The current challenges for the valve industry are manyfold – more than ever, competitive pressure, the energy crisis, supply chain risks, sustainability and the growing shortage of skilled workers call for effective solutions now. But there is an effective way to make these hurdles more manageable with the help of automation. Automatically successful – this could work especially today.
Automatically on course for success – more and more companies are relying on this: The automation of industrial production will continue to accelerate due to new technologies and vendors, according to an analysis by McKinsey & Company. The market for industrial automation will therefore grow by almost four percent annually to over US-$ 115 billion by 2025 soon. Cloud and IloT solutions in particular are amongst the winners.
“The bulk of the market (US-$ 76 billion) will then consist of the automation of process industries such as the chemical or oil and gas sectors, followed by production environments such as automotive or semiconductor manufacturing with US-$ 32 billion in volume,” explains McKinsey. Software conquers factories.a
More productive processes.
Industry suppliers are also increasingly leveraging the potential of automation for their own processes. AS-Schneider for instance renders its production more productive through a high degree of automation. Collaborative robots (cobots) are now to take over simple and repetitive activities in the assembly department: Employees are freed up and lead times shortened. Cobots could be used for laser marking, tape winding of screw plugs, greasing of valve tops and drying after pressure testing. “Productivity increases could amount to between ten and 15 percent,” explains AS-Schneider.
Thanks to a high degree of automation, AS-Schneider was able to render its manufacturing processes more productive. Simple and repetitive tasks during assembly could now be taken over by collaborative robots.
Photo: Armaturenfabrik Franz Schneider GmbH + Co. KG
Valve and actuator industry components are essential for plant automation. Air Torque for instance experienced an increasing demand for actuators as an essential part of automation. Depending on the control medium, the company is noticing different trends. “With electrically driven actuators, the integration of control, monitoring and maintenance functions has been state of the art for some time – take predictive maintenance for example,” reports Air Torque. And in addition to the increasing digitization and networking variance of valve actuators in pneumatic actuators, there is a development towards a modular attachment of logic and control elements.
Digitalisation as a game changer.
Sensor and actuator profiles.
Digitalisation is taking automation to a new level: As such, the aim is to further optimize the IO-Link – as a communication system for linking intelligent sensors and actuators to an automation system. The goal is an even broader and more efficient use of IO-Link in automation. This has already been achieved through the development of the Smart Sensor Profile (SSP). This standard allows a 1:1 exchange of similar devices from different manufacturers with their basic functions – without the need to adapt any function blocks. “Thanks to digital transmission via IO-Link, conversion errors are a thing of the past,” the IO-Link community explains.
Digitalisation and automation are among the key trends in the industry. Their networking opportunities open up new opportunities for companies.
Photo: Pixabay.
