Today still, the human hand is regarded as the benchmark when it comes to flexibility of gripping tools. Particularly when it comes to service and assistance robotics, humanoid manipulators that enable the widest variety of gripping variants will be more and more in demand in future.
In this issue of Industry Insights with Owen I had the opportunity to sit down with Warren Osak, founder and CEO of Electromate.
As food processing continues to grow in complexity, companies remain vigilant for how to make facilities work better without expanding their footprint.
Today, transformers are everywhere, feeding various voltages into our homes and businesses. When a transformer fails in a commercial or industrial environment, that failure can disrupt a significant portion of facility operations.
The threats that make enclosure thermal management necessary to begin with reach the height of their destructive energies all at once, once a year, in the summertime. While some logistics of manufacturing become vastly less complicated in the summer sun, several interrelated changes in the weather threaten the critical electronics that allow production lines to operate.
Protecting the consumer and the manufacturer’s brand are the key aspects of hygienic and efficient automation in food production. The aims are high productivity and perfect tasting food.
Safety used to be treated somewhat as an afterthought, in that it was added as a separate system once all the other production equipment was in place. Nowadays, many manufacturers are seeing the benefits of integrated safety systems, in which safety features are designed into equipment from the very beginning.
In the past, companies leaned towards moving their operations to developing markets where they could cut costs by finding inexpensive labour.
Over the last two and a half centuries, industry has embraced change and transformation. Analysts now say that we are in the beginning stages of a fourth industrial revolution – Industry 4.0. This latest advancement enhances existing technologies and computer frameworks to make them smarter, more efficient and better connected.
The market for automobiles today is placing greater demand on the experience inside the vehicle, rather than simply the ability to get from Point A to Point B. Manufacturers are responding by incorporating expensive technologies to connect cars to the internet, and this is creating a need to cut costs in other ways.
RBT Electrical & Automation, located in Brantford, Ontario, provides a full service of electrical contracting along with providing automation and control services in the commercial and industrial sectors.
You’re redesigning a piece of machinery or implementing a new manufacturing line, and you need to select a safety control system to monitor all of your safeguarding devices. How do you choose the right controller?
In this first edition of the column I spoke with Nathalie Pilon, President of ABB in Canada. Nathalie is a true industry professional with over 20 years of experience as a nationally recognized business leader and was previously named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women’s Executive Network. As the Canadian President of ABB Nathalie has deep knowledge of the industry and she here grants some insight into her perspectives regarding the automation and control industry in Canada.
When I talk to our customers, I do so with that experience and mindset. If we don’t deliver – we lose. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. It’s as simple as that. I just lived through a great example of this. Every morning I use our blender. One of the parts broke, and the manufacturer made it quite difficult and cumbersome to get a replacement.
Imaginations are running wild to transform what’s possible in industrial operations. And it’s all thanks to the merging of operational technology (OT) systems with IT systems to create connected, information-driven operations.
Whether due to a bustling economy, reshoring, better technology or a skilled- labor shortage, manufacturers are automating more than ever before. According to ASSEMBLY magazine’s annual Capital Equipment Spending Survey, 89 percent of U.S. factories employed manual assembly processes in 2009, while only 17 percent used fixed automation. A decade later, those numbers are decidedly different. In 2018, 77 percent of factories employed manual assembly processes, but 31 percent used fixed automation.
This project is funded [in part] by the Government of Canada.
Ce projet est financé [en partie] par le gouvernement du Canada.
