. Whether the Connected HMI's current design is adequate for that accountability load is an open question. It is the most consequential unresolved design question in this benchmarking.

The Operational Legibility Standard used in this review was constructed for this article. It has not been validated against operator outcome data. It is a structured analytical lens, not an empirically derived scale.

The systems that perform well in this review share one orientation: they treat the operator's workflow as the primary design constraint. The systems that perform poorly reverse this, expecting operators to adapt to the machine's internal logic.

When 95% of CPG companies are struggling to hire and 43% report four-to-six-month operator onboarding timelines, that distinction produces directly measurable operational costs. The packaging OEM that can demonstrate shorter operator onboarding through interface design has a verifiable advantage in capital equipment sales. The one that cannot is competing on throughput specifications against buyers whose labour constraint is already at a critical level.

The open question this benchmarking leaves is not which system performs best today. It is whether AI-driven adaptive interfaces, entering the market through Krones Dynafill and expected more broadly, will close the operational legibility gap or compound it. A static interface can be learned and internalised. An interface that adapts its own behaviour is harder for an operator to build a reliable mental model of. The design discipline required to make adaptive interfaces legible is not the same as the discipline required to make static interfaces legible. That problem has not yet been addressed in this product category.

What is the main business cost of poor packaging line HMI design? Extended operator onboarding time. PMMI's December 2025 research found that 43% of CPG companies take four to six months to fully onboard a line operator, and PMMI explicitly identifies complex, poorly designed HMIs as a direct contributor. In a hiring environment where 95% of CPG companies report difficulty finding skilled operators, each month of extended onboarding time represents production capacity that cannot be recovered. Across attrition cycles, an interface that requires four months of learning rather than two compounds that cost continuously.

Which packaging line HMI performs best on format changeover? KOCH easyControl's format management screen is the strongest changeover workflow in this review. Its "Compare values" function places current and target parameter sets side by side, allows selective copying, and tracks which parameters the operator has changed. This is the correct design response to the highest-cognitive-load regular task on most filling lines. Krones Connected HMI's drag-to-activate approach with a "Frequently produced" priority tab is the strongest alternative, particularly for operators running a narrow, repeating format range.

How does the Fogg Filler HMI compare to Krones or KOCH? The Fogg Filler interface scores at the bottom of this review on all five Operational Legibility Standard criteria: state transparency, changeover efficiency, fault differentiation, embedded guidance, and line-level navigation. The home screen provides no production status overview; system-level visualisation is absent; buttons are largely unlabelled. No evidence of interface updates since April 2024 has been found. The gap from Fogg to Krones or KOCH is structural: one set of interfaces encodes operator workflow; the other encodes machine architecture.

What is Krones Dynafill AI and does it change the HMI evaluation? Krones Dynafill AI, which entered field testing in 2024 and won a Business Intelligence Group "Intelligent Control" award, integrates machine-learning-controlled fill-level adjustment directly from the Connected HMI. It removes a category of manual parameter interventions that previously required operator judgment. A 2025 case study documented that MES teams updated SOPs when switching to the Connected HMI tablet system, which indicates the interface difference from predecessor systems was material enough to require procedural change. Whether the Connected HMI's current design adequately communicates the accountability structure of ML-driven parameter control is an open question.

Has the SIG Cruiser HMI been updated alongside the 2024 SIG NEO platform expansion? SIG launched the SIG Neo Slimline 15 Aseptic at Gulfood Manufacturing in November 2024, a 25% throughput increase over standard NEO machines. No independent documentation of corresponding Cruiser HMI changes has been found. SIG describes the Cruiser as "state-of-the-art" but provides no specific interface update evidence. Whether operators running the Slimline 15 encounter an interface designed around its operational context, or an interface designed around predecessor machine behaviour, is not established in public materials.

What is the Operational Legibility Standard used in this review? The Operational Legibility Standard is the evaluation framework developed for this benchmarking. It assesses five dimensions: state transparency (machine status visible without navigation), changeover efficiency (the format change workflow), fault differentiation (actionable versus informational alerts), embedded guidance (contextual instruction carried within the HMI), and line-level navigation (physical fault location from the interface). It was constructed from what operators need to accomplish during a production shift, not from design quality criteria. It has not been formally validated against operator outcome data.

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