Industry 4.0 / IIoT

Mitsubishi Electric has extended its MELFA articulated arm and SCARA robot offering to include a range of delta robots. These combine Mitsubishi Electric’s award-winning servo technology with the latest mechanicals from e-F@ctory Alliance partner Codian Robotics. This combination enables the user to achieve reliable performance in higher speed pick and place operations, with the advantage of simple set-up and programming from one the markets main automation brands.

There is no question that the digitisation of all areas of life and work creates new business models. In the DACH region, the connection of digital transformation of products and manufacturing has been dubbed “Industrie 4.0” – industry 4.0. Obviously, this is not just about setting up a PC at the manufacturing line and hooking it up to the internet. Rather, the goal is to gain a competitive advantage, be it through raising efficiency or generating new offers, from leveraging the data collected as well as networking operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT).

In an increasingly competitive marketplace smarter machine tools can offer big advantages to production facilities such as increased flexibility, efficiency gains and reduced down-time. At EMO 2019 Mitsubishi Electric will be showing how these goals can be met with connected production systems, intelligent control systems, Edge Computing and partner solutions.

Siemens Digital Industries Software has announced that Maschinenfabrik Bernard Krone, an agricultural machinery company based in Germany, has selected the Siemens Digital Innovation Platform to help establish its digitalisation strategy. Using solutions including the Teamcenter portfolio and NX software, Krone will launch a new digitalisation program that will support processes over the entire product lifecycle as well as collaborative work between departments by leveraging the broad, integrated solutions that are part of the Siemens Digital Innovation Platform. 

Digitalisation and networking are key issues facing industry – and will also feature prominently at EMO Hannover 2019, which opens its doors in September. This year's theme is Smart technologies driving tomorrow's production! – the impact of which extends to the vocational training of future metalworking specialists.

By definition, the food and beverage industry is fast moving and always changing; milk goes off, bread gets eaten, and we want to eat more salads in the summer. But the combination of changing consumer demand, increasing regulation, complex supply chains for global sourcing and distribution, and competition from agile new competitors means food and beverage companies have to move faster than ever.

congatec has introduced a new rugged class of embedded edge server technologies designed for the digitisation of the upstream and midstream oil and gas industry. Both sectors are characterised by distributed assets and infrastructures in harsh environments and therefore require ultra-robust embedded platforms for the digital transformation challenge that offers a huge potential for cost savings.

Critical Manufacturing has officially released version 7 (V7) of its modern Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for Industry 4.0. This Augmented MES release delivers four new modules: Augmented Reality, Experiments Management, Weigh and Dispense, and BI Cards. This latest version takes the already feature rich, modular solution to new levels; enhancing users’ experiences; speeding new product introduction (NPI); improving safety, reliability and visibility of processes and key performance indicators (KPIs).

It is worth stating that implementing smart manufacturing is a very worthwhile exercise, successfully applying a level of smart manufacturing will bring greater efficiencies and flexibility to any given production process. It is also a significant step toward ‘futureproofing’ a production enterprise. That 'forward thinking' mind-set is essential when implementing smart manufacturing projects where intelligent machines, systems and networks are capable of independently exchanging and responding to information to manage industrial production processes.

At the recent Unbound festival there was a panel discussion on digital transformation encompassing the digitalisation of business processes, assets and products. As with the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, high UX standards and increasing security threats, businesses need to be agile and embrace digital transformation. Moderator Kenneth Cukier, Senior Editor at The Economist started by asking the panel experts: “When we think about digital transformation do we think failure or success?”