Christian Zingg, Director of the Innovation & Global Machine Building Segment at Eaton
In the discussion about the intelligent factories of the future, many small and medium-sized machine and plant manufacturers are often unsure how to best approach Industry 4.0. In many cases, the greatest focus is placed on topics such as integration with ERP systems, big data, the cloud and safety. An initial basic step, however, is to make the machines IoT-ready using intelligent components. Laying this foundation opens up new opportunities to create added-value using process-specific information and develop new services for end users.
In the past, the function of a component was the basis for its use in a given application. For motor starters, this meant guaranteeing both a reliable and safe method of switching on and off and protection for the motor. From this perspective, the component is considered in isolation based on its function and it becomes more and more easily replaceable due to comprehensive standardisation.
As trends point towards more networking and data depth, future components will have to come with full communication capability and their own increased intelligence. To some extent, ‘Industry 4.0’ already describes the ability of components to provide feedback. This is certainly not a comprehensive description, but a first and necessary step in this direction.
As part of this, it is becoming increasingly important for machine and plant manufacturers to build not just using any components. Instead, they need to make use of devices and solutions to make equipment IoT-ready and therefore future-proof. As a component manufacturer, Eaton believes that analysing the application itself is crucial to further product development. This is because the machine manufacturer is interested in the function and the condition of the motor rather than the switching device.
Motor maintenance traditionally requires additional elements such as instrument transformers and sensors, but these involve added costs, complexity, space and effort. Today, Eaton is using its manual motor starters to move towards making switching devices intelligent enough to identify deviations in power consumption before sharing this information with other intelligent components. From this information, depending on the nature and extent of the deviation, steps are taken autonomously to maintain operation and/or notify the need for maintenance.
This trend will spread and there will be an increase in device functionality using integrated processing power and algorithms. The functionality will also be available tailored to customer applications. In this context, partnerships with application specialists and detailed knowledge of user processes and requirements play an increasingly important role.
In the future, communication-capable, intelligent devices will be used to create an integrated system at the lowest level of the automation pyramid. At this level, these devices will collect and analyse data and have a built-in ability to respond autonomously to existing problems. In addition, they will make any information required at any level available upon request. The ability to communicate with and interrogate real data at this low level will open up new business models for machinery and plant manufacturers. It is therefore conceivable, for example that an end user may want to use their smartphone or cloud model to query the power consumption of their machine over the past 24 hours. The machine manufacturer can then charge for such a service as an optional extra.
With its connection and communication system, SmartWire-DT and its intelligent components, Eaton is a pioneer in this field. At SPS IPC Drives in Nuremberg, the company presented a cloud-connected, intelligent hydraulic unit that was developed jointly with Swiss solutions partner ATP Hydraulik. With this, Eaton is demonstrating an approach that allows customers to make their machines IoT-ready today, using intelligent components that collect, analyse and manage information.
