Precision: The depth of intelligent manufacturing

CONTROL ENGINEERING China interviewed Dr. Weirong Xiao, President of Greater China of B&R, a global technology leader in automation technology. Dr. Xiao put forward the concept of precision automation in the interview, and said that one of the current manufacturing trends is precision manufacturing, through automation, digitalization, intelligent realization, "precision" will define the depth of intelligent manufacturing.

Precision: Equipment manufacturing to the road of high-quality development

For a long time, China's manufacturing industry was in the stage of low-end large-scale replication. In the early stage of industrial development, this model is understandable, even if you look at the economic rise of various economies around the world, it is also a large-scale replication process. However, after more than 40 years, this low-end large-scale replication is clearly out of date. It will make us in the low-end overcapacity, and high-end and mostly rely on imports, which makes our economic quality is limited, unable to better profit, so there is a certain vulnerability.

Therefore, in Dr. Xiao Weirong's view, the "high-quality development of manufacturing industry" strategy proposed by the state is just the right time, and the production mode of the entire manufacturing industry will be personalized, green, intelligent, and produce products with higher added value, and then move towards the road of sustainable development. For the equipment manufacturing industry, high-quality development means to move from the low-end of the value chain to the high-end, to provide users with lower total cost of ownership, faster time to market, higher cost efficiency and quality, higher return on investment and other competitive advantages.

For the high-quality development of the equipment manufacturing industry, precision automation is the only way, and precision is also the meaning of intelligent manufacturing. Dr. Xiao Weirong pointed out that although there are many ideas to achieve intelligent manufacturing at present, such as industrial Internet of Things, industrial AI, digital twins, etc., looking back at the nature of manufacturing, precision automation is the benchmark to measure the depth of current intelligent manufacturing.

The "precision automation" proposed by B&R not only refers to the more accurate control of the machine through accurate motion control, high-precision positioning, robots and flexible conveying systems, but also includes the use of digital technology to make the machine smarter, through data acquisition, communication connection, mechanism modeling, learning model, judgment decision, field execution and other multiple means. Supplemented by service innovation and ecosystem innovation, it creates value for users, so that enterprises can have more accurate production management and lean operations at a high level, so as to move towards the road of high-quality development. This includes three aspects of "precision" : to explore the precise needs of the market with customers, to assist customers to design more efficient and intelligent accurate solutions, and to help users solve problems with digital means to provide accurate value-added services. Through these three "precision automations" throughout the life cycle of customer projects, B&R helps customers improve their core competencies and achieve sustainable development.

Driving the next change

For B&R, precision automation is not just a concept, but a wealth of products and solutions that can be landed. From a technical point of view, precision automation includes microsecond precision control, precise repetitive positioning and process control, predictive maintenance mechanisms and advanced closed-loop algorithms.

From the product point of view, B&R has a complete automation solution from accurate intelligent perception (data acquisition, analysis and transmission), accurate intelligent analysis and decision, and accurate intelligent execution, including X20 I/O, machine vision and other sampling analysis, via OPC UA FX transmission, running on the PC architecture controller, Intelligent analysis and decision making based on physical modeling and data modeling, respectively, and efficient manufacturing through ACOPOS servos and intelligent execution of ACOPOStrak/ACOPOS 6D.

Especially in recent years, B&R has launched a series of products around adaptive manufacturing such as integrated machine vision, parallel robots and flexible conveying systems, opening a new stage of precision automation.

ACOPOS 6D is a flexible conveying system based on planar magnetic levitation technology released by B&R. It breaks the constraints of the original mechanical layout of the production line, gets rid of the limitations of mechanical conveying, and allows the workpiece to be machined to move and rotate in multiple dimensions. To enable the assembly process to form a "just-in-time production (JIT)" required continuous flow, load balancing, beat optimization, and these only need the rapid configuration of parameters. In addition, it reaches the IP69K protection level, and can work in food/pharmaceutical, medical devices, batteries and other production environments with high cleanliness requirements.

Codian Parallel robot is B&R's newly launched truly integrated robot in the machine, with high precision synchronous motion performance, fully integrated in B&R's Automation Studio universal development platform, a set of development tools can be applied to the integration of process equipment and robots. Through modeling and simulation technology, the early verification, code development and debugging time of machines and production lines can be greatly shortened.

Predictive maintenance is an integral part of precision automation. B&r launched the MDoctor tool for predictive maintenance of equipment, which can extract features from vibration, temperature, speed, pressure and other signals, and then conduct physical modeling and data-driven modeling based on this, and finally make equipment health status assessment, maintenance recommendations and remaining life prediction through the fusion method, to ensure the digitization level of plant operation and maintenance.

"Looking back at the development of precision automation, we can see that it started with open-loop control in the 1970s, then began to integrate into measure-based closed-loop control in the 1990s, and today, integrated closed-loop control based on data analysis has gradually become the mainstream, real-time monitoring and analysis of data from the production process, with the help of data-driven modeling. Intelligent methods like machine learning, deep learning, to achieve more precise automation." Dr. Xiao Weirong said that with the support of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning, precision automation may open the next change.

Precision automation to build customer core competitiveness

As an automation company that has been working in the field of machine intelligence for decades, B&R provides unique solutions for customers in the photovoltaic, lithium, wind, printing and packaging and plastics industries with evolving precision automation technology to help customers create industry-leading competitiveness.

Silicon cutting is a very important link in the photovoltaic industry chain, the quality of cutting directly affects the production of downstream cells, and the speed and line loss of slicing determine the efficiency and cost of production. B&r provides high quality tension and wiring control through ACOPOSmulti precision control technology, and ensures reliable operation of machines through power outage technology, predictive maintenance technology based on machine learning, and reduces processing losses caused by unplanned downtime. Compared with 10 years ago, today, the shortening of the cutting time, the cutting line speed, and the improvement of the single crystal rod make the photovoltaic production capacity increase by nearly a hundred times compared with 10 years ago. This means that the cost of photovoltaic modules has dropped significantly, in order to reduce the LCOE of the entire photovoltaic power generation to only about 1/10 of that of 10 years ago.

The pharmaceutical industry is an industry with complex processes and stringent compliance requirements, and its production process includes a variety of mixed modes such as flow, batch control, discrete packaging, and a large number of precision measurement, defect detection, foreign matter detection and other quality-related links. B&r has extensive experience in pharmaceutical packaging with its high-precision motion control solutions for pharmaceutical environments. For example, in blowing and sealing BFS, B&R can provide IP69K protection grade Panel PC, high protection grade ACOPOSmotor servo drive and motor, and accurate temperature control and wall thickness control technology to create industry-leading high speed and high precision packaging equipment for users.

"Our 'precise' automation and control technology, combined with a wide range of industry know-hows, engineering methods and experience in rapid machine development, and a dedicated team of engineers, continue to help our equipment manufacturing customers build industry-leading machines and improve their competitiveness, which is a key element of B&R's success." Dr. Xiao Weirong concluded.

Smart manufacturing Outlines the future of manufacturing, and precision automation defines the critical path for smart manufacturing in its implementation. Determining the success of intelligent manufacturing is not whether the surface is intelligent, but whether it can return to the essence of manufacturing and create value for users, which is the value of B&R advocating precision automation.