Over the last year I have interviewed a number of companies about how they are handling the interesting times we are living through and adjusting to the huge challenges our country is facing on every front. It struck me that all of them have taken a hard look at themselves, cut out the peripherals, improved their efficiencies, got closer to their customers and met their customers’ needs better. It can be difficult to be positive in the current uncertainty, but these impressive companies are looking through the noise to the long term and positioning themselves for when the upturn comes – and come it will, as has every new cycle over the centuries. Then they will be ready to fly and I salute them.
Looking ahead at the fluid power industry on the international front, the National Fluid Power Association (NFPA) in the USA has developed a technology roadmap for the next decade, addressing six challenges facing the industry. The goal was to contribute to the advancement of fluid power technology and generate new ideas that can help engineers to face today’s challenges. Another motivation was the need for the industry to change in order to face the threat from electromechanical solutions that are increasingly encroaching on its core business. As the NFPA sees it, the six challenges for the fluid power industry are:
• Increasing energy efficiency.
• Improving reliability.
• Building smart components and systems.
• Reducing size and weight.
• Reducing environmental impact.
• Improving and applying energy storage and redeployment capabilities.
There are many opportunities for designing new products and systems arising from these challenges and these are already evident in the megatrends in hydraulics and pneumatics. They include miniaturisation, dramatically improved energy efficiency, far greater durability through advanced materials and a step change in intelligence via electronic controls – smaller, cheaper, smarter, faster. Another trend in fluid power that is likely to extend far into the future is that plants are outsourcing engineering tasks to their vendors. Customers are relying more on engineering support from vendors as their engineering staffs become smaller.
Looking more broadly, when well known futurist, Jack Uldrich, addressed the NFPA’s annual conference, he described transformational trends that are changing the world now and will continue to shape things in the coming years, especially for manufacturing. These are some of them:
• Wearable technology: Google Glass may not have taken off yet, but Google is actively looking at factory floor applications.
• Additive manufacturing: Five years ago, industrial 3D printers cost R1,5 million and today you can buy them for below R15 000. NASA has launched the first 3D printer into space. GE is printing a fuel injection nozzle that used to have 86 parts, now it has one. Aircraft engine parts will be 3D printed next year. A significant number of the parts in the Bloodhound SSC supersonic car aiming to break the world landspeed record next year were made by 3D printing.
• Nanotechnology: Nanomaterials have fascinating properties like self-cleaning, and new advanced materials are corrosion resistant and can withstand extreme pressure and temperature conditions – perfect for bearings. Researchers are modelling hydraulics fluids, gears, clutches and brakes at the molecular level to find ways of making them more efficient. What if you could charge a car in one minute and not four to eight hours? What if the cost of desalinisation went down by orders of magnitude?
• Robotics: The rate of adoption for robotics will mean millions of robots in manufacturing. There will be robots that don’t just make products, but learn assembly procedures and learn to make them more efficiently. As robot prices come down, they will be more available to small and mid-sized manufacturers, which will allow them to stay competitive in the global marketplace.
• Sensors: Today only about 20% of the global economy is really connected to the Internet, despite all the talk about the Internet of Things; but by 2020, they will be. Uldrich calls this a R300 trillion business opportunity.
• Artificial intelligence: Siri may get 1000 times smarter in the coming decade. Our phones will be able to tell us what we want to know before we even know we want to know it. One day soon, nanosensors in your bloodstream may send you a message that you’re about to have a heart attack.
Uldrich says you need to consider what these rapidly changing technology trends mean in your particular industry and think about how your business may be altered in ways that might be uncomfortable; but better to think now about how to adapt than to find yourself working in an industry niche that may cease to exist because technology’s found a better way.
Kim Roberts
Editor
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