Bangalore, Karnataka -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/10/2011 -- Axcend participated at the Automation4Packaging Forum held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.
The workshop focused on the subject of ‘Meeting Operational Challenges in Modern Packaging through Industrial Automation’, where Axcend shared the industry best practices & towards an effective way to improve business value in FMCG & Pharmaceutical Packaging Process. The Axcend session covered roadmap towards adopting Technology Solutions Conforming to OMAC PackML Standard & how real-time software and related technologies help in consistent performance measurement and execution of packaging operations.
Axcend offers Industrial Automation - some details
Industrial Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly decreases the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience.
Automation has had a notable impact in a wide range of industries beyond manufacturing (where it began). Once-ubiquitous telephone operators have been replaced largely by automated telephone switchboards and answering machines. Medical processes such as primary screening in electrocardiography or radiography and laboratory analysis of human genes, sera, cells, and tissues are carried out at much greater speed and accuracy by automated systems. Automated teller machines have reduced the need for bank visits to obtain cash and carry out transactions. In general, automation has been responsible for the shift in the world economy from industrial jobs to service jobs in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Engineers now can have numerical control over automated devices. The result has been a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities. Computer-aided technologies (or CAx) now serve the basis for mathematical and organizational tools used to create complex systems. Notable examples of CAx include Computer-aided design (CAD software) and Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM software). The improved design, analysis, and manufacture of products enabled by CAx have been beneficial for industry.
Information technology, together with industrial machinery and processes, can assist in the design, implementation, and monitoring of control systems. One example of an industrial control system is a programmable logic controller (PLC). PLCs are specialized hardened computers which are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events.
Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers. Service personnel who monitor and control through HMIs can be called by different names.
In industrial process and manufacturing environments, they are called operators or something similar. In boiler houses and central utilities departments they are called stationary engineers.
Different types of automation tools exist:
* ANN - Artificial neural network
* DCS - Distributed Control System
* HMI - Human Machine Interface
* SCADA - Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
* PLC - Programmable Logic Controller
* PAC - Programmable automation controller
* Instrumentation
* Motion control
* Robotics.
Advantages
The main advantages of automation are:
* Replacing human operators in tasks that involve hard physical or monotonous work
* Replacing humans in tasks done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, etc.)
* Performing tasks that are beyond human capabilities of size, weight, speed, endurance, etc.
* Economy improvement. Automation may improve in economy of enterprises, society or most of humanity. For example, when an enterprise invests in automation, technology recovers its investment; or when a state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century.