Commercial and industrial property and casualty insurers have historically focused primarily on electrical fire protection, which – in case a fire occurs – minimizes property damage and business interruption along with reducing the risk of injury and death. However, today’s quickly evolving smart sensing technologies are enabling a new, more valuable move...
Augmented reality (AR) was once the stuff of Hollywood fantasies. Remember Marty McFly’s son in Back to the Future II sporting a head-mounted graphical display at the kitchen table? How about the use of AR-based gesture recognition throughout Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report? Or the helmet-mounted AR display in Iron Man? Since these films hit...
The food and beverage sector is adopting digitized processes to address common industry pain points. This includes improving the supply chain through data collection, visibility, and traceability to optimize product-to-market processes and improve overall quality. Digitalization makes this possible through the use of intelligent devices and sensors that collect data...
We cannot afford to miss this opportunity to use software-centric and data-driven automation to make meaningful change. The industrial sector is dominated by closed, propriety systems that are not designed for flexibility and prioritize vendor lock-in over innovation. Failure to apply truly open, interoperable standards for automation tools is costly on...
Sometimes we’re a little too close for comfort. As we’ve all learned in the last year, sometimes a little social distancing gives a lot of protection. The same goes for your relationship with your electrical installations. Electrical equipment injuries represent a serious workplace health and safety issue. There are thousands...
As manufacturing resumes across the globe many of us are considering how Industry can prepare for the ‘new normal’. I’ve spoken at length about how greater flexibility and agility in manufacturing can help companies respond to changing market demands and customer needs. But the current pandemic has shown us this is only one...
People’s safety has become the first priority for manufacturing companies. Pandemic-driven workplace changes such as social distancing on packaging lines, restricted access to installations for performing maintenance, a depleted workforce due to quarantine regulations, and multiple other issues require innovative responses from manufacturing stakeholders. For example, in March, the Institute...
As we all adapt to the ‘new normal’ the Food & Beverage industry has been gradually integrating Industry 4.0 into production processes and across their value chains. We believe the volatility we see in the market, combined with new demands to quickly improve agility and resiliency in plants and across...
What do small-batch brewing operations, package flow in an Amazon warehouse, and roller coasters all have in common? As different as all of these things are, when looking behind the curtain at what controls the mechanics, it’s all the same; the sturdy and reliable Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). A Programmable...
The EcoStruxure Machine Advisor from Schneider Electric consists of three modules. Track: simple management of your machine’s fleet by creating profiles with machine history, logbooks, task management, and transparent documentation. Monitoring: collection and visualizing operational machine data that can help inform you of anomalies of your machine using the analytics...
