IEN: What are the major concerns facing automation, and how can they be addressed?
Gingerich: The huge productivity gains in U.S. manufacturing in the last 10 years have come primarily through large investments in automation. Nevertheless, the outsourcing boom continues to force U.S. companies to find better ways to make products if they want to keep the jobs in the U.S. Meeting this challenge -- securing the U.S. manufacturing base -- is the biggest single issue for manufacturing companies and their automation suppliers.
What''s critical now is to look for innovative ways to eliminate waste through determined implementation of continuous improvement. For many companies, this is already a matter of course, like getting up every morning. But for many others, continuous improvement programs are poorly understood, or they are implemented half-heartedly. Automation suppliers need to help their customers understand how to take a new look at their processes, potentially even overhauling techniques and processes that, on the surface, seem to be working, but which are actually quite inefficient.
IEN: What innovations are in store in software, systems, intelligent field devices, digital manufacturing, customization, optimization, and other areas?
Gingerich: Getting new products to market fast and manufacturing them efficiently are still the keys to success in today''s market. A lot of innovation is going into helping engineers design products faster -- through online equipment configurators, simulation software, virtual robots, and even wider offerings of downloadable CAD files in various formats. This is so critical that we''ve had customers tell us that whoever provides the best tools to reduce the engineering effort for automation equipment will get their business. We''re offering an online configurator for our CMS Cartesian Motion System for pick-and-place systems, for example, and our RobotSuite programming software includes a complete control system and a virtual robot. That way, robot customers can try out routines and see if they''ll work before they try to implement them. These tools eliminate much of the time-consuming trial and error previously associated with installing and debugging a robot on-site.
IEN: How about production management, collaborative manufacturing, plant intelligence and visibility, advanced process control?
Gingerich: This is perhaps the most critical issue in your survey. Our experience has shown that companies with the best continuous improvement programs constantly reinvent themselves to meet the challenges that come along. Whether Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, 5S, or a combination of all available techniques, manufacturers can use them to achieve tenfold improvements in throughput, quality, and manufacturing space. Conveyors, robots, machine tools, electronically controlled fastening systems can all play a role in achieving these improvements.