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Motors giant Nidec enters into $260 million joint venture with automaker PSA

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Nidec, one of the world’s largest suppliers of motors and other industrial components, has entered into a joint venture with global automaker PSA Group.

The “Nidec-PSA emotors” joint venture has been created by Groupe PSA and Nidec to initiate the design of “future electric motors”.

Shigenobu Nagamori, CEO of Nidec, and Carlos Tavares, CEO of Groupe PSA, endorsed the establishment of Nidec-PSA emotors, saying the new business will be “dedicated to the design, development, manufacture and sale of electric traction motors”.  [Read more…] about Motors giant Nidec enters into $260 million joint venture with automaker PSA

Engineering companies struggling to find and keep talented young workers

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engineering graduates
Picture courtesy of WonderfulEngineering.com

To anyone looking for work, it might sound strange to hear that some sectors of the economy are struggling to find and retain workers, but that’s the situation many engineering companies find themselves in. 

Finding, educating, training and retaining talented young people is not just a dilemma for engineering companies in one region or country, it’s a global issue.

But, paradoxically, while companies in some countries say there’s a problem finding engineering graduates, in other countries such as India, large numbers of engineering graduates are reportedly not having much luck finding jobs.

In those countries where there is a shortage, such as Germany and maybe the US, it’s not at crisis levels yet, but it’s a complication that large industrial companies are trying to alleviate in a variety of ways.  [Read more…] about Engineering companies struggling to find and keep talented young workers

Opinion: Is digitalisation the key to remote plant operation?

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3d printing

By Eric Duchesne, SVP technology experts for Total, who will be addressing at the ERTC Ask the Experts conference in Cologne on 20-21 June 

There have been many advances in the field of digitalisation in recent years.

As the industry moves towards remote operation it is plant optimisation and integrity management which will provide the tools to enhance safety and anticipate potential problems within the plant, ensuring that the right human assets and replacement parts are available when required.

Today, there’s lots of talk about big data, but before we start to consider how we use big data we can dramatically improve the performance of our plants through the more effective interpretation of data that already exists. We need to become proactive rather than reactive.  [Read more…] about Opinion: Is digitalisation the key to remote plant operation?

NarrativeWave claims first of its kind IIoT platform

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industrial-internet-plm

Today, large industrial assets, such as airplane engines and gas turbines, generate data through sensors.

In fact, there are around 6 billion connected sensors in the world today and by 2020, more than 20 billion sensors will be connected worldwide, according to Gartner.

During a commercial airline flight, data such as the engine’s health and status is sent to diagnostic engineers to be closely analyzed.

Approximately 1,000 gigabytes of data are generated per flight and with over 100,000 flights per day, this equates to over 100,000,000 gigabytes of commercial flight data every day.

That is what you call BIG data.

While big data can be a curse to manage, it is becoming the most critical asset. [Read more…] about NarrativeWave claims first of its kind IIoT platform

Daimler develops ways for industrial robots and factories to save energy under Areus project

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Saving energy has been a serious preoccupation of many industrial companies for many years, but especially in recent years with prices of fuel fluctuating and public concern about the environment growing. 

In the auto manufacturing sector, which buys the most number of industrial robots and uses vast amounts of energy, companies such as Kuka have been looking to make their automation systems more energy efficient.

Now, in the European Union, a project called Automation and Robotics for European Sustainable Manufacturing, or Areus, says it has developed the components of an energy-efficient automobile production system of the future.  [Read more…] about Daimler develops ways for industrial robots and factories to save energy under Areus project

Top five causes of PLC control system failure

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Boulting Technology has released an infographic to help engineers mitigate problems with programmable logic controller (PLC) based control systems. The handy guide highlights the top five causes of failure and can be downloaded free from the Boulting Technology website. 

PLC-based control systems are invaluable to a manufacturing or processing business because they control and regulate critical production systems and processes.

A failed control system can cause significant plant downtime and is likely to be extremely costly; it can also create a hazardous situation when the system is controlling a critical process.  [Read more…] about Top five causes of PLC control system failure

Robotiq launches community for robotics professionals

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robotiq dof

Robotiq has launched an open community – called DoF – where industrial automation professionals can share their know-how and get answers to accelerate their robotics projects. 

DoF, which stands for degrees of freedom, is meant as a medium for sharing ideas and solving automation problems, says Robotiq.

Samuel Bouchard, CEO of Robotiq, says: “We realized that the know-how is locked in the head of automation engineers who can’t talk to each other because they are far apart, focused on making their factory run.

“This is why we created this online community, to bring industrial automation pros together so they can help each other with their automation projects and stop reinventing the wheel on their own.”  [Read more…] about Robotiq launches community for robotics professionals