Top 10 Industrial Automation Trends in 2022

Top 10 Industrial Automation Trends in 2022

by | Mar 16, 2023 | Articles

Most industries have been forced to change course due to the global pandemic. However, the forward-thinking industrial manufacturers had already begun their digitalization journey and were in a much stronger position during that crucial time. Since many industrial manufacturers have already learned from the crisis, they’re investing in new technologies, processes, and business models, to emerge stronger than before. If you are searching for the latest inventions, systems, and strategies for your industry, you might want to consider the trends that are influencing industrial automation.

1. Increased Investment in Internet of Things (IoT)
Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution has transformed traditional industries into smart ones by incorporating innovative digital technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a rapidly growing technology that is helping manufacturers in connecting and monitoring the different components of their operations, and getting insight that was never before possible. This flawless connectivity gives valuable data to the manufacturers that enable them to optimize, change, and enhance their manufacturing processes. IoT is not only improving safety, and streamlining manufacturing, but also creating new advanced products with better capabilities.

2. Accessible Automation
New technologies have made automation accessible to more manufacturers and are significantly changing the way industries operate. Automation has become possible with user-friendly Manufacturing Process Management systems, simple robotics solutions, and human-robot collaboration. With industrial automation, workflows have been optimized, resulting in better production and cost reduction.

3. Use of Autonomous Mobile Robots
One of the key drivers of this industrial automation trend is autonomous mobile robots. While robotics has always been an ultra-sophisticated technology that needed trained roboticists, this new technology has now made automation attainable for industries of all sizes. Tailor-made autonomous mobile robots are the future of industries and have reinvented the way workers operate within an industry.

4. Shift To The Edge
Agility will be critical in 2022. Collaborative robots can make real-time complex decisions, and are better equipped to respond proficiently even in changing situations. For this, data processing and computing power need to shift to the edge, or nearer to the creation of data to boost processing and reduce latency. It will not only help in manufacturing goods efficiently but also ensure the security of the workforce.

5. Universal Connectivity
To avail industry 4.0 benefits, industries need to establish automatic, instant as well as universal communication protocols amongst their devices and locations by hiring reliable industrial engineering services. Universal connectivity provides the ability to grow in the future with standard Ethernet as its specifications can be expanded. It allows all devices to speak the same protocol with the aid of harmonized application profiles.

6. Use of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Since industries have to manage more data than ever before, cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, can help them to make the most of that data. AI and machine learning do not just mean walking or talking robots, but it refers to the smart abilities of a system to recognize data trends and infer logical insights that can help industries to make the best data-driven decisions. AI and machine learning can enhance many aspects of a manufacturing operation, like Supply Chain Visibility, Inventory Management, Asset Tracking, Forecasting Accuracy, Warehousing Cost Reduction, Transportation Cost Reduction, and more.

7. Remote operations Are The New Normal
Due to the pandemic, many industries have started running their operations remotely, with a majority of employees working from different locations outside the plant. It needs a connected workforce along with the right cyber-security tools to give real-time visibility as well as seamless control. Remote industrial operations require appropriate technology for a well-connected workforce, that facilitates collaboration, supports interactions, provides secured access to information from anywhere, and reduces paperwork. This boosts the efficiency of the tasks and also ensures a safer working environment for employees.

8. The Surge in 3D Printing
These days, 3D printing is combined with traditional procedures to create unique combinations that perform much better at a lower price and can be manufactured according to the customer’s needs. 3D printing offers more possibilities for designing as per preference. It can help in achieving the same thing in a single take without additional procedures like screwing or welding. Waste can also be reduced, and recycling cuts down the waiting time for the replacement parts and transportation.

9. Implementation of VR and AR Tools
Transfer and retention of knowledge are quite challenging for the industries but now, new tools like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) can be employed by hiring expert product design engineering services to address this issue. Both these tools are interactive experiences and the main difference is that in VR, a simulated environment can replace the user’s environment completely whereas, in AR, the user’s real-world environment is altered by overlaying additional data. Both these technologies can be used in the form of a head-mounted device for personnel training. Many companies use AR solutions for remote assistance to allow people in different locations across the world to have a live view and troubleshoot together.

10. Constructing Intelligent Factories In The Cloud Technology
In addition to robotics and virtual reality, advanced environments are created using cloud migration technology and smart sensors. These smart sensors can carry out various tasks like conversion of data into different units of measurement, communication with other devices, recording feedback, statistics, and more.
Utthunga is a reputed product engineering company which offers industrial automation solutions that can cater to the technology needs of the industrial world. Utthunga’s expert engineers can dive into your process and create a precisely tailored automation solution symbiotically ushering in this new industry 4.0 era of production. To leverage the advances, contact us today!

Role of HISTORIAN in a fast-changing industrial world

by | Mar 15, 2023 | Articles

Role of HISTORIAN in a fast-changing industrial world

Big Data is the new buzzword in the town as industries realize its importance and benefits. Many sectors are investing in analytics to unlock hidden potential in the data generated by their machines. Most of this data comprises sensor data, process data, performance logs, etc.
The product design and development teams benefit the most from Big Data. The amount of data generated by industries is enormous and is constantly increasing. Some industries generate up to 8 gigabytes of data per day. This data needs to be appropriately managed. Thus, the role of a data historian becomes critical for smooth integration, storage, and access of industrial data.

Historian and its use in Industry 4.0 / IIoT

Data historian is a part of industrial automation solutions and helps with end-to-end data management. This data is processed by digital transformation services to help industries make data-driven decisions for maximizing operational excellence and profit. Some advantages of deploying data historians are:

  1. Data accessibility: Data historians can collect data from multiple sources and store it in a structured and secure format. Object linking, OPC UA, etc., are some protocols used to get the data ready for consumption.
  2. Cost reduction: Data compression algorithms used by data historians help store large data volumes efficiently for more extended periods. The maintenance costs are reduced significantly by data compression. Moreover, databases can be accessed by systems like MRP, ERP, SCM, etc., which reduces data loss and data integration costs.
  3. Easy access: Compared to relational databases, data historians are faster in storing or retrieving data in real-time. Thus, data is available 24X7 for visualizations or analysis.

Evolution of HISTORIAN with IIoT and Big Data

Data historians had supported product design and development teams in industries since the 1970s when the first general-purpose computers were introduced in markets.

The older data systems were time-series databases that were deployed on the industry’s premise. As a result, very little data was clocked, and the main focus was on data visualizations only.

With the advancement in technologies and the onset of the digital world, the focus has shifted to cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and IIoT platform. Due to these changes, the industrial engineering services teams expect data historians to have enhanced data wrangling capabilities.

This includes data identification, metadata addition, data relationship mapping, and dataset mobilization to various servers.

The old and standard data aggregation process has become obsolete. Product engineering services teams are looking for end-to-end data management and digital transformation services.

How HISTORIAN Improve the OEE

OEE, overall equipment effectiveness, is a benchmark to quantify manufacturing productivity. A 100% OEE score points to the fact that your industry produces high-quality products without any downtime.

Once the industrial processes are automated, the OEE benchmark will become more critical. Data historian is beneficial in improving OEE scores:

  1. Bidirectional communication is possible with advanced data historians.
  2. Data storage, processing, and analysis can be done in real-time. Thus, building and integrating machine learning models with batch analytics becomes easy.
  3. 24X7 data access helps in monitoring the industrial equipment and creating real-time alerts.
    Data encryption technology makes the system safe.

How HISTORIAN is Dominating the next Gen Industrial Data

The data historian is evolving with technology innovations and industry requirements. Simple data storing in the 1970s has changed to data architecture and infrastructure.

As per the Industry 4.0 requirements, features like data integration, asset modeling, visualization, analysis, etc., should be part of industrial automation solutions.

The future of data historians has much more data crunching and analysis in store for it. In addition, operations data historians are challenging to work with and expensive to implement.

Moreover, they have limited visualization and analysis capabilities. These data historians are not scalable across multiple platforms also. Thus, it becomes difficult for the system to process large volumes of data.

The key technologies that future data historians need to incorporate are:
1.Data wrangling: Data is the new gold for industries. If data quality is terrible, extracting insights from it will be a painful task. Thus, data historians should have capabilities like data aggregation, data cleansing, data enrichment, etc.

2.Digital Twin: The digital twin concept is to replicate the industry’s processes and products virtually. The virtual world provides the capability to model a product’s attributes based on the data associated with it.

3.Blockchain: It is a record-keeping technology that facilitates transactions through decentralized networks. No central authority can control the data in the blockchain ecosystem. Thus, the data remains safe and secure.

4.OPC UA: It is the primary communications protocol for Industry 4.0. OPC UA enables hassle-free communication between heterogeneous machines. This technology saves a lot of time and reduces costs for industries in collecting and sharing data for analysis.

The takeaway

The automation journey for industries isn’t a straightforward path. There are a lot of features that need to be incorporated into the Industry 4.0 framework. Utthunga takes pride in introducing its highly skilled team to handle automation for industrial engineering services.

This team can support digital transformation consulting and Testing as a service automation product. So, if you are interested in hiring a consultancy for industrial automation services, you can reach out to our team for a discussion.

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