Wittmann Battenfeld UK to “unravel” mysteries of working with Industry 4.0
Wittmann Battenfeld UK is holding a two-day open event to demonstrate and demystify the ways in which plastics processors can utilise the technology often referred to as ‘Industry 4.0’.
To be held at the company’s UK headquarters in Wellingborough, '4.0 Unravelled', a free-to-attend event on 24 and 25 April, will offer scope for hands-on work with a ‘live’ injection moulding production cell – complete with automation, materials handling, drying, temperature control and process control.
According to Wikipedia, Industry 4.0 is “a collective term for technologies and concepts of value chain organisation... it facilitates the vision of the Smart Factory. Within the modular structured Smart Factories of Industry 4.0, cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralised decisions.”
Whilst UK Managing Director of Wittmann Battenfeld, Barry Hill, says that “this all sounds rather futuristic,” he is keen to stress that “the reality is that the future is arriving sooner than we think.”
Another way of expressing the Industry 4.0 idea is that it stands for the synthesis and networking of all relevant technologies in an Internet of objects, services and data. Hill added: “This means integrating, directing and improving manufacturing systems in order to be able to offer quick, flexible responses to customer demands - including cost-efficient production of small batches.”
Hill added that “the Wittmann Group is uniquely placed to full develop these ideas since we design and supply all the necessary needed; injection moulding machines; automation; materials handling, temperature control, granulation, and many other related products.”
The company has given its own moniker to the Industry 4.0 technologies, namely Wittmann 4.0, within which it says a ‘plug and produce’ concept gives moulders an opportunity to keep all plastics processing equipment under one roof, getting efficiencies from the same central control panel and the same Internet router.
The April dates will see expert speakers from Austria, Italy and the UK explain how Industry 4.0 principles work in plastics processing and how they also related to Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) as well as issues of data control and customer marketing and interface. For availability contact barry.hill@wittmann-group.co.uk