News Industry Comment The key to a smart factory
A NEW WHITE paper titled ‘IP-Based Fieldbus Holds the Key to Smart Factory of Industry 4.0’ has been published by Nexcom.
The recent Sensors & Instrumentation exhibition, co- located with Micro | Nano | Mems 2013 and The Machine Building Show 2013, built on the solid foundations of last year’s show, proving to be a busy and vibrant event which generated plenty of discussion, enquires and potential business for exhibitors. It was also standing room only for many of the show’s engaging seminars that took place throughout the two days, and the interface with the other shows plus the integration of visitors throughout the halls proved the co-location of the event worked very well. Many of the show’s exhibitors have already booked their stand for 2014. There will be further feedback from the event available on our website, but within our October issue we will be looking at machine building & frameworks, robotics & motion control, wireless technology, plus an industry focus on the automotive supply chain. We’re also featuring another of our regular supplements this month, with a look at the world of machine vision. Joe Bush - Editor
The essence of Industry 4.0 lies in maximising net- work coverage to streamline production and sales processes, facilitating information sharing and commu- nication between the processes to build a smart factory. From a practical standpoint, a smart factory can achieve factory automation and remote monitoring, ensuring seamless production. It can assist manufac- turers, integrate the various data of production, logis- tic and inventory management, enabling real time control of capacity planning to meet the real time needs of customised orders. Furthermore, a smart fac- tory can increase the production capacity without expanding factories.
Aiming for a quieter flight
BRITISH AIRWAYS (BA) pilots are benefiting from a quieter flight simulator environment following the installation of ABB drives in an Air Handling Unit (AHU) at its Flight Training Centre near London’s Heathrow Airport.
The AHU is used to cool the flight deck and instru- ments on one of the Boeing 777 Flight Simulator’s. Previously the AHU’s fan motor was run at constant speed but generated high noise levels. By using a 5.5kW ABB HVAC drive at 39Hz, the same flow rate can be obtained at a lower motor speed, resulting in a reduction in noise from 80dBA to 73dBA. Reducing the unwanted background noise generated by the supply fan has made it easier for the crew to hear con- versations and spoken instructions.
The critical nature of the Flight Simulators means that there are two AHUs - one in duty and the other in standby mode. Both AHUs are fitted with a 5.5kW ABB HVAC drive. Supply ducts from each AHU feed air to the simulator. If the duty AHU fails or requires maintenance, a mechanical damper can be switched between the outlets of the AHUs to maintain airflow. The switchover between AHUs is managed by a pressure signal to the building management system
In achieving the vision of a smart factory, building an indus- trial network and implementing PC- based controllers have now become important topics. Full details on the Nexcom white paper can be viewed at
www.connectingindustry.com/nexcomwp.
www.nexcom.com
(BMS). This maintains a pressure of 860Pa as the dampers are opened or closed by ramping the speed of the motors up or down as required.
In addition to the noise reduction, the drives cut energy costs, with a payback of less than a year. Dennis Doody, senior engineer with BA Flight Training commented, “As well as this initial project, we have also used ABB drives on two other AHU installations, with significant savings in energy costs. “A major requirement for a Flight Simulator is its fidelity to the environment that pilots experience in the actual aircraft. The noise from the AHU is not pre- sent in the real aircraft so we had to find a way of removing the unwanted noise to make training easier and make the experience more realistic and relevant.”
www.abb.com
Power distribution from the smallest to the largest.
ENCLOSURES POWER DISTRIBUTION CLIMATE CONTROL
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