Welcome to another bumper issue of Motion Control.
Interest in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or more specifically Industry 4.0, is growing exponentially. The total amount of data worldwide is expected to reach 15 000 exabytes (15 trillion gigabytes) by 2020. More an evolution than a revolution, it has been described as a vast number of connected systems that communicate and coordinate their data and actions to improve industrial performance. Production becomes decentralised and more and more networked until everything is interlinked with everything else. The biggest benefits are expected to be shorter time to market, reduction of costs, higher quality, reduced natural resource consumption and customisation of products. Condition monitoring and energy efficiency are two of the early applications.
A recent study by Deloitte entitled Industry 4.0: Is Africa ready for digital transformation? sets out the opportunities for the South African manufacturing industry in digital transformation. Although adoption in the full sense of the word remains low in South Africa, smart technologies such as advanced analytics, cloud computing, advanced sensors, robotics and 3D printing are starting to make their presence felt and the promise of IIoT is increasingly being recognised.
With this in mind, our Technews publication SA Instrumentation & Control has published Industry Guide: IIoT. It covers the latest developments in sensor and RFID technology, standards and best practice, connectivity, big data, 3D printing, solutions in the cloud, training for the future, and much more. It is available online at www.instrumentation.co.za and Motion Control readers can also order a printed copy at this link.
While South Africa may lag in full implementation, there are quite a number of familiar companies operating locally that have the tools needed to be IIoT-ready. Most of them put the principles into practice in their own factories. Here are a few of them.
Beckhoff’s PC-based control technology is a good example. We previously covered the eXtended Transport System (XTS), where motion tasks that are nearly impossible to solve with mechanical engineering can be conveniently and flexibly realised via software. In this issue there is an interesting application in the automotive industry about a highly automated machine line.
An early adopter at the forefront of the IIoT technology wave is Festo. The role of people in the digitalisation of manufacturing is critical. For Industry 4.0 to succeed, the training of skilled employees will have to be adapted to new requirements. Recognising this, Festo will soon have an Industry 4.0 module as part of its training menu. We have a story about Festo’s training division, Festo Didactic; and in the IoT Guide there’s an article by SA Instrumentation & Control editor, Steven Meyer, which is well worth a read.
Bosch Rexroth, represented locally by Hytec, is another frontrunner, having already incorporated hydraulics into Industry 4.0 with electrohydraulic control devices with decentralised intelligence operating with micrometre precision. This reduces the energy consumption of hydraulic power units by up to 80%. The decentralised nature of electrohydraulics technologies means that even older facilities and machines can be retrofitted; and the multi-Ethernet interfaces meet Industry 4.0 demands for standardised communication protocols.
As another example, Schneider Electric’s Altivar drives can monitor their own health and tell the customer when they are about to fail. Schneider is moving from selling a product to selling a service to optimising an entire installation and expects to reach the stage where customers won’t buy a drive that’s not connected. We cover the Altivar machine range in this issue.
SEW-Eurodrive’s vision of the intelligent SEW-Sm@rt Factory 2020 of tomorrow has a modular design where people, things, processes, services and data are all interconnected with each other. SEW-Eurodrive products such as mobile assistant systems, contactless energy transmission and automation controllers are already on the market.
Another example is the new Bluetooth embedded amplifier from Sun Hydraulics. Available locally from Axiom Hydraulics, featured in our cover story, this is the fluid power industry’s first commercially available Bluetooth configurable product and enables wireless configuration of electrohydraulic proportional valves. We have an interesting application on board a dredger. We’ve previously covered the wireless machine condition sensor from SKF, which provides condition monitoring on rotating machinery operating at large plants. We also previously ran a story on Eaton’s LifeSense hydraulic hose condition monitoring system, another great example of an IIoT-enabled product. LifeSense monitors the length of the hose assembly, keeping track of data in real time and interpreting the health of each assembly.
Last but not least, one of the original drivers of Industry 4.0 is Siemens, and its Simotion platform offers complete machine control in a single controller and handles all necessary tasks for machine automation through the Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) portal.
Kim Roberts
Editor
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