‘Cybersecurity is becoming an increasingly urgent concern’
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Jhankar Dutta, Managing Director, B&R Industrial Automation, on the leading trends for 2019.
What are the leading trends in factory/process automation segment the industry is likely to witness?
Growing demand of factories to have a connected shop floor and connectivity to IT level or even to the cloud coupled with operating production cells economically, improving productivity and overall equipment effectiveness is a big challenge for SMEs. Intelligent automation solutions such as edge computing, open connectivity, predictive maintenance, asset performance management, remote diagnostics, energy monitoring, etc., help manufacturers to shape up a complete IIoT ready machine and factory with flexibility and scalability.
Edge architectures possess the ability to acquire and store process data, facilitating convergence of IT and OT. Edge computing is an established method used to acquire, compress and aggregate large volumes of data as close as possible to its source using distributed devices – and then transform that data into actionable intelligence. In addition, edge computing is in the factory premise incorporating controls, energy monitoring, predictive maintenance, data aggregation, data historian, internet connectivity, security, remote access, user authentication, machine learning, business intelligence, IT level connectivity such as MES/ERP and much more. Such edge architectures cost-effectively provide necessary levels of availability, bandwidth and response times. This becomes an economically viable solution, thus, enabling Indian SMEs too to take advantage of its various benefits.
Higher computing power together with real time performance and a general-purpose operating system has been a wish of many machine builders. Usually, this required the use of two separate hardware. However, with hypervisor, we make this a reality. B&R’s hypervisor allows multiple operating systems to run on a single industrial PC without any compromise on performance. The hypervisor is ideal for converting an industrial controller into an edge device or IoT gateway. With increase in such interconnected shop floors, cybersecurity is becoming an increasingly urgent concern for manufacturing companies.
What are the new products/developments from Messung Systems for 2019?
Our ACOPOStrak transport system and newly launched human-track collaboration will open up new dimensions in safe productivity at collaborative workstations. Intelligent safety technology keeps these workstations reliably risk-free without the need for safety barriers. The limit values for safe speed and safe force are calculated dynamically by the safety application at runtime and can be activated or deactivated as needed. The safe speed calculations even take the weight of the shuttle into account. This allows shuttles of different weights to travel at their respective maximum safe speeds without posing a danger. Human-track collaboration takes ACOPOStrak's ultimate production effectiveness to a new level.
With the world's first machine vision solution to be seamlessly incorporated in the automation system, B&R takes integrated machine vision to a whole new level. The cameras, intelligent image processing algorithms and innovative lighting portfolio are an integral part of the B&R control system. At the heart of B&R's vision solution is a broad selection of intelligent camera technology. Options at the lower end will replace simple machine vision sensors, while the top of the range will harness the full potential of high-end smart cameras. For the entire portfolio of cameras, there are easy-to-configure machine vision functions for creating applications with minimal programming.