Meeting the machine challenge

What matters most to your business? That was the title of the OEM workshop organised by Rockwell Automation and targeted at machine builders. For delegates at the December 2006 event in Singapore, they were promised the opportunity to find out how to deliver machines in an environment characterized by increasing demands for flexibility – to keep up with frequent line changes, scalability – tohandle the continuous introduction of new products, and other usual suspectslike speed, cost and accuracy.

“For an OEM, introducing new machines and releasing new features is key to a profitable operation. If a machine introduction is delayed, the market window for that machine can close. To maximize machine sales volume, quick time to market is crucial.

The critical path is to get machines released for full production, through prototype and pre-production testing without delays. When this occurs, machine sales will be have the greatest mass market appeal,” explained Han Tok, Sales Engineer, OEM, Rockwell Automation.

One of the ways that OEMs can save time and money, said Han, is through standardization. Benefits of a standard software approach include code reusability, fewer errors, easier scalability, and simplified maintenance. In one case, Rockwell’s Power Programming solution was used by a packaging OEM for a filling machine, reducing development time by almost 50 percent, from 38 to 20 days.

Along with Power Programming, a number of other Rockwell Automation technologies targeted at OEMs were described during the workshop. With an increasing need for machines to be connected rather than standalone, Selvakumar Subbiah, Business Manager, Automation Control and Information Group, provided a comprehensive account of the advantages of EtherNet/IP industrialnetwork technology.

And with machine safety becoming an important upfront consideration rather than an afterthought, Puneet Mehrotra, Regional Marketing Manager, provided delegates with an overview of fundamental safety principles and techniques. Technology trends in the safety arena include advanced safety relay systems including networking for diagnostics, increased usage of safety light curtains and area scanners over gated access, emergence of safety networks and safety PLCs, and tighter integration of standard control and safety control.