Industry 4.0 / IIoT

There is a misconception that the benefits of industrial robots are reserved for few manufacturing giants. However, according to the Robotics Industries Association (RIA), enterprises with less than 100 employees and less than ten robots represent a growing segment of the robotics market. Here, Neil Ballinger, Head of EMEA at EU Automation, explains what to consider when implementing industrial robotics in small and mid-sized manufacturing businesses.

Stratus Technologies has announced a ‚Solution in a Box‘ process control architecture. The solution runs Rockwell Automation PlantPAx 5.0 software on Stratus ztC Edge, performance tested, characterised, and validated by Stratus and Rockwell Automation, to ensure reliable, rapid deployment by operations teams and systems integrators using a single industrial-grade, panel-mounted Edge Computing device

Food production must increase to feed an extra two billion people by 2050 - but how can this be done with limited land and workforce? Here Stewart Goulding, Managing Director of Electro Mechanical Systems (EMS), explores how technology can boost the productivity of agriculture.

Mitsubishi Electric has announced a new collaboration with Radiflow, a provider of OT cyber security solutions for industrial automation networks. The collaboration will help businesses leverage industrial automation solutions within a secure framework. Customers also benefit from a single point of contact to create smart manufacturing solutions with secure Operational Technology (OT) networks.

Automation systems are widely known to provide boosts to productivity and cost effectiveness for industry. These benefits typically increase with more complex and sophisticated systems, which allow the user to achieve more. However, for machine builders and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), the increased complexity of automation can result in more time consuming and expensive projects, presenting greater challenges to being cost competitive and profitable.

For years, Industry 4.0 has been a term that has grabbed the attention of not just business leaders, but political leaders too. Offering increased interconnectivity and networked intelligence through the Internet of Things (IoT) or other cyber-physical systems, Industry 4.0 is far more interlinked than revolutions before. However, there is a fine line between elegant networking and a tangle of hyper-automated systems, argues George Walker, Managing Director of Novotek UK & Ireland.

The BMW plant in Steyr, Austria, is the BMW Group’s largest engine plant worldwide. At the facility, the top priorities are quality, efficiency and the transformation to Industry 4.0 through the implementation of digital technologies at shop floor level. To improve all three, plant managers embraced Autonomous Machine Vision, a new category of machine vision for quality inspection developed by German-Israeli company Inspekto.

Rockwell Automation has announced a set of new IIoT capabilities for FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, powered by PTC to simplify, scale and accelerate digital transformation for industrial organisations. This news follows the recent announcement that the two companies are extending and expanding the scope of their strategic alliance following strong market momentum and widespread industry recognition of InnovationSuite.

With an overall turnover of €1,109bn and more than 4.5mn people employed across the continent, the food and drink industry is undoubtedly one of the most economically important industries in Europe. Add to this the fact that there are 294,000 European companies active in the industry and it becomes plain to see why the ability to remain competitive is vital for food manufacturers. Here, George Walker, Managing Director of Novotek UK and Ireland, offers practical tips to stay competitive with food automation.

Rockwell Automation has introduced the first capability of its edge strategy with FactoryTalk Edge Gateway, to simplify and accelerate IT/OT convergence. Industrial enterprises struggle to aggregate operational data from heterogeneous sources and add relevant context from the source - such as process conditions, time stamps, machine states and other production states - to the IT layer. This prevents them from uncovering potentially game-changing insights at the enterprise level.