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Industry Stories

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How do customers like Knauf Insulation benefit from technological investment without spending any capital? With contracted and guaranteed outcomes? And how can they possibly end up with cash savings on top?

The 19-litre domestic Home Energy Resources Unit (HERU) is a washing machine-sized appliance that takes everyday items typically destined for landfill, such as packaging, plastics and uneaten food, and uses pyrolysis to transform them into energy to heat water. The initial commercial HERU is 240 litres in capacity.

The advance of digitalization is bringing countless benefits to business and society, but at the same time is presenting new challenges in dealing with the huge volumes of generated data. When processing this data, edge computing offers enormous advantages to manufacturers and is evolving as a technology of the future.

Paint manufacturer DuluxGroup has focused on the end-to-end digitalization of all processes. This has increased efficiency and quality, reduced time to market, and introduced a level of flexibility that will help personalize mass paint production.

When it comes to digitalization, automobile manufacturers are leading the charge. Audi is already taking first steps in this direction at its production plant in Neckarsulm, Germany. Watch our video to learn what Audi is doing to optimize its production!

Anglian water engineer's van

See how Anglian Water is preventing unwanted spills and freeing up engineers' using Simocode to detect and clear pump blockages

Unlocking value: Demystifying digitalisation in Industry 4.0

At Digital Talks 2019 Mike Lewis, Innovations Director at Mpac Lambert, talked to science and technology journalist Katherine Templar-Lewis about how strategic collaboration in areas of digitalisation can benefit the entire value chain.

Painting new possibilities in project management

Close collaboration and coordination deliver a chemicals industry first

Hear what Jonathan Hague, Vice President of R&D Homecare Division at Unilever, had to say at Digital Talks about how Digitalisation has accelerated product innovation and R&D at Unilever.

It’s 5 am at a bakery in Wales. The smell of freshly baked bread hangs heavy in the air as fluffy loaves race along congested conveyor belts. Shiny metallic arms slice and wrap bread, while a machine datestamps each loaf, before carefully dropping them into a delivery container. For the unsuspecting, everything seems to be running smoothly.

Industry commentators believe that, over time, every machine on every factory floor will have its own digital twin. Some have even been so brazen as to suggest that at least half of large industrial companies will adopt this self-learning technology by 2021.In this article, the first in a series on “Starting the digitalisation journey”, we examine what role digital twins must play in helping OEMs to meet growing demand, and how this caused one of our customers to reduce their time-to-market by 40 percent.

Scalability is fundamental to success. It's not just about scaling the operations within today's fulfilment centre walls, but about what happens when you want to build one, two or three more fulfilment centres.

A small company with a big vision is behind a revolutionary packaging system that is reducing the consumption of energy and material by food producers in the UK. With its cold wrapping technology, TrakRap has not only taken heat and waste out of the packaging line; it is working with Siemens to provide its customers with all the benefits of manufacturing digitalisation.

Billionaire investor, Warren Buffett, once famously said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” And from the findings of AON’s bi-annual “Global Risk Management Survey”, it looks like senior executives agree.

Continuous manufacturing has long been accepted by a host of manufacturing industries from food and beverage to oil and gas, where it ensures the delivery of consistent continuous quality of product.

Digitalisation remains a challenge for many businesses across multiple sectors at present and pharmaceutical manufacturers are no different.

The drive towards digitalisation and Industry 4.0 in the manufacturing sector is redefining the relationship between customers and OEMs. Digitalisation will change the way in which OEMs support customers through the processes involved in commissioning, purchasing, using, managing, monitoring, servicing and repairing industrial machinery.

Where the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) was once regarded “cutting-edge”, the next generation of manufacturing machines is leaping lightyears ahead. Connected clouds, artificial intelligence, augmented reality; there is a whole host of new technology waiting in the wings. What makes these especially exciting, however, is that they won’t simply boost productivity and profitability on the work floor - they will revolutionise our industry as we know it today.

There’s no denying pharmaceutical manufacturing is enjoying a sustained period of growth at present, with latest predictions forecasting the global market will reach $1.12 trillion by 2022. Drilling down into the UK market specifically, pharmaceutical, together with the chemical industry is the UK’s largest manufacturing export sector, making it a key player in the nation’s future prosperity as it continues to expand.

The chemical industry has worked hard to build its reputation as one of the safest around. Nonetheless, infamous incidents over the years mean that it is never far from the safety spotlight. From the Milford Haven refinery accident in 1994 which injured 26 people and resulted in a refinery re-build cost of over $75 million, to other catastrophic accidents in Seveso in Italy or Bhopal in India, it is clear that if something goes wrong at a chemical plant, the consequences can be devastating.

Ian Elsby, Head of Chemical industry GB&I at Siemens UK, believes the move to Industry 4.0 will be more of an evolution than an enterprise-wide revolution.[1] According to him, digitalisation is being driven from the factory floor as plant managers, OT (Operations Technology) and in-house IT specialists collaborate with trusted partners to find digital solutions to everyday operational challenges.

Ian Elsby, Head of Chemicals, Siemens UK, says that while the focus may be on industrial digital technologies that promise much around productivity enhancements, the chemical industry also needs to work hard to attract fresh talent and upskill existing workforces if the sector is to realise the true potential of digitalisation.

With the unveiling of the ‘Made Smarter’ industrial digitalisation review earlier this year, which outlined the ways industrial digitalisation could, over the next 10 years, boost UK manufacturing by £455bn and increase sector growth by 3%, the opportunities available to pharmaceutical manufacturers looking to further embrace digitalisation could not be clearer.

Not so long ago, fulfilment centre “success” was characterised by accuracy. It was all about getting the right goods into the correct customer's hands. Customers were prepared to wait several days – or longer at peak periods – so long as the goods they received were delivered within the timeframe stipulated by the supplier and were exactly what they’d ordered. Customer expectations changed the minute leading retailers began to offer next and, later, same day delivery as a standard option.

Find out how these experts are setting the pace of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry drive towards digitalisation.

According to the trade body, The Chemical Industries Association, the chemical sector adds £15 billion of value to the UK economy every year and supports around half a million jobs.

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