Cover Story
A
Automation & Robotics
utomation is anything that requires
less human intervention and is based
on Intelligence which is now being
used widely to reduce human workload enabling
the robots to perform tasks that needs to be
performed frequently. A plant, machine and
systemisdesigned and trained to perform certain
tasks and processes to increase the productivity
and reduce manual labour by improving the
design, process and operations as well by
addition of Robotics.
I would like to say that automation is the
combination of many factors for mainly
increasing the Productivity and Efficiency of
the plant & machinery by way Systematic
and proper automatic controls for minimizing
and proper Utilization of man power, Better
Product Engineering, Improving and Up-
gradingtheoperations, Adaptation of better
processes, Reduction of Material Handling,
Incorporation of Robotics in handling the
components and tooling, Systematically
Targeting Operations, Automatic tool and work
piece change-out, Design Process Automation,
Incorporation of Integrated Tooling and Systems
along with the Automated Inspection and
Sampling etc.
The target of automation may be the human less
factory and plant; but it will not materialize yetthe Robotic
Automation with convergence of man and machine where a
set of commands are developed for which a certain set of
response or output will be generated or else the machine
will halt the user unless the right command is given.However,
sometimes the semi-automated plants may bemore
flexible than totally automated plants and may have higher
availability as well as lower maintenance and investment
costs. Therefore, I personally feel that we must properly
analyze ifthe specific Industry must go for Full Automation
with Robotics or Semi-Automation with the properly selected
Controls for the equired production rates.
Automations and Robotics make sense only as long as they
benefit to the industries, they lead, and achieve the market
success and profitability. The significance of automation in
the Machines and Plant with the Robotics or thesuitable, new
generation Controls is today’s necessity for a large number of
industries looking to remain profitable and competitive in an
extremely dynamic environment. I am, therefore, providing
some information on the Electronic & Hydraulic Controls in
the later part of the article.
22 | JuNe-july 2018 | Global MDA Journal
Ashok Km Gupta
Global Media House
The industrial production is not only determined by a
continuing quest for greater productivity, but also by
progressive consolidation, flexibility and platform strategies.
Most of industries therefore demand powerful, easily
available, open and modular automation systems which can
be retrofitted or modified without long shutdown periods.
On the technical front, this goes hand in hand with greater
complexity and shorter innovation cycles.
When we just peep in the history, we had seen Siemens as
a trendsetter in Electronic Controls, andhadtaken account of
those developments by continuing to enhance its integrated
system portfolio on the ongoing basis. Totally Integrated
Automation (TIA) provided benefits in hybrid automation,
that was the integrated technology for the manufacturing
and process stages of production.
Siemens had also been pressing ahead with its developments
in industrial communication – ranging from field bus, all the
way to high-speed Ethernet. For the first time in that year’s
Hanover Fair, the company had presented an isochronous
real-time Ethernet. Other innovations involve solutions for
the security of data traffic and wireless communication.