FEATURE Smart Factories
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Enabling a software- confi gurable smart factory
M
anufacturing in the modern age is all about speed, adaptability, effi ciency and ingenuity. With increasing
product variability, matched with shorter development and production cycles, manufacturing is being pushed to limits that require new and innovative solutions. The current issue we face is that manufacturing equipment has yet to be designed to deal with the high levels of product variance that we see today. Production lines are typically set up and are expected to carry out the exact same task over and over, day in and day out. The variability in the market of products today has led to frequent large-scale equipment overhauls to reconfi gure a factory for a new product run, leading to extended factory downtime and lost productivity. Now there is a way to adapt to shifting market needs without having to build hardware from scratch. The addition of software-confi gurable components allows factory operators to be nimbler, enabling them to make changes more quickly and easily to the factory fl oor, to address shifting market demands. Software-defi ned factories make it possible to repurpose automation technology using accurate and precise data. That is why NXP has introduced the N-AFE. The software confi gurable features allow each of the eight inputs to be adapted to the required sensors, which eliminate the time required to replace the entire measurement
22 March 2023 | Automation
unit every time there is a change in the production run.
Another important element in the industrial world, especially in the Industry 4.0 era, is product quality. The accuracy and precision of the input data from the N-AFE opens the door for improved product quality. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, a very small variation in a measurement could compromise the proper dosage of a pill. However, increased accuracy and precision are not the end of the story.
Manufacturers are turning towards
predictive maintenance to optimise processes and maximise machine uptime. This aims to boost production effi ciency while streamlining manufacturing infrastructure management. Here, The N-AFE can unlock new levels of visibility and insight, enabling preventive maintenance. The diagnostic and anomaly detection features of the N-AFE help to identify issues before they occur, resulting in reduced factory downtime, increased effi ciency and improved safety. The N-AFE off ers up to eight, ±25V
software-confi gurable inputs for voltage, current, resistance temperature detector (RTD) sensors and more, enabling a software-defi ned factory. With measurement accuracy of 0.002%, self-calibration and advanced protection and self-diagnostics, the N-AFE off ers a huge leap forward in performance.
Schneider Electric has worked closely with NXP to incorporate the N-AFE family into its industrial solutions. The single-chip N-AFE helps reduce the complexity of hardware design for the company, whose industrial customers benefi t from the software confi gurability the analogue front- end delivers.
“The impact of a software-defi ned
factory, both in terms of productivity and overall costs saved, is immeasurable,” said Ralf Neubert, Vice President, Research & Development, Digital Factory at Schneider Electric. “NXP’s new analogue front-end software confi gurability and high precision accelerate hardware design, improving time to market. The N-AFE family enables fl exibility in our designs to allow our customers to quickly respond to market trends, but more importantly, it also helps to reduce unplanned downtime, enabling a more productive factory overall.” The N-AFE off ers the tools needed to
address the changing needs of the market. Combined with NXP’s MCU and power management solutions, the N-AFE devices expand the NXP industrial system solution off ering whilst helping customers to accelerate development time and reduce time to market.
CONTACT:
NXP
www.nxp.com
automationmagazine.co.uk
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