Industry 4.0 / IIoT

To help sheet metal manufacturers implement Industry 4.0 smart factories, as well as taking ‘major step forward’ with technology, Radan will now be issuing two new releases a year. “We’re aiming to get the very latest developments to customers as quickly as possible,” said Radan’s Product Manager Olaf Körner. “Starting with Radan 2018 R1, customers needn’t ever be working with software that is more than six months old.”

At the SPS Drives show in Nuremberg, the Avnu Alliance (Avnu), Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), and OPC Foundation took this as an opportunity to announce their collaboration with IT-OT industry leaders to advance industrial device interoperability and to show the progress made in bringing the open, unified communication standard OPC UA over Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) to market.

With all the talk of Industry 4.0 we need to address the very important issue of safety. Honeywell are tackling the safety side of Industry 4.0 with its personal protective equipment, as every year there are huge numbers of tragedies and cost with casualties and diseases that are not acknowledged. Taking a look at Industry 4.0 and the safety industry as a whole, there is a €476bn cost of workplace related injuries and ill health to the EU, and according to the EU-OSHA, 98% of work related deaths in the EU are caused by work related illnesses.

A collaborative research project between Crimson & Co, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) and Pinsent Masons, has urged that most businesses still need to undertake work around business strategy, technological investment and digital culture and skills, in order for them to be IoT-ready.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been anointed as the harbinger of Industry 4.0, a state in which factory automation devices are integrated within information technology (IT) platforms such as manufacturing execution systems (MES), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) systems to create significant efficiency and productivity gains.

Underlining its expertise and knowledge in the area of Industry 4.0 HEIDENHAIN will present at Southern Manufacturing its Connected Machining system of production, in which all work steps from the design to the deliverable component are interlinked via one of the company’s TNC controls.

There will need to be a focus on upskilling and digitisation from Sussex manufacturers, in order to reap the benefits of ‘Industry 4.0’ – the so-called fourth industrial revolution. The latest meeting of METALL (the Manufacturing, Engineering and Technology Alliance), a forum for south coast and Gatwick diamond businesses in the sector, heard that while robotics, 3D printing and artificial intelligence offered potential for productivity gains, there were structural barriers to overcome.

Speaking prior to the recent Advanced Engineering 2017 exhibition in Birmingham, Andy Brown, Divisional Leader at supply chain technology company Access Group, has challenged the idea that Industry 4.0 poses a threat to job security, amid reports of ‘robots taking over the factory’. 

  At SPS IPC Drives 2017 (Hall 9, Stand 205), Rockwell Automation will show how it can help every manufacturer and machine builder - wherever they are on their journey towards Industry 4.0.

  During the upcoming SPS IPC Drives 2017 in Nuremberg, Germany, Distec will present their new IoT-compliant POS-Line IoT monitor for industry 4.0 applications. At this European trade show for electrical automation, Distec will display the new monitor and further highlights from 28th-30th November 2017 at Stand 228 in Hall 8.