In recent years, the pace of factory automation has accelerated significantly, largely thanks to technological upheavals. The increasingly comprehensive automation in the industry is driven by macro trends such as reshoring, i.e. the relocation of manufacturing facilities from emerging countries back to industrialised states, a global shortage of skilled labour and efforts to produce in a resource-conserving and energy-efficient manner.
Applications & Technologies
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Autonomous production
Increasing automation can reduce unit labour costs and make production less dependent on the lack of skilled workers. In the future, factories will produce autonomously to a large extent. According to an analysis by McKinsey, many of today's most advanced manufacturing technologies – such as digital twins, robots that teach themselves and devices that program themselves – will be commonplace in the future. Edge computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain are fundamental technologies that enable entire factories to operate almost autonomously.
Increasing importance of functional safety
With the autonomous operation of machines, the topic of functional safety is becoming increasingly important. On the one hand, even highly automated factories will not manage entirely without people – on the contrary, people and machines will work closely together in future factories. On the other hand, it must of course be ensured that no risks arise for the factory itself or the environment without human control. To this end, integrated automated safety systems enable the detection and rectification of malfunctions in the machines and plants.
Flexible manufacturing
Current automation solutions increase the flexibility of manufacturers: production lines can be quickly converted to new products and even orders with batch size 1 can be produced economically. Traditional assembly lines are being replaced by matrix solutions in which individual, independently operating functional modules can be flexibly combined with each other. There is a digital twin for each module, via which logistical processes and machine utilisation are optimised and finally real modules are controlled again. All instances of production – people, workpieces, machines and tools – are linked to each other through communication systems.
At an estimated 18 percent, the market for connectivity and industrial IoT (IIoT) will grow faster than any other part of the industrial automation market, according to McKinsey. Ethernet-based communication systems enable the uniform networking of the entire factory – from the ERP system to the individual sensor. In conjunction with TSN (Time-Sensitive Networking), fast-clocked processes can be easily controlled via Ethernet. A new generation of wireless communication solutions will also have far lower latency and enable a quantum leap in bandwidth and the potential number of connected devices. This will significantly improve the performance of applications such as factory monitoring systems, augmented reality and autonomous mobile robots.
However, as networking within the factory and along the entire value chain increases, so do the demands on cybersecurity. In addition to technologies for secure authentication of participants and secure communication, organisational measures are also indispensable.
Increasing self-sufficiency in energy supply
Finally, automation also has the potential to improve the energy efficiency of companies. In the European Union, industry consumes around a quarter of all energy. A large part of this, in turn, flows into electrical drives. The increased introduction of frequency-controlled drives can significantly reduce consumption in many applications. New semiconductor materials such as SiC (silicon carbide) and GaN (gallium nitride) ensure greater efficiency in the converters themselves. Since the frequency inverters use a DC circuit internally anyway, it makes sense to connect it directly to a DC network in order to avoid unnecessary conversion losses. In addition, regenerative energies can be fed directly into a DC network - because in the future, more and more factories will become more self-sufficient in energy supply through their own power generation systems such as solar cells.
An ecosystem with networked devices, machines and systems that can seamlessly exchange data and make decisions automatically will enable factories to act faster and more flexibly while saving energy and resources.
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