GHM edia
B usiness
Article
Machine safety in the age of digitisation- Schmersal
Digitisation in industrial production imposes new requirements on machine safety. It also lays the foundations
for new solutions. This article looks at the effects of Industry 4.0 on functional machine safety.
Keywords: machine safety, digitisation, internet of things,
platform economy, Industry 4.0.
The Schmersal Group develops and produces some 25,000
switchgear units, making it one of the largest providers
anywhere in the world. Motivated by a vision of a safe
world of work, the company’s development engineers are
constantly working on new devices and systems for all
conceivable application situations. Development focuses
on three areas — lift technology, automation technology
and safety technology — and has produced a range of
mechanical and non-contact switchgear devices, a portfolio
of safety switchgear and safety switching systems for
protection of man and machine.
Digitisation, the internet of things, platform economy,
Industry 4.0. Behind all of these buzzwords is a real ‘mega
trend’ that is sweeping through industry. Virtually every
company has been touched by this mega trend, and we’re
likely to see significant changes in every stage of industrial
production as a result.
This also affects machine safety, and in a multitude of ways.
In the first instance, new machines and production concepts
impact the design of safety systems. If components are
manufactured in highly-automated one-size production
batches, machines need to offer much greater flexibility, as
too must the safety equipment. The most striking example
of this are collaborating robots, which operate alongside
workers without safety fences to separate them.
Secondly, the unbroken networked communication systems
of Production 4.0 offer new opportunities for machine safety.
Infrastructure like the cloud and edge computing and, at
product level, virtual machine and system twins, help to
enhance the transparency and flexibility of safety equipment.
We will outline some examples of both trends below.
Increasing productivity as a goal
It is a principle that machine safety should not be allowed to
impair the productivity of a machine. This is far from a new
requirement, but in the age of Industry 4.0, it has become
far more pressing. In response to this, increasing numbers
of machine builders are seeking cooperation from machine
safety experts early on in the design of new series, with the
aim of integrating safety functions into machine functions
in such a way that productivity is maximised alongside high
levels of safety.
New tools such as multi-discipline Systems Engineering are
available to assist with this challenge. When it comes to
32 | january-february 2019 |
Global
MDA
machine safety, qualified services are available and offered
by Schmersal under the tec.nicum brand. Services include
design support, encompassing machine safety aspects and
customer-specific programming of safety control units.
Both help to ensure that safety functions can be integrated
into or coordinated with operational machine functions as
seamlessly as possible, so as not to impair productivity.
Systems and solutions for machine safety
In today’s world, machine builders can benefit greatly by
procuring safety systems from a single source. As a systems
and solutions provider for machine safety, Schmersal
offers safety components and systems for signal evaluation
alongside consultancy, project planning and engineering
services.
In view of the increasing complexity of machines, machine
control units and safety systems, it is vital that we offer
complete solutions packages. Individual components such as
RFID-based security sensors have already been developed, like
the RSS260, which can also transmit diagnostics information
such as error messages, e.g. ‘Fault or short circuit at a safety
output’ or ‘Faulty actuator’, to enable rapid elimination of
errors. In addition, these advanced diagnostics functions
also enable predictive maintenance and the avoidance of
machine downtime by transmitting non-safety-related status
information to operating control units, such as a notification
to adjust the safety door in the event of a door offset. The
extended features of these RFID sensors, such as the RSS260,
also include individual encoding for enhanced manipulation
protection.
Data exchange beyond the machine
Things become even more complex when you go beyond
component level to control unit level. The goal here is to
Global MDA Journal
Journal