AIM­PLAS, the Plastics Tech­no­logy Centre based in Spain, has de­veloped an in­nov­at­ive di­git­al to­tem that sim­u­lates the di­git­al pass­port for plastic products, which will be man­dat­ory for mar­ket­ing products in the European Uni­on. Com­pan­ies should start im­ple­ment­ing it from 2025 to ad­apt to its likely entry in­to force the fol­low­ing year, al­though the ex­act date is not yet known. This tool provides con­sumers with es­sen­tial in­form­a­tion about the trace­ab­il­ity, ma­ter­i­als, re­cyc­ling, and car­bon foot­print of the products they pur­chase. Ad­di­tion­ally, this solu­tion de­veloped by AIM­PLAS of­fi­cially demon­strates that plastic products com­ply with all European reg­u­la­tions.

As an ex­ample of what this di­git­al pass­port will en­tail, the to­tem in­cludes ex­amples of su­per­mar­ket ice cream pack­aging, re­usable cos­met­ic pack­aging, a re­cycled plastic pen­cil hold­er and a toy house, which, in ad­di­tion to be­ing made with at least 90% re­cycled plastic, aims to edu­cate about sus­tain­able habits and re­spect for nature.

Pack­aging and toys are framed with­in the pri­or­it­ies defined by the European Com­mis­sion's Joint Re­search Centre for the Sus­tain­able Products Eco­design Reg­u­la­tion.

The to­tem, de­signed as an in­ter­act­ive screen with code and la­bel read­ers, al­lows users to visu­ally and in­tu­it­ively ex­plore the in­form­a­tion that these products could present in their fu­ture di­git­al pass­ports. It in­teg­rates de­tailed data about the product's life cycle, from its ori­gin and man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess to its ma­ter­i­al com­pon­ents and re­cyc­ling op­tions at the end of its use­ful life, as well as its im­pact on the car­bon foot­print. With this demon­strat­or, AIM­PLAS aims to raise aware­ness among the in­dustry and con­sumers about the im­port­ance of hav­ing veri­fied and ac­cess­ible in­form­a­tion that pro­motes more re­spons­ible and cir­cu­lar con­sump­tion.

Reg­u­la­tion for end products and in­ter­me­di­ates

The products iden­ti­fied by the European Com­mis­sion as key to be­ing in­cluded in the Sus­tain­able Products Eco­design Reg­u­la­tion (which en­com­passes the di­git­al pass­port) are el­ev­en fi­nal products (tex­tiles and foot­wear, fur­niture, tyres, bed mat­tresses, de­ter­gents, paints and var­nishes, lub­ric­ants, cos­met­ics, toys, fish­ing gear, ab­sorb­ent hy­giene products), and sev­en in­ter­me­di­ate products (iron and steel, ba­sic chem­ic­als, non-fer­rous met­al products oth­er than alu­mini­um, alu­mini­um, plastic and poly­mers, pulp and pa­per, glass). Ad­di­tion­ally, three ho­ri­zont­al re­quire­ments will be con­sidered (dur­ab­il­ity, re­cyc­lab­il­ity, re­cycled con­tent).

The de­vel­op­ment of this demon­strat­or for the fu­ture di­git­al product pass­port has been made pos­sible thanks to the sup­port of the Valen­cian In­sti­tute of Busi­ness Com­pet­it­ive­ness and In­nov­a­tion (IVACE+i) with funds from the Gen­er­al­it­at Valen­ciana for the de­vel­op­ment of in­de­pend­ent R&D activ­it­ies by tech­no­logy centres. It is framed with­in the Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Line pro­moted by AIM­PLAS and rep­res­ents a step to­wards trans­par­ency and sus­tain­ab­il­ity in the plastics in­dustry.

ITC Pack­aging and Famosa have col­lab­or­ated in this de­vel­op­ment by provid­ing rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion from the tech­nic­al sheets of the ice cream pack­aging and the toy. Both com­pan­ies are work­ing with AIM­PLAS on the OAS­IS project, fun­ded by IVACE+i with­in the aid pro­gram aimed at tech­no­logy centres in the Valen­cian Com­munity for non-eco­nom­ic R&D projects car­ried out in col­lab­or­a­tion with com­pan­ies for the 2024 fisc­al year, fun­ded by the European Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment Fund (ERDF) of the European Uni­on un­der the 2021-2027 Op­er­a­tion­al Pro­gram.

“We are very pleased to add Samtec to our sup­pli­er line card,” said Lew La­For­n­ara, Seni­or Vice Pres­id­ent, Product and Sup­pli­er Mar­ket­ing. “We look for­ward to bring­ing Samtec’s in­dustry-lead­ing con­nect­or, cable and fibre op­tic products to our glob­al cus­tom­ers, many of whom look to TTI and our cus­tom sup­ply chain man­age­ment pro­grams to min­im­ize sup­ply chain risk, re­duce their in­vent­or­ies, and stream­line their pur­chas­ing pro­cesses.”

Rick Skees, Vice Pres­id­ent of Dis­tri­bu­tion, Samtec, shared that “TTI is known throughout the in­dustry as a lead­er in cus­tom­er sup­port with a com­mit­ment to qual­ity and in­vent­ory man­age­ment. We are very pleased that they will be rep­res­ent­ing Samtec products in the glob­al dis­tri­bu­tion chan­nel.”

The in­tro­duc­tion of Samtec products to TTI’s port­fo­lio means TTI will provide Samtec PCB in­ter­con­nects to elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­ers world­wide, sim­pli­fy­ing cus­tom­ers’ BOM pur­chases. The full line of Samtec products are avail­able from TTI as of Q1 2025.

Nor­walt Auto­ma­tion joins the ETG as an­oth­er lead­ing ma­chine build­er that wants to provide the nu­mer­ous ad­vant­ages of Eth­er­CAT tech­no­logy to its cus­tom­ers today and in the fu­ture. Just like the ETG it­self, Kyle Seitel, Tech­nic­al Op­er­a­tions Man­ager at Nor­walt, is also pleased about join­ing: “Without Eth­er­CAT, our new ma­chine would not be nearly as suc­cess­ful: the per­form­ance and syn­chron­iz­a­tion pre­ci­sion of Eth­er­CAT en­able the out­stand­ing ac­cur­acy and high through­put of this sys­tem with its many axes. In this way, Eth­er­CAT helps us meet the high ex­pect­a­tions of our cus­tom­ers and con­tin­ues to do so in the fu­ture.”

The Eth­er­CAT Tech­no­logy Group con­tin­ues to ex­pand its po­s­i­tion as the largest field­bus user or­gan­iz­a­tion in the world. Hit­ting this 8000-mem­ber mile­stone, in com­bin­a­tion with the ap­prox­im­ately 80 mil­lion Eth­er­CAT nodes in the field, once again con­firms the suc­cess and mar­ket pen­et­ra­tion of the tech­no­logy.

De­vel­op­ment in­to a glob­al or­gan­iz­a­tion

The con­tinu­ous mem­ber­ship growth of the Eth­er­CAT Tech­no­logy Group con­tin­ues un­abated more than 20 years after its found­a­tion, with over 400 new mem­bers join­ing every year for the past 10 years. And al­though Eth­er­CAT ori­gin­ated in Ger­many, the struc­ture of the ETG is ab­so­lutely glob­al: case in point, the num­ber of Asi­an mem­ber com­pan­ies has re­cently over­taken those from Europe. This means that 43% of mem­bers come from Asia, 42% from Europe, 14% from Amer­ica and 1% from the rest of the world. Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­iz­a­tion's guidelines, only leg­al en­tit­ies such as com­pan­ies or uni­versit­ies can be­come mem­bers of the ETG, not in­di­vidu­als.
 

For strongly ex­port-ori­ented drive tech­no­logy and flu­id power com­pan­ies, HAN­NOV­ER MESSE is the ideal plat­form to push their glob­al busi­ness for­ward thanks to its highly in­ter­na­tion­al char­ac­ter. "Giv­en the gen­er­al glob­al con­di­tions, HAN­NOV­ER MESSE has a spe­cial role to play this year, be­cause this is where the glob­al course for to­mor­row's in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion will be set," says Dr. Jochen Köckler, Chair­man and CEO of Deutsche Messe AG. "In the areas of auto­ma­tion, di­git­al­iz­a­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion, we of­fer a cent­ral plat­form on which drive tech­no­logy and flu­id power com­pan­ies can show­case their pi­on­eer­ing con­cepts and provide de­cis­ive im­petus for a re­si­li­ent in­dustry. At the same time, the highly in­ter­na­tion­al nature of the event opens up ideal op­por­tun­it­ies for ex­port-ori­ented com­pan­ies to tap in­to new mar­kets, ac­quire po­ten­tial new cus­tom­ers, and strengthen their po­s­i­tion in glob­al com­pet­i­tion in the long term."

Com­pan­ies that have already re­gistered their par­ti­cip­a­tion in­clude Atos, Baumüller, Bosch Rexroth, Can­toni, Festo, Flender, HAWE, IMM Hy­drau­l­ik, SEW-EURODRIVE, and Schaeffler. The man­u­fac­tur­ers will present their latest ap­plic­a­tions and com­pon­ents for in­tel­li­gent and sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion. All this, un­der the Mo­tion & Drives la­bel, will be fo­cused in Halls 4, 5, and 6.

"Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing and Flu­id Power com­pon­ents are key build­ing blocks of ma­chines – they provide power and move­ment, serve as a data source for di­git­al value-ad­ded ser­vices, and play a de­cis­ive role in the per­form­ance of cus­tom­er products. In 2025, HAN­NOV­ER MESSE with its 'Mo­tion & Drives Com­munity' will be­come a driver of in­nov­a­tion in the en­gin­eer­ing busi­ness," em­phas­izes Hart­mut Rauen, Deputy Man­aging Dir­ect­or of the Ma­chinery and Equip­ment Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­ation (VDMA) and re­spons­ible for the Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing and Flu­id Power As­so­ci­ations with­in VDMA.

Young Tal­ent and Re­search Activ­it­ies as the Key to the Fu­ture

The mem­bers of the Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing and Flu­id Power as­so­ci­ations are in­creas­ingly in­volved with the prob­lems of se­cur­ing young tal­ent and the short­age of skilled work­ers. Through close co­oper­a­tion with re­search in­sti­tu­tions such as the Re­search As­so­ci­ation for Drive Tech­no­logy (FVA e.V.), the Flu­id Power Re­search Fund and the Flu­id Power Edu­ca­tion Fund, pi­on­eer­ing re­search projects are be­ing driv­en for­ward, and ur­gently needed gradu­ates are be­ing trained.

Di­git­al­iz­a­tion will con­tin­ue to be a key top­ic at HAN­NOV­ER MESSE. The pub­licly fun­ded re­search project "Flu­id 4.0", which fo­cuses primar­ily on the As­set Ad­min­is­tra­tion Shell (AAS) concept, is open­ing up new per­spect­ives for the in­dustry. OPC UA spe­cific­a­tions are be­ing de­veloped in the area of Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing to op­tim­ize data ex­change in Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing. In­ter­faces to the over­arch­ing top­ic of Man­u­fac­tur­ing-X will also be ad­dressed in or­der to design fu­ture data spaces for the in­dustry, and to gear up the sec­tor for the fu­ture.

Spe­cial Flu­id Power 4.0 Show: In­nov­a­tion Meets Sus­tain­ab­il­ity

The spe­cial show in Hall 5, D44 at the heart of the "Mo­tion & Drives" ex­hib­i­tion fo­cus will prove to be the cent­ral meet­ing point for cast­ing light on the fu­ture of flu­id power and ex­chan­ging ideas and in­sights with ex­perts. Ex­hib­its and re­search activ­it­ies on sys­tem con­trol, en­ergy mon­it­or­ing, re­cyc­ling man­age­ment, car­bon foot­prints, and IoT in­teg­ra­tion will be presen­ted. The ex­hib­i­tion will show what the path to even more ef­fi­cient and pro­duct­ive flu­id power looks like, and what ad­ded value di­git­al­iz­a­tion brings for man­u­fac­tur­ers and cus­tom­ers alike.

“Mo­tion & Drives” Con­fer­ence Stage: Trans­fer of Ex­pert­ise and Net­work­ing

The Con­fer­ence Stage in Hall 5, D32 will be the cen­ter for trans­fer­ring ex­pert­ise and net­work­ing in the fields of Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing and Flu­id Power. In the im­me­di­ate vi­cin­ity of the spe­cial FLU­ID POWER 4.0 show, ses­sions will be offered throughout the week deal­ing with spe­cif­ic top­ics on the latest de­vel­op­ments in smart Flu­id Power and Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing. The pro­gram will be sup­ple­men­ted with top­ics fo­cus­ing on Europe, In­dia and Italy.

VDMA Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing and Flu­id Power in Hall 5

The joint stand for VDMA mem­bers and the in­form­a­tion stands of the Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing and Flu­id Power as­so­ci­ations to­geth­er with their European sec­tor com­mit­tees CETOP and EUR­O­TRANS, will be loc­ated in the im­me­di­ate vi­cin­ity in areas E36 to E44. Sev­en mem­ber com­pan­ies from the Power Trans­mis­sion En­gin­eer­ing and Flu­id Power sec­tor and the Flu­id 4.0 project will be ex­hib­it­ing in­nov­at­ive products, in­nov­a­tions and solu­tions at the joint com­pany stand.

If you want to meet the spe­cial­ists live at HAN­NOV­ER MESSE, you can re­gister for a free tick­et on the fair web­site: ht­tps://www.han­nov­er­messe.de/en/?open=tick­etRe­gis­tra­tion&code=5C5oC
 

The glob­al mar­ket value of in­dus­tri­al ro­bot in­stall­a­tions has reached an all-time high of US$ 16.5 bil­lion. Fu­ture de­mand will be driv­en by a num­ber of tech­no­lo­gic­al in­nov­a­tions, mar­ket forces and new fields of busi­ness. The In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Ro­bot­ics re­ports on the top 5 trends for the ro­bot­ics in­dustry for 2025.

Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence – Phys­ic­al, Ana­lyt­ic­al, Gen­er­at­ive

The trend to­wards ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in ro­bot­ics is grow­ing. By lever­aging di­verse AI tech­no­lo­gies, ro­bot­ics can per­form a wide range of tasks more ef­fi­ciently:
Ana­lyt­ic­al AI en­ables ro­bots to pro­cess and ana­lyze large amounts of data col­lec­ted by their sensors. This helps to man­age vari­ab­il­ity and un­pre­dict­ab­il­ity in the ex­tern­al en­vir­on­ment, in high mix/low-volume’ pro­duc­tion as well as in pub­lic en­vir­on­ments. Ro­bots equipped with vis­ion sys­tems, for ex­ample, ana­lyze past tasks to identi­fy pat­terns and op­tim­ize their op­er­a­tions for great­er ac­cur­acy and speed.
Ro­bot and chip man­u­fac­tur­ers re­cently are in­vest­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of ded­ic­ated hard­ware and soft­ware that sim­u­late real-world en­vir­on­ments. This so-called Phys­ic­al AI al­lows ro­bots to train them­selves in vir­tu­al en­vir­on­ments and op­er­ate by ex­per­i­ence, rather than pro­gram­ming.

These Gen­er­at­ive AI projects aim to cre­ate a “Chat­G­PT mo­ment” for Phys­ic­al AI. This AI-driv­en ro­bot­ics sim­u­la­tion tech­no­logy will ad­vance in tra­di­tion­al in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments as well as in ser­vice ro­bot­ics ap­plic­a­tions.

Hu­manoids

Ro­bots in the shape of hu­man bod­ies have re­ceived a lot of me­dia at­ten­tion. The vis­ion: ro­bots will be­come gen­er­al-pur­pose tools that can load a dish­wash­er on their own and work on an as­sembly line else­where. Start-ups are work­ing on these hu­manoid gen­er­al-pur­pose ro­bots.

Yet, in­dus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ers are fo­cus­ing on hu­manoids per­form­ing single-pur­pose tasks only. Most of these projects are be­ing car­ried out in the auto­mot­ive in­dustry, which has played a key role in pi­on­eer­ing ro­bot ap­plic­a­tions throughout the his­tory of in­dus­tri­al ro­bot­ics, as well as in the ware­hous­ing sec­tor. From today's per­spect­ive, however, it re­mains to be seen wheth­er hu­manoid ro­bots can rep­res­ent an eco­nom­ic­ally vi­able and scal­able busi­ness case for in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions, es­pe­cially when com­pared to ex­ist­ing solu­tions. Nev­er­the­less, there are many ap­plic­a­tions that could in­her­ently be­ne­fit from the hu­manoid form and there­fore of­fer mar­ket po­ten­tial for ro­bot­ics e.g. in lo­gist­ics and ware­hous­ing.

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity – En­ergy Ef­fi­ciency

Com­pli­ance with the UN's en­vir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity goals and cor­res­pond­ing reg­u­la­tions around the world is be­com­ing an im­port­ant re­quire­ment for in­clu­sion on sup­pli­er whitel­ists. Ro­bots play a key role in help­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers achieve these goals.

In gen­er­al, their abil­ity to per­form tasks with high pre­ci­sion re­duces ma­ter­i­al waste and im­proves the out­put-in­put ra­tio of a man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess. These auto­mated sys­tems en­sure con­sist­ent qual­ity which is es­sen­tial for products de­signed to have long lifespans and min­im­al main­ten­ance. In the pro­duc­tion of green en­ergy tech­no­lo­gies such as sol­ar pan­els, bat­ter­ies for elec­tric cars or re­cyc­ling equip­ment, ro­bots are crit­ic­al to cost-ef­fect­ive pro­duc­tion. They en­able man­u­fac­tur­ers to rap­idly scale up pro­duc­tion to meet grow­ing de­mand without com­prom­ising qual­ity or sus­tain­ab­il­ity.

At the same time, ro­bot tech­no­logy is be­ing im­proved to make the ro­bots them­selves more en­ergy-ef­fi­cient. For ex­ample, the light­weight con­struc­tion of mov­ing ro­bot com­pon­ents re­duces their en­ergy con­sump­tion. Dif­fer­ent levels of sleep mode put the hard­ware in an en­ergy sav­ing park­ing po­s­i­tion. Ad­vances in grip­per tech­no­logy use bion­ics to achieve high grip strength with al­most no en­ergy con­sump­tion.

Ro­bots - New Fields of Busi­ness

The gen­er­al man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dustry still has a lot of po­ten­tial for ro­bot­ic auto­ma­tion. Most man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies are small and me­di­um-sized en­ter­prises (SMEs). The ad­op­tion of in­dus­tri­al ro­bots by SMEs is still hampered by high ini­tial in­vest­ment and total cost of own­er­ship. Ro­bot-as-a-Ser­vice (RaaS) busi­ness mod­els al­low en­ter­prises to be­ne­fit from ro­bot­ic auto­ma­tion with no fixed cap­it­al in­volved. RaaS pro­viders spe­cial­iz­ing in spe­cif­ic in­dus­tries or ap­plic­a­tions can of­fer soph­ist­ic­ated solu­tions quickly. In ad­di­tion, low-cost ro­bot­ics of­fers solu­tions for po­ten­tial cus­tom­ers that find a high-per­form­ance ro­bot to be over­sized for their needs. Many ap­plic­a­tions have low re­quire­ments in terms of pre­ci­sion, pay­load, and ser­vice life. Low-cost ro­bot­ics ad­dresses this new “good enough” seg­ment.

In­ter­est­ing new cus­tom­er seg­ments bey­ond man­u­fac­tur­ing in­clude con­struc­tion, labor­at­ory auto­ma­tion and ware­hous­ing. De­mand across all in­dus­tries is be­ing driv­en by the fact that re­cent crises have led to polit­ic­al aware­ness of do­mest­ic pro­duc­tion ca­pa­city in stra­tegic­ally im­port­ant branches. Auto­ma­tion al­lows man­u­fac­tur­ers to nearshore pro­duc­tion without sac­ri­fi­cing cost ef­fi­ciency.

Ro­bots Ad­dress­ing La­bour Short­age

The glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor con­tin­ues to suf­fer from la­bour short­ages ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al La­bour Or­gan­isa­tion (ILO). One of the main drivers is demo­graph­ic change, which is already bur­den­ing labor mar­kets in lead­ing eco­nom­ies such as the United States, Ja­pan, China, the Re­pub­lic of Korea, or Ger­many. Al­though the im­pact var­ies from coun­try to coun­try, the cu­mu­lat­ive ef­fect on the sup­ply chain is a con­cern al­most every­where.

The use of ro­bot­ics sig­ni­fic­antly re­duces the im­pact of la­bour short­ages in man­u­fac­tur­ing. By auto­mat­ing dirty, dull, dan­ger­ous or del­ic­ate tasks, hu­man work­ers can fo­cus on more in­ter­est­ing and high­er-value tasks. Ro­bots per­form te­di­ous tasks such as visu­al qual­ity in­spec­tion, haz­ard­ous paint­ing or heavy lift­ing. Tech­no­lo­gic­al in­nov­a­tions in ro­bot­ics such as ease of use, col­lab­or­at­ive ro­bots or mo­bile ma­nip­u­lat­ors help to fill gaps when and where needed.
 

Feb­ru­ary be­gins with news for Mel­er thanks to the launch of its new web­site: www.mel­er.eu . This mile­stone rep­res­ents the fi­nal stage of the rebrand­ing pro­cess that the com­pany star­ted in 2021, aimed at sup­port­ing and re­flect­ing the com­pany's sus­tain­able growth strategy, which began in Nav­arra 40 years ago.

"This web­site rep­res­ents a re­struc­tur­ing and up­dat­ing project of Mel­er's en­tire port­fo­lio, where the spe­cial­ist brands we have been work­ing with for sev­er­al years have been or­gan­ic­ally in­teg­rated. The new web­site now truly re­flects our com­pany and is ready to con­tin­ue grow­ing," says Nuria Santón, Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­nic­a­tion Dir­ect­or of Fo­cke Mel­er.

Main ad­vant­ages of the new web­site

Mel­er's web­site is a show­case that re­ceives vis­its from all over the world and, there­fore, main­tains its 5 lan­guages (Span­ish, Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, and Itali­an), of­fer­ing more visu­al con­tent that guar­an­tees a bet­ter user ex­per­i­ence. The product port­fo­lio has been re­or­gan­ized in­to cat­egor­ies fol­low­ing an in­form­a­tion ar­chi­tec­ture based on mod­u­lar and re­spons­ive design cri­ter­ia. It has also in­cor­por­ated a fil­ter­ing sys­tem that will al­low cus­tom­ers and part­ners to ac­cess the in­form­a­tion they need more in­tu­it­ively.

One of the most im­port­ant nov­el­ties is the in­cor­por­a­tion of Mel­er's ser­vice pages: Mel­er Academy, Mel­er Lab, or Mel­er En­gin­eer­ing. These new sec­tions re­flect Mel­er's po­ten­tial to tackle per­son­al­ized projects, al­low­ing users to as­sess wheth­er their project can be­come a real­ity with the re­sources Mel­er of­fers. The new web­site faith­fully re­flects Mel­er's cor­por­ate iden­tity, an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pany but ac­cess­ible through each of its sub­si­di­ar­ies and part­ners. 

The po­s­i­tion of Mar­ket­ing & Product De­vel­op­ment Dir­ect­or is a newly cre­ated role with­in KENDA Europe, de­signed to meet grow­ing de­mand for high-qual­ity auto­mot­ive tires in the re­gion. In this role, Sab­rina Kühl will over­see mar­ket­ing strategy & roll-out, work­ing closely with the KENDA Europe Tech­nic­al Centre to de­vel­op Pas­sen­ger Car Ra­di­al (PCR) tires tailored to the European mar­ket. In ad­di­tion to lead­ing all mar­ket­ing ini­ti­at­ives, Sab­rina will rep­res­ent the busi­ness at key in­dustry events. The first ma­jor event in the cal­en­dar be­ing Auto­pro­motec 2025, in Italy at the end of May.

With deep in­dustry ex­pert­ise, Sab­rina is per­fectly po­si­tioned to drive the growth of KENDA’s auto­mot­ive busi­ness in this area. She has worked in the tire in­dustry since 2001 and has been part of the KENDA team for for than 8 years, serving as the Key Ac­count Man­ager for sev­er­al coun­tries. 
In her new role, she will con­tin­ue to re­port to Henno Plag­gen­borg, Dir­ect­or of the Auto­mot­ive Di­vi­sion at KENDA Europe, who com­ments: “Sab­rina’s pro­mo­tion re­flects the com­pany’s com­mit­ment to ex­pand­ing its pres­ence in the auto­mot­ive tire mar­ket. We are con­fid­ent that her lead­er­ship will play a pivotal role in ad­van­cing KENDA’s stra­tegic goals, which in­clude in­creas­ing brand aware­ness and fur­ther strength­en­ing our mar­ket po­s­i­tion in Europe.”
 

Ac­cord­ing to El­len Ma­cAr­thur Found­a­tion, a non-profit or­gan­isa­tion com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, the three prin­ciples of a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy are the fol­low­ing:

• Elim­in­ate waste and pol­lu­tion
• Cir­cu­late products and ma­ter­i­als (at their highest value)
• Re­gen­er­ate nature
   

More and more com­pan­ies pre­tend to sup­port a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy by only fo­cus­ing on the first and second prin­ciple. Al­though there is ar­gu­ably a third prin­ciple that can­not be left out. In or­der to em­phas­ize this prin­ciple on top of the oth­er two prin­ciples of the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, Dassault Systèmes uses the term “(re)gen­er­at­ive eco­nomy” as part of its mis­sion and We be­lieve that this will be a solu­tion to (over)con­sump­tion.

The im­port­ance of a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy

In our cur­rent sys­tem, we take ma­ter­i­als from the Earth, make products from them, use these products for a while, and throw them away as waste. A take-make-use-waste mod­el fo­cused on con­sump­tion is not sus­tain­able be­cause it takes much more from the plan­et and so­ci­ety than it gives back: it leaves a neg­at­ive eco-bill. As we con­tin­ue like this, sup­plies of ma­ter­i­als are run­ning low, waste moun­tains are grow­ing big­ger and big­ger, and nature suf­fers. All of this will af­fect hu­man­ity. There­fore, we have to trans­form from a lin­ear sys­tem to a sys­tem that con­tinu­ously re­uses ma­ter­i­als: a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy.

The main idea of a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy is re­du­cing the con­sump­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources, avoid­ing ma­ter­i­als that be­come waste and there­fore keep products and ma­ter­i­als in cir­cu­la­tion. It is the suc­cessor to the fam­ous “3R waste hier­archy” that every­one knows: re­duce, re­use, re­cycle. In the mean­time, this list has evolved in­to many more Rs. In gen­er­al, the main goal of the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy (and the R-strategies) is to re­tain the value of ma­ter­i­als and products as much as pos­sible.

There are plenty of great ex­amples of this work­ing in prac­tice, for ex­ample, one of Dassault Systèmes cus­tom­ers’ in the auto­mot­ive space made bet­ter use of scrapyard ma­ter­i­als. They changed their in­tern­al pro­cesses to use a product for its ori­gin­al pur­pose. In­stead of re­cyc­ling bump­ers from the scrapyard in­to oth­er, lower-qual­ity plastic parts, the bump­ers are now re­used. This avoids the en­ergy re­quired to sep­ar­ate, wash, shred, melt and re­mold plastics for re­cyc­ling. In ad­di­tion, there is no longer a need to buy new bump­ers made from vir­gin ma­ter­i­als. Fur­ther­more, the value of the bump­er ma­ter­i­al re­mains much high­er than that of the ori­gin­al scrap.

Key op­por­tun­it­ies in the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy trans­ition

El­len Ma­cAr­thur Found­a­tion high­lighted a couple of key op­por­tun­it­ies in the trans­ition to the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy:

• Im­prov­ing the design of products and their cor­res­pond­ing pro­duc­tion pro­cesses, so that products last longer. Ele­ments are eas­ily re­paired and re­used by design­ing products and their man­u­fac­tur­ing lines for product dis­as­sembly,
• En­sur­ing the re­verse net­work is in place, in­clud­ing lo­gist­ic flows of re­verse products, to save products from land­fills and re­turn them to the man­u­fac­turer after use.
• Cre­at­ing new value chains and op­tim­iz­ing ma­ter­i­al flows, so that we max­im­ize the us­age of ma­ter­i­als by keep­ing them in the loop.
   

Vir­tu­al twin solu­tions are key for busi­nesses to ima­gine, cre­ate and de­liv­er cir­cu­lar man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses. These solu­tions are able to tackle all of the key op­por­tun­it­ies to sup­port a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. The power of com­bin­ing the vir­tu­al twins of the product, man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply chain is ex­tremely power­ful, but the scope of this blog fo­cuses in on the op­por­tun­ity with the sup­ply chain, and how the sup­ply chain vir­tu­al twin can en­able the cre­ation of new value chains, and the op­tim­iz­a­tion of ma­ter­i­al flows.

Op­tim­iz­ing ma­ter­i­al flows with­in sup­ply chains

An ex­ample: sus­tain­able sourcing op­tim­iz­a­tion:
DELMIA Quintiq Op­tim­ized Plan­ning en­ables com­pan­ies to set up a vir­tu­al twin of their sup­ply chain. A con­crete ex­ample is the op­tim­iz­a­tion of a sourcing plan. It helps users an­swer the ques­tion: “how much of which product to buy from which sup­pli­er in which week?” while tak­ing in­to ac­count con­straints, costs, car­bon emis­sions and sup­pli­er rat­ings. Sup­pli­er rat­ings are non-quan­ti­fi­able factors, for ex­ample sup­pli­er com­pli­ance with stand­ards and cer­ti­fic­a­tions. The choice of KPIs, in­clud­ing cir­cu­lar­ity met­rics, and how much weight these are giv­en, de­pend on the set­tings and can be dif­fer­ent for each com­pany or situ­ation. It al­lows a man­u­fac­turer to make trade-offs between mul­tiple dif­fer­ent scen­ari­os, such as:

• Cost vs. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity with a fo­cus on Cost: This plan min­im­izes costs, but sources ma­ter­i­als from sup­pli­ers that are geo­graph­ic­ally loc­ated far from man­u­fac­tur­ing loc­a­tions, which in­tro­duces longer dis­tri­bu­tion routes.
• Cost vs. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity with a fo­cus on Sus­tain­ab­il­ity: This plan sources ma­ter­i­al from loc­al sup­pli­ers, close to man­u­fac­tur­ing, who of­fer re­cycled ma­ter­i­als, have sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices and use EV or rail net­works for dis­tri­bu­tion. The plan in­volves high­er costs and a lower mar­gin than the first scen­ario, but gen­er­ates much less in­dir­ect scope 3 emis­sions and en­sures a more re­spons­ible value chain.
• Bal­anced: This plan op­tim­izes against both costs and car­bon emis­sions. It res­ults in a bal­anced sup­ply plan that in­volves a high­er mar­gin than the second scen­ario, but gen­er­ates much less in­dir­ect scope 3 emis­sions than the first scen­ario.
   

Con­sequently, by rap­idly and pre­cisely eval­u­at­ing po­ten­tial scen­ari­os in the vir­tu­al world, the sup­ply plan design is ready to be ap­plied in the real world and lays a found­a­tion for the over­all value chain.  

Cre­at­ing new value chains with­in and between com­pan­ies

In a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, waste is the new raw ma­ter­i­al. In­stead of be­ing dis­carded, the out­put of one pro­cess step be­comes the in­put of an­oth­er. There­fore, to keep products and ma­ter­i­als cir­cu­lat­ing, cir­cu­lar pro­cesses have to be set up.

For ex­ample, a Dassault Systèmes cus­tom­er in the alu­min­um in­dustry in­creased the use of scrap alu­min­um and re­duced the use of vir­gin ma­ter­i­als, by chan­ging their in­tern­al pro­cesses. The qual­ity of the alu­min­um product de­pends on its in­gredi­ents; the qual­ity of the scrap. There­fore, now the scrap is first care­fully sor­ted in­to low/high qual­ity “scrap buck­ets”. The next step is the plan­ning of the alu­min­um batches, which is very com­plex be­cause hun­dreds of prop­er­ties have to be taken in­to ac­count (such as qual­ity or strength). Thanks to DELMIA Quintiq, op­tim­al batches are com­posed with the avail­able sup­ply of scrap ma­ter­i­al, while re­spect­ing their cus­tom­er’s re­quire­ments and de­liv­ery dates.

The ex­ample above il­lus­trates an im­prove­ment of pro­cess in­nov­a­tion with­in the or­gan­iz­a­tion. However, cir­cu­lar pro­cesses go bey­ond a single com­pany: com­plete new cir­cu­lar value chains should be built between dif­fer­ent com­pan­ies. Com­pan­ies have an unique op­por­tun­ity to join a large net­work of dif­fer­ent com­pan­ies in or­der to keep products and ma­ter­i­als in the loop. We see ini­ti­at­ives already emer­ging with­in sec­tors where raw ma­ter­i­als are be­com­ing scarce, such as steel and alu­min­um. Key stake­hold­ers, from met­al pro­du­cers to waste man­age­ment com­pan­ies, are ex­plor­ing how ma­ter­i­als can be kept in the cycle for longer.
 

Smart­Fact­ory is an in­nov­at­ive Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ex­e­cu­tion Sys­tem (MES) soft­ware de­veloped by Smartes to di­git­ise pro­duc­tion pro­cesses and in­crease the ef­fi­ciency of com­pan­ies. With an in­fra­struc­ture based on In­dustry 4.0 and II­oT tech­no­lo­gies, it cov­ers all equip­ment, from CNC and PLC-con­trolled ma­chines to in­dus­tri­al ro­bots, and en­ables the col­lec­tion, mon­it­or­ing and re­port­ing of di­git­al data. The soft­ware of­fers user-friendly, in­teg­rated and scal­able solu­tions in many sec­tors, es­pe­cially in the ma­chin­ing sec­tor.

Full con­trol and flex­ib­il­ity with a mod­u­lar struc­ture 

Today, as tra­di­tion­al pro­duc­tion meth­ods evolve with di­git­al trans­form­a­tion, the solu­tions offered by Smart­Fact­ory are a great ad­vant­age for com­pan­ies. Smart­Fact­ory's Smart Fact­ory solu­tions col­lect and ana­lyse all pro­duc­tion data in a single centre, min­im­ising er­ror rates and re­du­cing la­bour costs with its pa­per­less fact­ory concept. With each di­git­ised piece of data, users can reg­u­larly mon­it­or their pro­duc­tion lines, de­tect faults im­me­di­ately and im­prove their op­er­a­tions.

The sys­tem in­stantly mon­it­ors the per­form­ance, status and util­isa­tion of each ma­chine on the pro­duc­tion line and presents the data in easy-to-un­der­stand graphs. This al­lows com­pan­ies to identi­fy which pro­cesses need im­prove­ment and op­tim­ise their op­er­a­tions by mak­ing real-time de­cisions.

Smart­Fact­ory's power­ful mod­u­lar struc­ture gives com­pan­ies full con­trol and flex­ib­il­ity over their pro­duc­tion pro­cesses. With the Op­er­at­or In­ter­face Mod­ule, op­er­at­ors have easy ac­cess to work or­ders and can enter down­time reas­ons in­to the sys­tem. This speeds up work or­der man­age­ment and di­git­ises qual­ity con­trol and main­ten­ance pro­cesses. The Mo­bile Trace­ab­il­ity Mod­ule provides in­stant, hard­ware-in­de­pend­ent re­mote ac­cess to all data when you are away from your premises. The Work Or­der In­teg­ra­tion Mod­ule en­ables com­pan­ies without ERP sys­tems to di­git­ise work or­ders; tech­nic­al draw­ings and op­er­a­tion­al de­tails are trans­mit­ted to op­er­at­ors in a di­git­al en­vir­on­ment. The ERP In­teg­ra­tion Mod­ule works in har­mony with your ex­ist­ing ERP sys­tem and trans­fers work or­ders to op­er­at­or screens. Fi­nally, the Pro­duc­tion Plan­ning Mod­ule fa­cil­it­ates daily, weekly and monthly plan­ning and op­tim­ises your pro­cesses by elim­in­at­ing delays. Smart­Fact­ory's mod­ules give you a flex­ible, in­teg­rated and fully con­trolled struc­ture for di­git­al trans­form­a­tion.

User-friendly in­ter­face and mo­bile ac­cess

Smart­Fact­ory is easy to use for all types of users thanks to its user-friendly and in­tu­it­ive in­ter­face. This sys­tem, which provides ac­cess at all levels from op­er­at­or screens to man­agers, can be ac­cessed at any time via com­puter or mo­bile devices. Its mo­bile-com­pat­ible struc­ture al­lows the fact­ory to be con­trolled from any­where in the world, re­ports to be viewed in­stantly and de­cision-mak­ing pro­cesses to be ac­cel­er­ated.

In­creas­ing com­pet­it­ive­ness

Smart­Fact­ory adds value to com­pan­ies on their di­git­al trans­form­a­tion jour­ney. It en­ables you to man­age pro­duc­tion pro­cesses with real-time data, im­prove trace­ab­il­ity and achieve op­er­a­tion­al ex­cel­lence. Ad­vanced re­port­ing and ana­lyt­ics en­able you to drive change at every stage of your busi­ness, max­im­ising qual­ity while re­du­cing pro­duc­tion costs. 
Smart­Fact­ory is an agile in­fra­struc­ture for the in­tro­duc­tion of In­dustry 4.0 tech­no­logy in­to com­pan­ies. The soft­ware is plug and play, so it is up and run­ning quickly without the need for ad­di­tion­al hard­ware.

Ima­gine a bust­ling fact­ory floor where every product that rolls off the line is a test­a­ment to me­tic­u­lous crafts­man­ship. Yet, no mat­ter how skilled, the hu­man eye can tire, and de­fects can slip through un­noticed in those mo­ments of fa­tigue. The new Mit­subishi Elec­tric MEL­SOFT VIX­IO soft­ware helps avoid­ing this. Tire­lessly vi­gil­ant it en­sures that every product can meet the highest qual­ity stand­ards.

“Our visu­al in­spec­tion soft­ware trans­forms the in­spec­tion pro­cess, mak­ing it more ac­cur­ate and ef­fi­cient. It per­forms the heavy lift­ing of primary screen­ings, identi­fy­ing po­ten­tial de­fects with un­matched pre­ci­sion. Do­ing so lib­er­ates hu­man in­spect­ors to fo­cus on what truly mat­ters—en­sur­ing that only the finest products reach the hands of con­sumers” - em­phas­ises Daniel Sper­lich, Stra­tegic Product Man­ager Con­trol­lers at Mit­subishi Elec­tric, Fact­ory Auto­ma­tion EMEA.

How does it spe­cific­ally work?

• Learn­ing phase: The soft­ware learns what a "good" product looks like by re­view­ing many ex­amples of good and bad items, sim­il­ar to study­ing for a test. 
• Im­age pro­cessing: After learn­ing, it ana­lyses product im­ages in real-time us­ing al­gorithms to com­pare them against its train­ing data.
• De­cision mak­ing: Based on its ana­lys­is, the soft­ware gives products a "thumbs up" if they meet stand­ards or a "thumbs down" if not, en­sur­ing only qual­ity products are sent out. 
• Feed­back loop: The soft­ware im­proves over time; if it makes mis­takes, en­gin­eers can up­date its learn­ing data to en­hance its ac­cur­acy in re­cog­nising products.

MEL­SOFT VIX­IO is de­signed for ease of use and re­quires no spe­cial­ised pro­gram­ming know­ledge. Its in­tu­it­ive in­ter­face al­lows users to set up three simple pro­cesses: mak­ing the pic­ture data­set, cre­at­ing the AI mod­el by con­fig­ur­a­tion, and gen­er­at­ing the task via low-code. It de­mands only build­ing with the help of low code in­stead of pro­gram­ming, mak­ing it ac­cess­ible to every­one—from seasoned en­gin­eers to new­comers in the field.

As the tool de­buts across the EMEA re­gion, it tar­gets in­dus­tries ran­ging from auto­mot­ive to food & bever­age to life sci­ences and prom­ises to en­hance pro­ductiv­ity and re­duce waste and en­ergy con­sump­tion. 
 

Would you open the ma­chine every time to check the in­ter­ac­tion of com­pon­ents or wear? It makes no sense. It is much easi­er to keep an eye on things with a cam­era. Mod­els from the con­sumer sec­tor are quite com­mon, but they also have their draw­backs: they are of­ten only avail­able for a very lim­ited time, and spare parts are usu­ally hard to come by. With the uEye SCP and uEye SLE product lines, IDS Ima­ging De­vel­op­ment Sys­tems is now launch­ing the "uEye Live" cam­era series. They spe­cial­ise in mon­it­or­ing tasks, de­liv­er vari­ous live streams and even al­low event re­cord­ing.

The GigE cam­er­as are de­signed for stand-alone op­er­a­tion. In ad­di­tion to easy ac­cess via the web front-end (HT­TP), users be­ne­fit from video stream­ing, hard­ware-ac­cel­er­ated video en­cod­ing and event-based re­cord­ing in the cam­era's memory. This means that in the event of an in­cid­ent, the cam­er­as provide a valu­able 'win­dow in­to the past'.

Housed or em­bed­ded cam­era op­tion

The uEye SCP series has a com­pletely sealed 29x29x29 mm hous­ing. The uEye SLE series con­sists of board-level mod­els for em­bed­ded ap­plic­a­tions with dif­fer­ent mount­ing op­tions. The first uEye SCP cam­era is now avail­able with the 8.3 MP IMX678 rolling shut­ter sensor from the Sony Star­vis 2 series. The board level ver­sion and ad­di­tion­al sensors will fol­low in 2025.

These sur­veil­lance cam­er­as are in­dus­tri­al grade, com­pact and cost ef­fect­ive. They can de­liv­er mul­tiple video streams sim­ul­tan­eously - and thanks to Sony's Star­vis 2 tech­no­logy, they de­liv­er high im­age qual­ity even in low-light situ­ations. A total of three par­al­lel streams are avail­able. In ad­di­tion to H264, the mod­els also of­fer MJPEG over HT­TP for dir­ect view­ing in a web browser without the need for ad­di­tion­al plug-ins or third-party soft­ware. The RTSP pro­tocol en­sures stand­ard­ised in­teg­ra­tion of H264 streams in­to ex­ist­ing tools and ap­plic­a­tions. A web-based REST API makes it easy to in­teg­rate the cam­er­as in­to ma­chine con­trol sys­tems.
 

The Volume3D from Pep­perl+Fuchs is easy to in­stall, al­lows non­con­tact meas­ure­ment, and is low main­ten­ance. The sys­tem is suit­able for vari­ous ap­plic­a­tions such as in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics and min­ing, boast­ing high ac­cur­acy, re­li­ab­il­ity, and easy in­teg­ra­tion. The Volume3D volume de­tec­tion sys­tem of­fers pre­cise meas­ure­ments for bulk ma­ter­i­al and chaot­ic con­vey­ing ap­plic­a­tions. It con­sists of a R2000 2-D LiD­AR sensor, a Multi-Scan Eval­u­ation Unit (MSEU), an ENI58IL rotary en­coder, and the re­quired con­nec­tion cables. The non­con­tact concept re­duces main­ten­ance costs and pre­vents un­ex­pec­ted fail­ures.

Op­tion­al multi-sensor setup for high­er ac­cur­acy

The R2000 LiD­AR sensor de­liv­ers an an­gu­lar res­ol­u­tion of 0.042° and scan rates up to 50 Hz. The R2300 is op­tion­ally avail­able up to 100 Hz. For es­pe­cially de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tions, up to three LiD­AR sensors can be con­nec­ted to ex­tend the sens­ing range and in­crease ac­cur­acy. The pre-in­stalled soft­ware of the eval­u­ation unit fil­ters in­val­id meas­ur­ing points, in­creas­ing the pre­ci­sion of the res­ults.

From min­ing to in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics

The sys­tem de­tects the volume, flow rate, di­men­sions, and oth­er load in­dic­at­ors of the con­vey­or belt. In ad­di­tion, the pol­lu­tion de­gree of the LiD­AR is mon­itored to ini­ti­ate clean­ing in time. The con­vey­ing speed is de­tec­ted by a rotary en­coder. The sys­tem also al­lows for oth­er ways to source this in­form­a­tion. Volume3D is suit­able for many ap­plic­a­tions, from in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics to min­ing. It mon­it­ors con­vey­or belts and en­ables pre­cise con­trol of ma­ter­i­al flows. The cost-ef­fect­ive­ness of the sys­tem is based on its high meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy, re­li­ab­il­ity due to the non­con­tact meas­ur­ing prin­ciple of the 2-D LiD­AR sensor sys­tem, and easy in­teg­ra­tion, even in ex­ist­ing sys­tems.
 

SICK has unveiled its new IO-Link Wireless Gateway, which brings greater freedom and flexibility to industrial operations. Without the need for expensive cabling, the solution reduces installation costs, provides real-time data streaming and supports advanced analytics for improved efficiency.

As the demand for wireless connectivity and data communication grows, SICK is meeting the industry's evolving needs for intelligent industrial communication and IIoT technology with a robust, easy-to-install wireless IO-Link solution that enables data to be collected and analysed from multiple sensors. 

The IO-Link Wireless Gateway works in harmony with SICK sensors and actuators. It reduces installation time and downtime, while increasing flexibility and safety. For advanced analytics, predictive maintenance and greater operational efficiency, it features an intuitive design and enables real-time data streaming to enterprise and cloud platforms. 

Simple retrofit solution

Ideal for applications where wired connections are impractical or impossible, SICK's IO-Link Wireless Gateway is the next evolution of the global, bi-directional, intelligent industrial communication standard IO-Link. It enables innovative new machine designs that weren't possible before and easily retrofits existing technology for unparalleled flexibility, future-proof automation and greater scalability.

Comprising the IO-Link Bridge, IO-Link Hub and IO-Link Master, the new suite of wireless IO-Link solutions is an easy way to make sensors and actuators wireless. Both the Bridge and the Hub can be used to feed data back to the Master, with the IO-Link Hubs enabling multi-sensor connectivity via their four IO-Link ports. The IO-Link Master can support up to 16 sensors simultaneously, with the SICK Wireless IO-Link Gateway providing intelligent connectivity at distances of up to 20 m with a low latency of 5 ms.

Seamless integration for accurate, uninterrupted data acquisition

With its plug-and-play functionality, the SICK IO-Link Wireless Gateway eliminates the need for programming or complex wiring, making installation easy and hassle-free. Sensors can be easily configured remotely via the IO-Link Wireless Gateway, and the IO-Link Wireless network ensures uninterrupted data transmission and accurate data collection through dynamic frequency hopping and blacklisting. To further ensure data accuracy, localised power cabinets reduce interference, voltage drops and electrical noise.

The point-to-point wireless communication system adapts to any existing data infrastructure on the PLC, ensuring accurate data transmission. It provides access to various IIoT interfaces, such as REST API and MQTT, and multiple fieldbuses, including PROFINET, EtherNet/IP and EtherCat, using the 'Connect X' platform.

The exceptional flexibility of the IO-Link Wireless Gateway is ideal for automation solutions where wired connections are impractical or not possible in a wide range of industries, with applications such as

• Helping food and beverage manufacturers meet stringent hygiene standards by eliminating the need for cabling, which can be a source of bacteria and cross-contamination.
• Providing fast, cost-effective scalability for conveyors and cross-belt sorters by supporting more sensors over longer distances, allowing for additional sortation stations and expansion without the need for costly hardware upgrades.
• Enable real-time device-to-device communication between devices such as AMRs, AGVs and forklifts with low latency and data integrity, ensuring cohesive co-ordination and high flexibility with no cabling to minimise downtime.

An im­age in­tens­i­fi­er is a device for in­creas­ing the in­tens­ity of avail­able light in an op­tic­al sys­tem to al­low use un­der low-light con­di­tions, to fa­cil­it­ate visu­al ima­ging of low-light pro­cesses, to con­vert non-vis­ible to a vis­ible light source, or to provide in­creased light sens­it­iv­ity for high-speed ima­ging ap­plic­a­tions. Re­solve Op­tics has de­veloped a repu­ta­tion for suc­cess­fully de­vel­op­ing cus­tom re­lay lenses for in­dus­tri­al part­ners look­ing to im­prove the ef­fi­ciency of devices and in­stru­ments in­cor­por­at­ing im­age in­tens­i­fi­ers. 

Rob Watkin­son, Sales Man­ager said “A nice ex­ample of our cap­ab­il­ity in this area was when we were ap­proached to design a cus­tom re­lay lens to op­tim­ize the qual­ity of im­age trans­fer from an in­tens­i­fi­er to the im­age sensor in a high-speed range cam­era. His­tor­ic­ally, most range cam­era designs have used off-the-shelf lenses placed back-to-back to trans­fer im­ages from the in­tens­i­fi­er to the im­age sensor. However, this ap­proach pro­duces a large amount of shad­ing and im­age dis­tor­tion. To over­come this in­ef­fi­ciency we de­signed a be­spoke re­lay lens that was both com­pact and that elim­in­ated the shad­ing and dis­tor­tion ef­fects that de­graded the qual­ity of trans­ferred im­ages. The res­ult­ant nov­el f/2.8, 1 to 1.1-mag­ni­fic­a­tion re­lay lens has en­abled our cli­ents range cam­era to pro­duce im­ages with no vis­ible dis­tor­tion that are equally il­lu­min­ated across the en­tire im­age area. The com­pact re­lay lens has also en­sured op­tim­al in­put in­to the mi­crolenses on the range cam­era’s CCD im­age sensor”.
 

Plas­matreat is ex­pand­ing its port­fo­lio to in­clude an in­nov­at­ive solu­tion for gently, in­tens­ively and ef­fi­ciently re­mov­ing stub­born con­tam­in­ants from glass, met­al and plastic sur­faces. This ad­vanced tech­no­logy sets new stand­ards in sur­face pre­par­a­tion for sub­sequent pro­duc­tion steps by com­bin­ing the proven be­ne­fits of Openair plasma tech­no­logy with the chem­ic­al re­act­iv­ity of wa­ter.

In many high-tech in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing auto­mot­ive, elec­tron­ics, aerospace and med­ic­al, sur­face clean­li­ness is a crit­ic­al suc­cess factor. Even the slight­est con­tam­in­a­tion can im­pair ad­he­sion in sub­sequent pro­cesses such as bond­ing, print­ing, paint­ing or coat­ing, thus jeop­ard­ising the qual­ity and re­li­ab­il­ity of the end product. While con­ven­tion­al clean­ing meth­ods of­ten rely on solvents or com­plex wet chem­ic­al pro­cesses, Plas­matreat's new Hy­dro­Plasma tech­no­logy of­fers a re­li­able and ef­fi­cient al­tern­at­ive. The in­nov­at­ive tech­no­logy works en­tirely without chem­ic­als, us­ing only com­pressed air, elec­tri­city and wa­ter. Hy­dro­Plasma sets new stand­ards in in­dus­tri­al sur­face clean­ing - en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly, re­li­able and eco­nom­ic­al.

Most im­port­antly, Hy­dro­Plasma en­hances the ef­fect­ive­ness of the proven Openair Plasma tech­no­logy and also en­ables the re­mov­al of in­or­gan­ic residues, such as fin­ger­prints, that have been dif­fi­cult to re­move in the past. This ad­vanced solu­tion of­fers  a highly ef­fect­ive and re­source ef­fi­cient al­tern­at­ive to tra­di­tion­al clean­ing meth­ods.

Oil, salt and grease re­mov­al

This in­nov­at­ive, chem­ic­al-free and en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly tech­no­logy uses ion­ised wa­ter to ef­fi­ciently re­move even the most stub­born con­tam­in­ants such as oil, salt and grease.

The clean­ing pro­cess is based on the dir­ect in­jec­tion of wa­ter in­to the plasma jet, where it is ion­ised and con­ver­ted in­to a highly re­act­ive jet. A spe­cially de­signed nozzle dir­ects the jet onto the de­sired sub­strate sur­face. The ion­ised wa­ter mo­lecules achieve a clean­ing ef­fect com­par­able to that of de­ter­gent in warm wa­ter, re­li­ably dis­solv­ing and re­mov­ing residues.

For many years, the Openair plasma pro­cess de­veloped by Plas­matreat has been used to op­tim­ise in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion pro­cesses. A pro­cess gas, usu­ally air, is ion­ised by a high-voltage arc. This cre­ates a plasma jet that is dir­ec­ted through a spe­cially ad­ap­ted nozzle. It mi­cro-cleans sur­faces with pin­point ac­cur­acy, ac­tiv­at­ing met­al, glass and plastic sur­faces. It re­li­ably re­moves con­tam­in­ants such as dust and or­gan­ic residues. Sim­ul­tan­eously, plasma treat­ment in­creases sur­face en­ergy, mak­ing ma­ter­i­als more wet­table and ideal for sub­sequent pro­cesses such as bond­ing, paint­ing, print­ing, seal­ing and coat­ing. 

For ap­plic­a­tions where this alone is not suf­fi­cient - for ex­ample, dif­fi­cult-to-re­move con­tam­in­ants such as oils, greases or salts - Hy­dro­Plasma adds an­oth­er power­ful clean­ing tech­no­logy to the Plas­matreat port­fo­lio.

Both are VOC-free, sus­tain­able clean­ing pro­cesses without en­vir­on­ment­ally harm­ful chem­ic­als. As a res­ult, they con­trib­ute to work­place safety, help com­pan­ies re­duce their car­bon foot­print and pro­mote sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion.

Ver­sat­ile in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions

Hy­dro­Plasma is par­tic­u­larly suit­able for in­dus­tries with high pur­ity re­quire­ments. It can be in­teg­rated in­to ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion pro­cesses as well as in­to ex­ist­ing Plas­matreat plasma sys­tems. The pro­cess is ex­tremely flex­ible and can be used for in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses such as bat­tery pro­duc­tion or ap­plic­a­tions in the elec­tron­ics in­dustry. Hy­dro­Plasma was ori­gin­ally de­veloped for met­al and glass clean­ing. However, its ad­vant­ages are also evid­ent in the plastics sec­tor. The cool­ing ef­fect of the wa­ter sup­ply min­im­ises the risk of thermal dam­age to sens­it­ive sur­faces, al­low­ing gentle but ef­fect­ive clean­ing.

The pro­cess is chem­ic­al-free and sus­tain­able. This makes it ideal for in­dus­tries such as auto­mot­ive, med­ic­al and aerospace, where the highest stand­ards of clean­li­ness are re­quired. Com­pan­ies be­ne­fit from im­proved pro­cess re­li­ab­il­ity and sur­face qual­ity. It is also an en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly al­tern­at­ive to con­ven­tion­al clean­ing meth­ods.

Nex­per­ia is ex­pand­ing its en­ergy har­vest­ing port­fo­lio with the NEH71x0 power man­age­ment IC (PM­IC) fam­ily. This ad­vanced PM­IC line com­bines su­per­i­or per­form­ance, cost-ef­fi­ciency, and ver­sat­il­ity, set­ting a new stand­ard in sus­tain­able design for low power ap­plic­a­tions. Un­like com­pet­ing products, these devices elim­in­ate the need for an ex­tern­al in­duct­or, sig­ni­fic­antly re­du­cing cir­cuit board space and bill-of-ma­ter­i­als (BOM) cost. It is avail­able in a com­pact 4 mm x 4 mm QFN28 pack­age. Ap­plic­a­tions in­clude re­mote con­trols, key fobs, smart tags, as­set track­ers, oc­cu­pancy sensors, en­vir­on­ment­al mon­it­ors, wear­ables, key­boards, tire pres­sure mon­it­ors, and any num­ber of In­ter­net of Things (IoT) ap­plic­a­tions.
 
These new PM­ICs rep­res­ent a com­plete power man­age­ment solu­tion for en­ergy har­vest­ing: en­abling en­gin­eers to ex­tend bat­tery life, re­charge bat­ter­ies or su­per­ca­pa­cit­ors, and even elim­in­ate bat­ter­ies in cer­tain designs, thanks to its cold start fea­ture. With the NEH71x0 (NEH7100BU, NEH7110BU) PM­ICs, de­sign­ers can choose from mul­tiple am­bi­ent power sources such as light, kin­et­ic/piezo or a tem­per­at­ure gradi­ent. With an in­put power range from 15μW to 100mW, these high-per­form­ance en­ergy har­vest­ing ICs can con­vert en­ergy with an ef­fi­ciency of up to 95%. These devices in­clude an on-chip max­im­um power point track­ing (MPPT) ad­apt­ive al­gorithm to op­tim­ize the en­ergy har­ves­ted, which ad­apts every 0.5 second, mak­ing the PM­IC ex­tremely re­spons­ive to chan­ging en­vir­on­ment­al con­di­tions.

Dif­fer­ent pro­tec­tion fea­tures

The IC fam­ily in­teg­rates a range of power man­age­ment fea­tures to pro­tect bat­ter­ies and stor­age ele­ments, in­clud­ing over-voltage pro­tec­tion, low-voltage de­tec­tion, and over-cur­rent pro­tec­tion. The ad­di­tion of a low dro­pout (LDO) reg­u­lat­or and USB char­ging fur­ther re­duces the BOM cost and sim­pli­fies the design pro­cess. For great­er func­tion­al­ity, the NEH710BU vari­ant in­cludes I2C pro­gram­mab­il­ity and meas­ure­ment read­ings, giv­ing en­gin­eers ad­di­tion­al flex­ib­il­ity and con­trol in their designs.

By op­tim­iz­ing bat­tery life and re­du­cing the need for costly, pol­lut­ing bat­tery re­place­ments, the NEH71x0 con­trib­utes to a more sus­tain­able fu­ture of elec­tron­ics. The fam­ily com­ple­ments NEH2000, Nex­per­ia’s first en­ergy har­vest­ing power man­age­ment IC – a com­pact, low-BOM con­vert­er – by adding more ad­vanced en­ergy har­vest­ing fea­tures and a new set of power man­age­ment fea­tures.
 

The trend today is mov­ing ever faster to­wards mo­bile ap­plic­a­tions of elec­tric­al en­ergy. In the low-power sec­tor, we are all fa­mil­i­ar with this from smart­phones and the like. However, the auto­mot­ive and avi­ation sec­tors as well as smal­ler ships also work al­most ex­clus­ively with dir­ect cur­rent. In ad­di­tion, elec­tri­city is also be­ing gen­er­ated dir­ectly as dir­ect cur­rent to an ever great­er ex­tent. Photo­vol­ta­ics are par­tic­u­larly worth men­tion­ing here. So why con­vert the dir­ect cur­rent in­to al­tern­at­ing cur­rent with losses (in­vert­ers), trans­port it and then con­vert it back in­to dir­ect cur­rent with losses (rec­ti­fiers)?

Re­li­able arc pre­ven­tion

The Schurter EDC is is an elec­tro-mech­an­ic­al mi­croswitch that has been de­veloped spe­cific­ally for switch­ing high dir­ect cur­rents. The EDC is cur­rently the only one of its kind. Su­per-com­pact and light­weight. It switches up to 10 A at 48 VDC. The oc­cur­rence of elec­tric arcs is pre­ven­ted by the spe­cial design and the use of state-of-the-art elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents (semi­con­duct­ors). As a res­ult, the elec­tron­ic DC push­but­ton has a sig­ni­fic­antly longer ser­vice life (more than 1 mil­lion switch­ing cycles) and is more re­li­able than any com­par­able elec­tromech­an­ic­al al­tern­at­ive.

The fourth Y-Lock gen­er­a­tion from Ya­mai­chi con­tin­ues to of­fer the ad­vant­ages of its pre­de­cessor series and com­ple­ments them with new fea­tures that ful­fil the spe­cial re­quire­ments of bat­tery ap­plic­a­tions. A proven fea­ture of the series and the V4 is the one-push lock­ing mech­an­ism. The flex­ible flat cable (FFC) or the flex­ible prin­ted cir­cuit board (FPC) is in­ser­ted in­to the con­nect­or us­ing the pre-as­sembled stiffen­er. The V4 has a double lock­ing func­tion, firstly via two lat­er­al lock­ing hooks and secondly via a cent­ral lock­ing mech­an­ism on the long side of the in­su­lat­or. The design of the side hooks also en­sures the blind-mat­ing func­tion. The cable side is dis­as­sembled as be­fore by simply pulling the cable.

Pro­tec­tion against con­tact and twist­ing 

The stiffen­er also ful­fils oth­er func­tions: For ex­ample, the two-part stiffen­er design en­sures that the pads of the FFC/FPC are pro­tec­ted against con­tact, so that the cable can also be handled safely dur­ing ser­vi­cing. This fea­ture also en­sures that the plug can­not be in­ser­ted at an angle or up­side down, thus pre­vent­ing short cir­cuits caused by in­cor­rect in­ser­tion of the cable side. This en­sures 10 mat­ing cycles.

CPA - Con­nect­or Po­s­i­tion As­sur­ance 

Ya­mai­chi of­fers the mech­an­ic­al CPA (Con­nect­or Po­s­i­tion As­sur­ance) as an op­tion. This means that the stiffen­er can be per­man­ently locked to the con­nect­or by the ad­di­tion­al plastic part. The con­nec­tion can then only be re­leased after the CPA has been un­locked.

Low over­all height 

To en­sure the greatest pos­sible flex­ib­il­ity, the Y-Lock V4 series is avail­able with gold or tin plat­ing. This al­lows the pos­sib­il­it­ies of FPC sup­pli­ers to be catered for. The V4 is cur­rently avail­able in the 90° ver­sion and, with a com­plete height of 4.5mm, has a design that is per­fectly ad­ap­ted to the tight in­stall­a­tion spaces in bat­tery ap­plic­a­tions. Y-Lock V4 is avail­able with dif­fer­ent con­tact spa­cings: 1.0mm, 1.2mm, 1.8mm and 2mm in or­der to ful­fil the vari­ous re­quire­ments for clear­ance and creep­age dis­tances.

The sys­tem ful­fils the re­quire­ments of LV214.
 

Yokogawa Test & Meas­ure­ment an­nounced the re­lease of the PBDH0400 series dif­fer­en­tial probe with a max­im­um in­put voltage of 2000 V and a fre­quency band­width of 400 MHz. The dif­fer­en­tial probes in this series are cap­able of provid­ing the meas­ure­ments re­quired for the de­vel­op­ment of the next gen­er­a­tion of high-speed power devices.

De­vel­op­ment back­ground

With in­creas­ing em­phas­is on meas­ures to help de­car­bon­ise all as­pects of so­ci­ety, there is a need to im­prove the en­ergy ef­fi­ciency of mo­tors and in­vert­ers used in the trans­port and re­new­able en­ergy sec­tors. This need is par­tic­u­larly acute in the power elec­tron­ics in­dustry, where the in­crease in ap­plic­a­tions for - and pro­duc­tion of - next-gen­er­a­tion power devices based on sil­ic­on carbide (SiC) tech­no­logy re­quires ul­tra-pre­cise meas­ure­ment of high-voltage and high­er-speed sig­nals. 

This task re­quires meas­ure­ments to be made from an un­groun­ded (float­ing) po­ten­tial, which ne­ces­sit­ates the use of dif­fer­en­tial probes rather than stand­ard probes. Yokogawa Test & Meas­ure­ment there­fore set out to de­vel­op wide-band­width dif­fer­en­tial probes cap­able of meas­ur­ing high-voltage and high-speed sig­nals.

High voltage and wide band­width meas­ure­ment

Ini­tially, two mod­els of the PBDH0400 series will be avail­able: mod­el 702922 with a max­im­um in­put voltage of 2000 V and mod­el 702921 with a max­im­um in­put voltage of 1000 V.

For ac­cur­ate wave­form mon­it­or­ing of fast-chan­ging sig­nals com­mon in elec­tric vehicle (EV) and clean en­ergy ap­plic­a­tions, the PBDH0400 Series dif­fer­en­tial probes meas­ure voltages above 1000V and of­fer a wide fre­quency range from DC to 400MHz. This cap­ab­il­ity is of par­tic­u­lar be­ne­fit to de­velopers of next-gen­er­a­tion in­vert­ers, en­abling them to ac­cur­ately mon­it­or minute changes in high-speed switch­ing sig­nals. In ad­di­tion, ex­cel­lent noise im­munity al­lows de­tec­tion of events that can cause un­ex­pec­ted an­om­alies, in­clud­ing wave­form over­shoot and ringing.

The PBDH0400 series fea­tures Yokogawa's probe in­ter­face, which saves both cost and space by elim­in­at­ing the need for an ex­tern­al power sup­ply when con­nec­ted to a Yokogawa os­cil­lo­scope. In ad­di­tion, the in­ter­face auto­mat­ic­ally sets the probe at­ten­u­ation ra­tio so that meas­ure­ment can be­gin im­me­di­ately upon con­nec­tion to the in­stru­ment. Com­bin­ing the PBDH0400 with Yokogawa's 12-bit DLM5000HD or DLM3000HD os­cil­lo­scopes en­ables more ac­cur­ate wave­form meas­ure­ments.

The main mar­kets for the new probe series are auto­mot­ive elec­tron­ics, in­clud­ing in­vert­ers and mo­tors, power elec­tron­ics and mechat­ron­ics, in­clud­ing in­dus­tri­al equip­ment.
 

R&S ScopeStu­dio is a new soft­ware solu­tion from Ro­hde & Schwarz that trans­fers the cap­ab­il­it­ies of the MXO series os­cil­lo­scopes to a com­puter. This PC-based os­cil­lo­scope ap­plic­a­tion fa­cil­it­ates the view­ing, ana­lys­is, doc­u­ment­a­tion and shar­ing of os­cil­lo­scope meas­ure­ments away from the os­cil­lo­scope hard­ware, present­ing a more ac­cess­ible solu­tion for in­di­vidu­al users and de­vel­op­ment teams.

Smooth­er work­flows

Users can im­port os­cil­lo­scope wave­forms or en­tire ses­sions – a blend of cap­tured wave­form data and in­stru­ment setup files. The sub­sequent meas­ure­ments and ana­lys­is cap­ab­il­it­ies mir­ror what a user would ex­per­i­ence on their MXO os­cil­lo­scope. However, the ap­plic­a­tion of­fers three key ad­vant­ages. First, since users can view and ana­lyze pre­vi­ously ac­quired data away from the in­stru­ment, it leaves the os­cil­lo­scope free for oth­ers to use. Second, en­gin­eers can use PC tools to more ef­fi­ciently doc­u­ment designs. This not only en­hances pro­ductiv­ity but also im­proves the qual­ity of im­ages and an­nota­tions by lever­aging the flex­ib­il­ity of ad­di­tion­al PC re­sources. Fi­nally, re­search and de­vel­op­ment teams can share meas­ure­ment res­ults more ef­fect­ively with re­mote loc­a­tions, part­ners, sup­pli­ers and cus­tom­ers. The need to share tech­nic­al meas­ure­ment de­tails is com­mon in de­vel­op­ment teams, and this PC-based os­cil­lo­scope ap­plic­a­tion sim­pli­fies the pro­cess.

The stand­ard fea­tures of the ap­plic­a­tion in­clude R&S Smart­Grid, curs­ors, over 40 auto­mated meas­ure­ments, math­em­at­ic­al func­tions, fil­ters and spec­trum view­ing of time-do­main sig­nals. Pro­tocol de­cod­ing sup­port for I²C, SPI, RS-232/UART, CAN, CAN-FD, CAN-FL, LIN, SENT, Mil­Std 1553, ARINC 429 and SPMI seri­al buses will be avail­able soon. The new R&S ScopeStu­dio PC ap­plic­a­tion soft­ware for the MXO 4, MXO 5 and MXO 5C os­cil­lo­scopes is now avail­able.

The new Faul­haber SXR mo­tors of­fer stand­ard high­er per­form­ance and a broad­er range of con­fig­ur­a­tion op­tions to meet the de­mands of mod­ern drive solu­tions. They provide flex­ible voltage vari­ants from 3V to 18V as well as dif­fer­ent bear­ing con­fig­ur­a­tions. Ad­di­tion­ally, the mo­tors can be cus­tom­ized – from front and rear shaft modi­fic­a­tions to op­tions for va­cu­um and tem­per­at­ure en­vir­on­ments. The op­tim­ized ro­tor bal­an­cing en­sures longev­ity and smooth op­er­a­tion. At the core of the new SXR fam­ily is the in­nov­at­ive hexagon­al coil with a high cop­per filling factor and straight wir­ing. This tech­no­logy de­liv­ers sig­ni­fic­antly en­hanced per­form­ance and ef­fi­ciency com­pared to tra­di­tion­al pin coils. Ad­di­tion­ally, a new mag­net grade im­proves mag­net­ic in­duc­tion amp­litude and tem­per­at­ure sta­bil­ity.

Com­pact and power­ful

All com­pon­ents in the SXR series are RoHS com­pli­ant, and the elec­tric­al con­nec­tions of­fer flex­ible con­fig­ur­a­tion op­tions. The main mar­kets for this product line in­clude high-tech in­dus­tries that rely on qual­ity, re­li­ab­il­ity, and an out­stand­ing power-to-volume ra­tio. These in­clude sec­tors such as pros­thet­ics, sur­gic­al tools, met­ro­logy, semi­con­duct­or pro­cessing, and auto­ma­tion solu­tions. 
 

Delta Elec­tron­ics an­nounces the launch of its MSI mo­tor series in the EMEA re­gion. De­signed as a high-ef­fi­ciency PM re­luct­ance mo­tor, the MSI series brings un­par­alleled com­pact­ness, en­ergy sav­ings, and in­teg­ra­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies to fan and pump ap­plic­a­tions. With op­tions in­clud­ing flange, foot, and flange/foot ver­sions, as well as speeds of 1500 rpm and 3000 rpm, the MSI series is set to re­define in­dus­tri­al mo­tor per­form­ance.

Com­pact design 

The MSI mo­tor series re­vo­lu­tion­izes mo­tor design with its com­pact form factor, of­fer­ing a size re­duc­tion of 1-2 frame sizes com­pared to tra­di­tion­al in­duc­tion mo­tors. This smal­ler size saves valu­able in­stall­a­tion space while meet­ing IE5 ef­fi­ciency stand­ards, mak­ing it an en­vir­on­ment­ally con­scious choice. The mo­tors de­liv­er out­stand­ing en­ergy sav­ings, help­ing in­dus­tries lower op­er­at­ing costs and re­duce car­bon emis­sions, sup­port­ing glob­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives. These fea­tures po­s­i­tion the MSI mo­tors as a valu­able solu­tion for whole­salers, dis­trib­ut­ors, and sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors across vari­ous in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions.

Seam­less in­teg­ra­tion and easy setup

Delta has pri­or­it­ized ease of use with the MSI mo­tor series, en­sur­ing in­stall­a­tion di­men­sions match those of stand­ard IM mo­tors for straight­for­ward re­place­ment. Ad­di­tion­ally, mo­tor para­met­ers are pre­loaded in­to Delta´s MS300, CP/CFP2000, and VP3000 fre­quency drives, al­low­ing for quick and ef­fort­less sys­tem setup. This com­pat­ib­il­ity re­duces com­mis­sion­ing time and sim­pli­fies op­er­a­tion­al pro­cesses, provid­ing busi­nesses with an ef­fi­cient, cost-sav­ing solu­tion.

En­gin­eered to de­liv­er con­sist­ent and pre­cise per­form­ance, the MSI mo­tors op­er­ate with re­duced noise—5-10 dB lower than stand­ard mo­tors—and min­im­ized vi­bra­tion levels, cre­at­ing a quieter and more stable en­vir­on­ment. These fea­tures en­hance re­li­ab­il­ity and ac­cur­acy, mak­ing the MSI series ideal for fan and pump op­er­a­tions in de­mand­ing in­dus­tri­al set­tings.