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.
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Investment in smart buildings today is necessary for a green tomorrow. Modern buildings are built to last one hundred years or more. However, this means that acting now and investing in smart buildings will be essential to hit net zero by mid-century.
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While manufacturers would love to have a 100 percent modernised factory with all new bells and whistles, in reality, this is never going to be the case – it is still common to have decades-old equipment doing its part on the production line. Here, Adnan Khan of Beckhoff UK, explores how new and old equipment can work together seamlessly when industrial PCs (IPCs) come into the picture.
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If companies were to take home one lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be that flexibility is key. This statement is no less true for the pharmaceutical industry, which has been pushing for flexibility for years. With a pandemic almost behind us and the challenges of a rapidly ageing population, flexible manufacturing is needed now more than ever.
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Beckhoff UK has joined the UK’s leading authority on logistics automation, the Automation Materials Handling Systems Association (AMHSA), committing to promoting excellence in solutions, aftersales support, reliability and safety.
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According to World Bank’s 2018 book, What a Waste 2.0, the world generates 2.01 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste annually. With the World Bank expecting annual global waste to grow to around 3.40 billion tonnes by 2050, waste management could soon become unmanageable. However, advancements in technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics could provide a solution to future waste management.
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With the growing climate pressures and the strong support for renewables by government policies since COP26, the global wind automation market is set to reach $5.196 billion in 2027, a 1.507 billion increase from the 2020 market. Given this predicted growth in the wind industry, companies will need to seek out technology that can help them harness and store wind energy cost-effectively.
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Since the time of Henry Ford, the consensus among manufacturers has been that bigger is better. Economies of scale would provide increasing profits, and this necessitated ever larger manufacturing facilities. For some, the emergence of automation technology will power ever larger factories, or gigafactories as Elon Musk called them. For others though, automation opens the opportunity to do things in a radically different way...
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