Industry 4.0 / IIoT

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.

Vision AI software company, Neurala has announced a new strategic partnership with global manufacturing company, IMA Group. The partnership will deliver AI solutions for industrial machines, focused on field testing of AI that enables monitoring and provides actionable insights from data collected through IIoT systems.

Despite the financial instability that characterised the first half of 2020, the demand for professionals in the field of data management and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is steadily on the rise. This is what emerges from LinkedIn’s 2020 UK Emerging Jobs Report, which revealed that companies are on the lookout for individuals that have a strong technical background, but also outstanding problem-solving skills. Neil Ballinger, Head of EMEA at EU Automation, examines the UK’s top-three emerging jobs and what these trends mean for manufacturers.

Supply chains have always been a key part of industry. However, following COVID-19, there has been increased speculation on how they can adapt to future scenarios. Over the last few years, there has been a distinct transformation which has altered how supply chains work and can be outlined by four key trends, including digitisation, sustainability, customisation and regionalisation. By Mark Yeeles, Industrial Segment Director at Schneider Electric

The Avnet Silica MiniPOC Kit is designed to enable ‘Proof-of-Concept’ for edge-to-cloud Internet of Things (IoT) use cases.