Our friends at SIEMENS remind us that drives are literally everywhere. You don´t always see them, but they are an important part of machines, of production facilities or of baggage handling systems in airports...
Data for Digitalization
Digitalization needs data. Information is considered the fuel of digitalization. To get more flexibility, more efficiency and ultimately more productivity out of machines, production facilities and even airports, you need to know what they are doing. You need to know about the properties, the status and the behaviour of your machines. And one easy way to get this information is – you guessed it – the drive train.
Drives are everywhere
It doesn´t really matter if you are producing cars or toothpaste or if you are transporting luggage. If you use a machine, there is some kind of drive inside. Digitalization of the drive train is connected closely to digitalization of your machines and your factories. However, since drives can generate a lot of data, drive technology represents an ideal entry into digitalization.
From design through commissioning up to servicing machines
Starting with design, planning and engineering, digitalization of the drive train helps machine builders to shorten the time-to-market of a machine. With a digital twin, a virtual representation of the drive train, they can simulate many possible scenarios and find out where problems or bottlenecks could arise. Through virtual commissioning based on behaviour models, and supported by our engineering and commissioning tools, machine builders can shorten the commissioning time in the real world. And the data acquired during production can be captured and analysed on industrial cloud-platforms.
Through drive-based digitalization machine users can get fundamental data about the machine status and its performance, and optimize their production accordingly. And it brings service one step closer to the factory – through consultation and implementation of digitalization solutions, predictive services and remote support.
With the help of a digital twin you can optimize your production – or the baggage handling system of an airport. And through predictive maintenance you can even predict, when a conveyor is going to fail.
Digitalization in drive technology at the airport
An airport is a very good example of how digitalization can be used to increase your productivity and the happiness of your customers. First of all: depending on the size of the airport, a baggage handling system can be quite complex. With the help of a digital twin you can optimize your strategy and minimize the bottlenecks during the engineering phase. Once you set up the handling system you can get a full and transparent overview of your system through the data from your drives and optimally use its capacity. And on top of this, with the right kind of analytics you can even predict when a conveyor in a baggage handling system is going to fail – before it happens…
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Source:
https://ingenuity.siemens.com/2019/11/drives-are-everywhere/