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Smart devices rely on even smarter engineering

As industrial machines become more sophisticated and connected, the need for ‘smart engineering’ and detailed application knowledge continues to grow to increase productivity and safety, lower risk and reduce costs of compliance. Peter Tomazic, senior solution consultant with the Global Solutions team at Rockwell Automation has more than 25 years experience in ‘thinking outside the square’ to successfully solve customers’ unique challenges, whether it involves engineering for cranes, pulp and paper machinery, process lines, mining applications , printing presses and the list goes on. He explains that while providing the hardware is only 30-40 percent of the solution, it is the domain knowledge on the application and how to apply the engineering that really makes the difference. “Anyone can go and buy hardware and try to put it together but it is the application knowledge of how to engineer the hardware that really adds value to our customers operations.” “As part of the Global Solutions team at Rockwell Automation, we leverage our in depth technical knowledge and work with customers to understand their unique challenges and goals. We can then design, manufacture and commission a solution to meet their production and business objectives,” said Tomazic. Driving innovation Advances in technologies such as the Industrial Internet of Things, are enabling machines to get smarter and meet endusers networking, integration, diagnostics and intelligence demands. Motors and drives are gaining improved integration and connectivity, resulting in increased productivity, safety and asset management. “Ethernet communications is now an important part of any application that involves drives because it provides full access to all the diagnostics within the drives, including drive parameters, status and additional features such as Automatic Device Configuration,” explained Tomazic. Automatic Device Configuration is a feature that increases uptime by allowing the Logix controller to automatically detect a replaced drive and download […]

World’s largest trade fair for robotics and automation has started

Power machine – or intricate technician. At the AUTOMATICA in Munich you will find them all because the robotics business is booming worldwide. Every reputable manufacturer is present at this leading trade fair to present innovations from all areas of automation and mechatronics. AUTOMATICA has recorded a registration record. Exhibitors have already booked more space today for the trade fair in Munich on June 21 to 24, 2016 than at the previous event. In five exhibition halls, more than 800 companies are displaying their solutions for the optimisation of production processes and professional service robotics and will show that the era of smart robotics and automation has begun. One of the key focus points at the fair is Integrated Assembly Solutions: intelligent, economical and integrated assembly and production solutions. It is essential to have the necessary hardware and the right brainware such as analysis, conception, planing and software for the realisation of complex production processes. AUTOMATICA’s leading role is palpable in the sector of image processing too. The crux here is the integration of sensors and image processing systems for example within Industry 4.0 solutions. The advantages can be seen for example in quality control, flexible parts handling or orientation between different components. A further key focus at AUTOMATICA 2016 is robotics. Whether it is for regular production, or outside the factory in medical technology, agriculture, logistics or professional service robotics; robotics promises a huge growth potential. Human-robot collaboration is extremely popular amongst robotics manufacturers. In the near future, these machines will be as normal as an electric drill for employees. Digitalisation and Industry 4.0 are pivotal here, therefore it is vital that IT and industry grow and develop further together. Messe München discovered this development early on and created their own platform with the IT2 Industry. It is now […]

Robot force sensors automate difficult manufacturing tasks

Seiko Epson Corporation has developed its S250 series of high-precision force sensors. The S250 series technology, which were rolled out worldwide from June, will be available as an option for the company’s six-axis and SCARA robots. Employing Epson’s proprietary piezoelectric quartz sensing technology, the new force sensors are durable and sensitive, allowing them to accurately and consistently sense minimal amounts of force in six directions1. This will allow customers to automate complex manufacturing tasks and will improve productivity. Epson also provides robot operation commands with the sensor, allowing customers to easily introduce the system. Many manufacturers are turning to robots as labor shortages and falling birth rates and aging populations hit companies in the world’s leading economies, and the trend to reshoring continues worldwide. Epson’s innovative new force sensors answer these needs and are a significant step forward in achieving the company’s mission of using robots to improve the way products are manufactured. The S250 series enables robots to feel force as limited as 0.1 N, allowing the robots to automate complex tasks such as precisely assembling delicate components. The sensors can also be used on tasks that formerly relied on human sensory perception such as polishing and deburring, freeing people from repetitive manual work. “The new force sensors are a significant development for Epson and for the manufacturing industry in general,” said Yoneharu Fukushima, COO of Epson’s Robotics Solutions Operations Division. “As a company dedicated to manufacturing innovation, the new sensors help to expand the applications for robots, and bring us a step further towards achieving our goal of creating a world in which robots support people in a wide variety of situations.” “There is strong demand for industrial robotics and their applications within the Southeast Asia region, with robotics spending looking to double in Asia Pacific by […]

The Interview: Sean Creswell, Manager – Design Office, Streetscape Limited, Tauranga , NZ

What is Streetscape? Streetscape is a New Zealand street furniture manufacturer based in Tauranga. The company is locally owned and operates with extensive knowledge and expertise in design and manufacturing, specialising in the fabrication and design of street furniture ranging from lighting, street bollards, fencing, shelters, bike racks and customised decorative features for the enhancement of urban landscapes. Streetscape aims to provide a genuine partnering approach for designers and developers to create high quality urban-design street furniture and street lighting, rather than supplying products from a catalogue, to meet the most discerning of consumer tastes. What is your role in the company? My role is as a Manager – Design Office involves all aspects of product design, development, and continuous systems improvement. Most items are initially conceived in CAD, or where a prototype machine has been constructed in the field, we need to accurately capture it back into the system. Streetscape has been using Solid Edge for some time. Would you share with us your previous experience with Solid Edge? Streetscape has been using Solid Edge for over 10 years. In fact, I introduced Solid Edge to them. Prior to Streetscape, I was using Solid Edge for years in an injection moulding company that utilised the Solid Edge software to manufacture automotive and consumer components. Currently, Streetscape has two seats of Solid Edge Classic, and a few Free2D installations pertaining to factory production. Our latest seat is subscription based. We apply 3D CAD in our day-to-day operations such as developing new designs, and making data translations throughout the day, as clients present them. The data from clients come in different formats: it could be design models from a variety of design software, or just ideas outlined on napkins. But in general, data formats are not a problem. As soon as […]

Southeast Asia Poised to Reap Rewards of Fourth Industrial Revolution

SINGAPORE, May 30, 2016 – Southeast Asian countries have the potential to leapfrog ahead of other developing nations by embracing new technologies to transform how people work, live and play, according to a new report by real estate consultancy JLL. Ahead of the World Economic Forum on ASEAN, taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 1 and 2 June, JLL has released a report looking at how advanced digital technologies could impact countries in the newly established ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), a trading bloc of 10 Southeast Asian nations. Chris Fossick, Managing Director, Singapore & South East Asia, JLL, says: “In many ways, new technologies will allow people to bypass current constraints and leapfrog into greater efficiency. The impact on real estate and infrastructure in Southeast Asia is likely to be positive and transformational. If harnessed effectively, the changes will bring improved productivity, income levels and quality of life to the population.” Southeast Asian economies are forecast to grow at 5 percent annually until 2020, exceeding global growth of 3.5 percent. The urban population in Southeast Asia’s cities is growing by around 2.2 percent annually and the middle income population is set to increase by 70 million to 194 million by 2020. New ways to work In the sphere of work, demand for office space will change due to greater outsourcing from developed markets, more flexible work practices, and an increase in co-sharing spaces. Regina Lim, National Director, Advisory & Research, Capital Markets, JLL and author of the report, says: “While growth in demand for office space slowed after the global financial crisis, Southeast Asia has bucked the trend, with demand expected to grow at 6 percent per year until 2020 due to economic growth, further acceleration of outsourcing from developed markets, and the rise of the middle class. In […]

Crown’s internal combustion range provides greater choice in Southeast Asia

SINGAPORE – Crown Equipment, one of the world’s largest material handling companies, has recently enhanced its range of gas and diesel lift trucks, with the introduction across the Southeast Asian region of its C-5 Series internal combustion (IC) counterbalance forklift truck. The new C-5 range complements Crown’s existing industry-leading internal combustion and electric truck range, providing customers with a single source of supplier for proven and trusted material handling equipment. “Our enhanced IC range offers customers a broad choice of trucks matched to requirements from occasional loading and unloading, to reliable everyday workhorses,” said David Sultana, Crown marketing manager, Southeast Asia. Respected across the region as the leading supplier of electric lift trucks, Crown believes it now has what it takes to grow its IC truck business across the region. Key to this success will be three series of trucks from the total range that satisfy the most common requirements for IC trucks across Southeast Asia. GX Series The GX Series has been designed, manufactured and priced specifically for companies requiring an economical truck for general work. With lifting capacities from 2000kg to 3,000kg and a choice of either 2.4 litre liquid petroleum gas (LPG) or a 3.3 litre diesel engine, all models in the GX Series are serious about performance, reliability and operator comfort. The Crown GX Series comes with dual element air filters, heavy duty transaxles that deliver high torque to the drive wheels, and with transmission gears made from high carbonated steel for long life. Pro 5 Series The Pro 5 is manufactured to be a reliable workhorse for companies looking for a truck that will work and perform all day, every day. This is a series designed, manufactured and equipped for seriously hard work. The Crown Pro 5 series comprises two distinct categories of lift trucks. […]

From challenges to opportunities: favourable climate for the plastics industry

The plastics industry in ASEAN remains unperturbed by global developments that are also impacting the growth path of key industries. With K 2016, the world’s largest trade fair for plastics and rubber, coming up in Düsseldorf, Germany, from 19 to 26 October, we take a closer look at this market. The new norm of economic growths and trends such as oil prices, variable supply and demand, and weakening of most Asian currencies against the US dollar, have allowed the region’s countries to rediscover their strengths to sustain growth either individually or as a part of the collective grouping of the 10-member ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nation), which comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. ASEAN’s fertile consumer base with a combined population of over 600 million and a combined GDP of US$ 2.6 trillion, as well as presence in the global market, enables the region to tap the right opportunities, hinging on the region’s rising middle class sector. One of ASEAN’s top export sectors by value is plastics and plastic products earning US$ 39.3 billion in export revenues in 2013. The sector’s production rates have witnessed a steady average growth over the recent years, especially in the ASEAN-6: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, which account for more than 95 % of regional GDP, according to McKinsey & Company. Vietnam’s relatively nascent plastics industry had an average annual growth of 16-18 % between 2010 and 2015. Packaging accounts for 37.4 %, followed by consumer goods (27 %), construction (18 %) and technical products (15 %). Yet, the industry is still at the “low end and of low value”, according to Vietnam Plastics Association (VPA), with a majority of exports being plastic bags to Japan. It also relies heavily on imported raw materials, like […]

Veolia Water Technologies appoints new CEO for Asia Pacific Region

Singapore, 10 May, 2016:- Veolia Water Technologies (Veolia) is pleased to announce the appointment of Frédéric Théry as its new Asia Pacific Chief Executive Officer. Having taken on the new role since January 2016, Frédéric now oversees Veolia’s business in the Asia Pacific region, and guides the company in its transition to a new internal structure. Towards the end of 2015, Veolia strategically reorganized its operational entities according to four geographical regions, in order to facilitate greater cooperation between the company’s various business units. With this restructuring, Veolia aims to improve overall productivity, and to better integrate its water and wastewater expertise across the board. An Engineering graduate from l’Ecole des Mines de Douai in France, Frédéric gained a wide range of experience working in different entities across the Veolia Group over the last 23 years. Frédéric first moved into Veolia Water Technologies in 2003 as Executive Vice President at Veolia Water Technologies North America, leading the Design and Build division out of the USA for four years. Thereafter, Frédéric moved to Europe to oversee the industrial business of Veolia Water Technologies in France until 2012, where he was then appointed Managing Director of the Northern Europe entities. Commenting on the internal restructuring and his new appointment, Frédéric said, “While Veolia is an established name in the water and wastewater industry, we have to ensure we remain attractive and nimble in order to stay competitive. This is especially true of the fast-paced Asian market. “By realigning our business units, we are actively fostering cooperation between divisions to refine our competitive edge. Our water solutions set us apart from other providers, so it is imperative that Veolia transforms itself into a more integrated company to offer these technologies across the five continents that it is active in. I look forward to […]

Use the super computer in your pocket for new levels of productivity

Anyone with a smartphone or tablet now can connect securely in an industrial setting to access performance metrics and data analytics. By Kyle Reissner, mobility platform leader, Rockwell Automation You can use any digital device to easily access performance metrics and data analytics from your plant floor and machines. How are you using that freedom? Your smartphone is now as powerful as your desktop. That mobility is more than viewing a webpage or report on your tablet; it’s a fundamental shift in how we live our lives. Seventy percent of us carry a smartphone or tablet into the office. We are mobile. Yet many of us still live as if the world is flat. You know the analogy. For thousands of years people lived like they would fall off the edge of the earth if they ventured too far from what they knew. Then we realized the world is a sphere, and that opened a world of possibility. Since the 1980s, we’ve used the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture to define clear layers between systems. Our first shot at mobility was the replicate a web browser in a Palm Treo. It was a good start, but it fell short of the ultimate user experience. Some people are using the latest devices to extend 20-year-old technology. That type of mobility is resulting in very small increases in productivity, in the range of 1 to 2 percent. I suggest a loftier goal for mobility —10 percent — and for everyone in the plant, not just one or two people. It’s possible because we now have the technology that lets people do things they couldn’t do before while reducing the cost of curiosity to literally zero. Now, anyone with a device can connect securely, expand their area of influence, deploy a system more quickly […]

Defining the IoT

-Dr. Hai Wang, Senior Vice President, Technology & Operations, NXP Semiconductors. At NXP, we believe that we are entering a new era of computing technology that many are calling the Internet of Things (IoT). We see the IoT as billions of smart, connected “things” (a sort of “universal global neural network” in the cloud) that will encompass every aspect of our lives, and its foundation is the intelligence that embedded processing provides. IoT is made up of smart machines interacting and communicating with other machines, objects, environments and infrastructures. As a result, huge volumes of data are being generated, and that data is being processed into useful actions that can “command and control” things to make our lives much easier and safer—and to reduce humanity’s impact on the environment. How would IoT affect people and businesses now and in the future? IoT affects individuals, businesses large and small as well as industries. Today there are an estimated 2.9 billion people online, or 40% of the world’s population. Analysts expect that as nations and technology develop, 50% of the world’s population could be online by 2017. We could see up to 30 billion connected devices in coming years, three times more than today’s 10 billion connected devices. The major impact of IoT will be in consumer and business sectors, security and safety, education and healthcare, as well as in governments and policy shaping. What benefits do NXP Smart Solutions bring to businesses? A critical value that NXP brings is secure connectivity solutions. In fact, NXP is currently the world’s leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, enabling secure connections and infrastructure for a smarter world. Our solutions work behind the scenes, helping partners in the global ecosystem as they work to are create and deliver complete hardware and software solutions […]

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