Developments

Machine learning speeds up search for new sustainable materials

A model that rapidly searches through large numbers of materials could find sustainable alternatives to existing composites. Researchers from Konica Minolta and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan have developed a machine learning method to identify sustainable alternatives for composite materials. Their findings were published in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials: Methods. Researchers are looking for sustainable options, such as recyclable materials or biomass, to substitute the constituent materials in composites which are used in various applications including electrical and information technologies. Composite materials are compounds made of two or more constituent materials. Due to the complex nature of the interactions between the different components, their performance can greatly exceed that of single materials. Composite materials, such as fibre-reinforced plastics, are very important for a wide range of industries and applications, including electrical and information technologies. In recent years, there has been increasing demand for more environmentally sustainable materials that help reduce industrial waste and plastic use. One way to achieve this is to substitute the constituent materials in composites with recyclable materials or biomass. However, this can reduce performance compared to the original material, not only due to the features of the individual constituent materials, such as their physicochemical properties, but also due to the interactions between the constituents. Finding a new composite material that achieves the same performance as the original using human experience and intuition alone takes a very long time because you have to evaluate countless materials while also taking into account the interactions between them. Machine learning offers a potential solution to this problem. Scientists have proposed several machine learning methods to conduct rapid searches among a large number of materials, based on the relationship between the materials’ features and performance. However, in many cases the properties of […]

Recycling can drive new manufacturing pathways and prosperity

Of interest may be research by the UNSW Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) Centre which has found a way that could start a new ‘green aluminium’ manufacturing revolution and bolster government and industry efforts to advance manufacturing, and be more sustainable and create new jobs. The new technique to recover aluminium from complex, multilayered packaging is based on the microrecycling science pioneered by the SMaRT Centre under the leadership of its Director, Professor Veena Sahajwalla, and builds on their waste materials innovations including Green Steel and Microfactorie® technologies. Green aluminium The research, published across two international scientific journals, demonstrates there is now a way to sustainably recycle polymer-laminated aluminium packaging (PLAP) materials, such as post-consumer food and coffee packaging, into high-quality aluminium and be a potential source of high-energy hydrocarbon products.’ “We developed Green Steel technology where we extract hydrogen and carbon from old rubber tyres and plastic as an innovative and green pathway in steel making , and we now can develop new ‘Green Aluminium’ with our novel technique called Thermal Disengagement Technology (TDT),” said Veena whose SMaRT Centre is part of the UNSW Science Faculty. “Recycling using new technologies can be a foundation for the manufacturing of high-quality materials from our waste resources, as we seek to develop greater sovereign capability along with economic prosperity.” Thermal Disengagement Technology The new Thermal Disengagement Technology, described in scientific publications Springer Nature and the Journal of Cleaner Production, offers an innovative, efficient, and sustainable microrecycling technique to separate the materials in complex polymer-laminated metal packaging waste. TDT can transform the aluminium into a clean and green metal, allowing it to be extracted in a way that means it can be used as a high-quality material for manufacturing, while minimising residual waste. Veena said: “Green Steel and green manufacturing are capabilities […]

Why 24/7 clean energy beats carbon offsetting

Post COP26, more companies will feel the pressure to decarbonise operations and one increasingly popular claim is 100% renewable energy – but so is the word ‘greenwashing’. In this context, the term is used to describe branding that makes power generated by fossil fuel seem clean, normally via renewable energy certificates (RECs). Although RECs are a first step towards supporting clean energy generation, they allow companies to claim 100% renewable energy when some of the energy they use is actually being generated by fossil fuels. To overcome the risk of greenwashing, some companies have committed to around-the-clock carbon-free energy, also known as 24/7 clean energy. What is 24/7 clean energy? 24/7 clean energy fixes the mismatches of power supply-demand, the associated grid congestion, and inherent CO2 emissions (notably by peak demand being covered by fossil sources, such as coal, oil and gas). It matches electricity consumption with carbon-free energy generation on an hourly basis, from resources on the same local and regional grids. As a result, 24/7 clean energy shifts from offsetting energy emissions (mostly through RECs) to ‘time-location‘ tracked energy procurement, thus maximising real-time, local impact. 24/7 energy is fundamentally about recognising that with renewable energy, it DOES matter where and when you consume that energy – and it puts in place the mechanisms to address that challenge. A typical mismatch between clean energy supply and demand Image: Google Supporting companies Several initiatives aim to accelerate the transition to 24/7 clean energy. More than 100 global companies have joined the EnergyTag initiative, including tech giants, and energy companies like Statkraft and Vattenfall. Through partnerships, Google and Microsoft have enabled their data centres to become more sustainable through hourly energy monitoring and matching with carbon-free sources from their clean-energy portfolios. Google’s Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates (T-EACs), for example, has enabled data centres to be 90% carbon-free on an hourly basis, […]

Open systems the route to the Smart Factory

Francisco Perez, Lantek’s OEM Channel Director Lantek has been a leader in software solutions for the sheet metal industry for 35 years. It has accomplished this by helping OEM machine tool manufacturers optimise the functionality and performance of their machines while enabling sheet metal manufacturing companies take advantage of new, productivity boosting, CAD/CAM, MES, ERP software and cloud-based technologies. Dedicated OEM team, worldwide support Integral to this approach is Lantek’s neutral stance for its OEM partners, giving them the confidence to trust Lantek with information about the individual technology advances each is working to develop. To facilitate this secure coordination, Lantek has established a focused and dedicated department to manage the 150 OEMs it now supports. This special team is giving each OEM individual attention on their Lantek projects and is supporting them in their implementation and market rollouts to ensure the technology works as intended and, that their customers are happy with the results. Lantek has 20 offices in 14 countries and a global dealer network across 100 countries which Lantek puts at the disposal of its OEM partners for professional support. Long term experience and a culture of hard work Software development is a long and complex process. Lantek has been developing its sheet metal CAM, ERP and MES software solutions for 35 years. Mostly, its innovations come from long hours working in partnership with sheet metal manufacturers and machine tool builders, incorporating their requirements while anticipating the direction the industry is heading, providing features and innovations that add real value for customers. This knowledge and experience can only be acquired after years working in partnership with machine tool builders. Since 2019, Lantek’s OEM partnerships have grown 16% with an increase in OEM channel sales of 41%. Special collaborative projects Over the years, Lantek has developed software to […]

Carbon-neutral manufacturing is possible

Amid a slow political process on climate change, businesses globally must step up their efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Engineering and manufacturing can make an essential contribution to achieving net zero, as manufacturing plants, machinery, and sophisticated production processes are at the heart of global value creation everywhere. The good news is that we can help to significantly limit global warming and reach net-zero emissions, using the technology and know-how we already have. Three key priorities that will propel us more quickly on this journey – if we embrace them consistently: Focus all our efforts on minimising greenhouse gas emissions. Use all available levers for improvement, from the thousands of incremental refinements that add up to significant efficiency gains over time, to fundamentally designing and adapting large industrial plants and processes with the goal of climate neutrality. We will need to question established routines and scrutinise every aspect: can we minimise the amount of stainless steel or other raw material and still get the same performance? How can we reuse more of the waste we produce in production processes, or – even better – avoid it? And this line of questioning doesn’t stop within our own operations; we must encourage, or even require, our suppliers to do the same. This is critical given that a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions are generated in the supply chain. We must put energy efficiency front and centre. There is no doubt that energy efficiency improvements will have to play a crucial role in putting the world on a net-zero pathway. In particular, heating and cooling require our immediate focus, as they account for a large proportion of energy consumption in processing plants – often between 50 and 90%. By deploying state-of-the-art heat pump technology, manufacturers can capture their waste heat from refrigeration and then boost the temperature to […]

Taking the edge off Industry 4.0

~ Why edge analytics should be part of an IIoT strategy ~ In a 2019 report from Forrester, 69 per cent of decision makers said that prioritising edge Internet of Things (IoT) processes would improve their ability to meet IoT objectives. And they aren’t wrong. Eventually, it won’t be possible for all data to be stored and monitored in the cloud — this is where edge analytics offers an olive branch. Here, Johan Jonzon, CMO and Co-Founder of pioneer in edge analytics for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Crosser, looks at why edge analytics should be a key part of an IIoT strategy in manufacturing. Gartner predicts that, by 2025, more than 75 per cent of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the traditional data center or cloud. Gaining access to relevant data in a central location, either a cloud or a data center, is key to making changes and meeting business objectives. Companies must therefore ensure data is received in a faster, more secure and cost-effective way by making edge analytics a key part of their IIoT strategy. Edge systems hold numerous benefits for the manufacturing industry. Relevant data can be transmitted from the edge so that businesses can act on insights in real-time. The reduced distance between the server and end-user enables quicker data analysis and decision-making. In addition to delivering faster insights, the sheer volume of data that connected devices are creating is making edge analytics a necessity. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), “every connected person in the world will have at least one digital data interaction every 18 seconds”. If we consider just how many IIoT devices are available in a smart manufacturing plant, we can quickly see why manufacturing needs the edge. Strategy on the edge Manufacturers must manage all their devices […]

Why automate?

By Daniel Carranco Director, Continuous Improvement Global Shop Solutions Manufacturers are looking to lower cost and increase speed without sacrificing quality. This means getting more done in less time, with less manpower, less scrap and fewer mistakes. To do this, the manufacturing industry is investing more in automation. Specifically, automating the processes and tasks that machines can do quicker and better than humans and integrating them with a company’s ERP system and other technology. What once seemed to be the stuff of science fiction – manufacturing plants run by robots – is already a reality. FANUC Corporation of Japan uses a workforce of robots working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to produce up to 23,000 robots a month. Most manufacturers are a long way from being able to automate the majority of their production processes. But as ongoing advances enable machines and humans to get better at talking to each other, more production lines and eventually more production plants will become more and more automated. If your manufacturing business hasn’t yet jumped on the automation bandwagon, it’s time, and here are the top five reasons why you should. 1.To reduce labor costs For most manufacturers, labor costs represent the biggest expense and hardest cost to manage (or reduce). It’s no surprise that companies around the globe have begun using automated machinery and equipment to replace human workers on assembly lines. For example, automation is already replacing human labor in areas such as picking and moving parts, assembly, inspection and more. Other examples where automation is producing significant reductions in labor costs include: BOM COMPARE. Reduces expensive engineering time by eliminating the manual comparing of CAD/CAM BOMs against existing BOMs in your ERP system. Improves the speed and reliability of employee software logins and inventory tracking. AUTOMATING PURCHASING. […]

Service buses and their impact on digitalisation

One of the biggest challenges that enterprises face in their digitalisation efforts is having too many complex data silos and applications that don’t follow a common architecture. The promises of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are significant, but there are several traps that companies need to avoid in order secure the long-term outcome of their digitalisation projects. The answer lies in a flexible, future-proofed data architecture, as Martin Thunman, CEO and co-founder at edge analytics platform Crosser, explains. IDC reports that 60 per cent of executives believe the Internet of Things (IoT) will play a critical role in their digital business strategy — with big data and analytics among the top technologies already implemented to support this. However, the communication layer of yesterday has evolved and has now become even more intelligent. Therefore, industry now needs to add intelligent logic between data endpoints to enable IoT applications. Architectural development The core concept of the enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture is that it enables easy integration of multiple applications by putting a communication bus between them. This is crucial in increasing organizational agility by reducing time to market, making it one of the key reasons that companies implement an ESB as the backbone of their IT infrastructure. This is down to an ESB architecture providing a simple, well defined, “pluggable” system that is highly scalable. From the ESB followed the need of an event driven architecture (EDA) to leverage insights when they occur. This formed the need for initial steps toward the integration of large enterprise systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). ESB is regarded as the most promising strategy for integrating business applications across distributed and diverse frameworks and platforms today. Using ESB as a middleware layer creates a superset of both service oriented architecture (SOA) and EDA. […]

Carbon-neutral manufacturing is possible

Automate your manufacturing

By Daniel Carranco Director, Continuous Improvement, Global Shop Solutions Manufacturers are looking to lower cost and increase speed without sacrificing quality. This means getting more done in less time, with less manpower, less scrap and fewer mistakes. To do this, the manufacturing industry is investing more in automation. Specifically, automating the processes and tasks that machines can do quicker and better than humans and integrating them with a company’s ERP system and other technology. What once seemed to be the stuff of science fiction – manufacturing plants run by robots – is already a reality. FANUC Corporation of Japan uses a workforce of robots working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to produce up to 23,000 robots a month. Most manufacturers are a long way from being able to automate the majority of their production processes. But as ongoing advances enable machines and humans to get better at talking to each other, more production lines and eventually more production plants will become more and more automated. If your manufacturing business hasn’t yet jumped on the automation bandwagon, it’s time, and here are the top five reasons why you should. 1.Reduce labor costs For most manufacturers, labor costs represent the biggest expense and hardest cost to manage (or reduce). It’s no surprise that companies around the globe have begun using automated machinery and equipment to replace human workers on assembly lines. For example, automation is already replacing human labor in areas such as picking and moving parts, assembly, inspection and more. Other examples where automation is producing significant reductions in labor costs include: BOM COMPARE. Reduces expensive engineering time by eliminating the manual comparing of CAD/CAM BOMs against existing BOMs in your ERP system. Improves the speed and reliability of employee software logins and inventory tracking. AUTOMATING PURCHASING. Reduces […]

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