Equipment manufacturing is the foundation of the entire manufacturing industry, often known as the “mother of industry”, to promote the high-end and intelligent traditional equipment manufacturing is an important starting point to achieve high-quality development of manufacturing. Then how to achieve the high-end and intelligent equipment manufacturing? Technological innovation is undoubtedly the most direct source of power.

Innovation is to innovate, break existing ideas, improve or create new things. In modern society, innovation is everywhere, but innovation is always easier said than done. That in the current trend of the whole society toward digitalization and intelligence, how to innovate in the equipment manufacturing industry? We may wish to take a look at the 2023 Innovation Day of ABB B&R, an automation manufacturer that has long focused on the equipment manufacturing industry, and how to carry out innovative development in the current stage of equipment manufacturing.

Digital intelligence, innovation in the intangible

B&r, as a provider of integrated hardware and software solutions in the field of machine intelligence, is always at the forefront of technology. The Innovation Day is an exchange event with industrial users on B&R’s innovations in products, technologies, solutions and services in the field of machine intelligence. On May 26, ABB B&R held the 2023 Innovation Day in Shanghai under the theme of “Enabling Machine Innovation Development”, where Dr. Wei Rong Xiao, President of B&R Greater China, and several experts from B&R’s headquarters in Austria shared their understanding of machine innovation.

Dr. Wei Rong Xiao, B&R Greater China President

At present, we are in a volatile, uncertain, complex and fuzzy VUCA era, the market demand is changing rapidly, how to win the future in the fierce competition? Dr. Xiao Weirong believes that relying on innovation to achieve high-quality development is the only correct development path.

“High-quality development is in line with the long-term development of the manufacturing industry, which is also closely related to the current stage of the industry.” Dr. Xiao Weirong said that after more than 40 years of rapid development of reform and opening up, China has become the world’s largest manufacturing country, however, new challenges are quietly coming, more personalized product demand, slowing down the competition, all these need manufacturing enterprises through more agile market response, as well as sustainable development to support. At the same time, high quality is also an industry consensus, that is, to avoid low-quality price competition, towards a more high-quality innovation, independent research and development and core competitiveness of the control of the development of the road.

For the equipment manufacturing industry, how can we embark on the road of high-quality development? Dr. Xiao Weirong believes that a company that can win the future must have the ability to “sustainable development” and must have high profitability support, and to achieve this high profitability, it must break through price competition. Our industry needs to win sustainable development through better product and service innovation.

In the past, we emphasized that enterprises are bigger, but like the equipment manufacturing industry, it is very suitable for taking the road of “specialized and special new”, and the equipment manufacturing industry is to take the road of professional and refined development. On this basis, enterprises should consider building a sustainable platform and look to the future of continuous product and technology iteration.

For innovation, Dr. Xiao Weirong proposed that the innovation in the digital era is not only in those visible places, but also in those invisible places, such as industry cognition, talent training, industrial software, industrial processes, research and development and operational efficiency. Digital intelligent technology, innovation in the intangible, this is the lever to move the future.

Adaptive manufacturing – responding to “changing” needs

On this Innovation Day, Luca Galluzzi, Chief Sales Officer at ABB headquarters in B&R, gave a presentation entitled “Shaping the Future of Machines Together”. He analyzed the challenges faced by the current manufacturing industry, such as increased consumer personalized demand, labor shortages and market uncertainties, which require continuous improvement in productivity, more flexible manufacturing and simpler operations. To this end, B&R proposed the idea of “adaptive manufacturing”, through intelligent perception, information collaboration, intelligent analysis, robotics and intelligent delivery technology implementation, the formation of a complete flexible manufacturing system to respond to the changing consumer market needs.

Mr. Luca Galluzzi, Chief Sales Officer of ABB B&R

“B&r’s adaptive manufacturing concept is supported by a wide range of proven digital technologies, including self-sensing – machine vision, digitally connected OPC UA FX, adaptive brains, intelligent actuators – flexible delivery systems, and more.” Luca Galluzzi said that B&R’s machine vision lies in its “integration”, it integrates the vision into the automated system, rather than a separate system, so the biggest benefit is “synchronicity”, it can be configured and diagnosed like an I/O, with a network, a software can be achieved.

B&r is an active promoter of OPC UA FX, having installed OPC UA Server in the system since around 2008, and has been spearheading the development of TSN technology since 2016. In B&R systems, vertical industry information modeling such as PackML, EUROMAP, and Unimat using the OPC UA framework will also be integrated in the software for users to call.

Adaptive manufacturing requires intelligent “brains,” intelligent algorithms that are the backbone of data analysis. B&r uses a combination of physical modeling and data-driven modeling to solve learning, analysis and decision making problems in manufacturing. In physics modeling, through the FMU/FMI interface, B&R’s Automation Studio can co-simulate with MapleSoft, MATLAB/Simulink, IndustrialPhysics, and more. When IT comes to data-driven modeling, B&R’s exOS enables synergy between IT event-driven tasks and OT periodic tasks.

An important part of adaptive manufacturing is the flexible production line conveyor system, B&R’s ACOPOStrak maglev conveyor system, ACOPOS 6D plane maglev conveyor system makes “adaptive manufacturing” in the physical sense possible. The flexible conveying system not only allows the production to form a continuous flow, balanced load and high efficiency state, but also can freely adjust the production line for individual needs to achieve high energy efficiency production.

On the advancement of adaptive manufacturing technology, Mr. Luca Galluzzi said that with the help of magnetic levitation transportation technology, combined with machine vision and ABB robots, mechanical design can be simplified to meet the flexible market demand, and users in the field of “assembly” to create an “adaptive manufacturing” platform. B&r will also provide local users with production line engineering consulting, design and implementation support.