Industrial Automation - boosting your efficiency

Industrial Automation is often considered the next big revolution in the industrial world, namely Industry 4.0. It has the potential to change the way we work and generate and understand value in the working context. Also, it is a solution for the lack of time and fast development-cycles in current industrial workflows. It is already in use especially in manufacturing, which indicates a lot of upcoming changes that will affect everyone: The job descriptions and requirements will change. But where are the benefits and what is necessary to implement industrial automation? The electronics industry contributes a large part to sophisticated technology and still is not very far in automation.

In this article, you will learn about:

1. The goal: Increasing efficiency
2. Automation requires overarching connections
3. Smart automation is key
4. Industrial automation in the electronics sector

The goal: Increasing efficiency

The most popular application of Industrial Automation Technology is probably manufacturing. Assembly-line production will sooner or later completely be taken over by machines. However, before worrying about this development, we have to keep in mind that someone has to develop, install and maintain the necessary software and machines on a Human Machine Interface. Consequently, there is going to be a shift from dull tasks to what makes the human skill set unique: creativity, problem-solving, thinking outside the box and creating innovation. Smart technology taking over the time-consuming tasks can let the productivity increase in manufacturing as well as in any other industries. So, automation is a solution to enable humans to do demanding and innovative tasks instead of dull work while being more productive than before.

Automation requires overarching connections

Of course, automation basically means that machines will work somehow on their own. Nevertheless, if an error message appears, a human is needed. Action must be taken quickly as even minutes of standstill can cause delays and high losses, especially in manufacturing. Strict manual inspections take a lot of time and therefore, a network is needed, where the device can send frequent status signals. Having several objects in this industrial network, an internet of things (IoT) is created as a control system. It is already widely used especially in manufacturing but also for instance, in smart home technologies. How this technology exactly works is described in more detail in this article. Generally, IoT is an appropriate way to maintain automated workflows.

Smart automation is key

There are two ways to let machines work on their own. On the one hand, you can program machines to do exactly what you like, which is called programmable automation. It is a fast and manual way to automate workflows. On the other hand, nowadays, machines can be programmed to be able to work on their own. Such smart automation is only possible based on large amounts of data as an initial input. For instance, when applying Machine Learning algorithms, machines are capable of reacting to given input themselves and learn on their own. Therefore, data acquisition is a crucial aspect of Artificial Intelligence-based automation. In the field of engineering, Machine Learning offers huge potential for automation as there are more complex tasks to be tackled. This also means that there are even more options where time can be freed-up, which the engineers can invest into innovation and outstanding results.

Industrial Automation in the electronics sector

The electronics industry is one of the core industries that makes industrial automation and state-of-the-art technologies possible in the first place. Despite this, most development processes within the industry are still carried out manually, which also offers great potential for further development. In current processes, electronics designers must search for components, which in turn must be assembled into a working PCB design - a complex process with many manual steps. CELUS is changing this and working to automate electronics design workflows and increase productivity. We aim to increase the efficiency of highly skilled workers by allowing algorithms to take over the time-consuming tasks. Besides these positive aspects of automation, algorithms are not able to achieve such extraordinary results as well trained and experienced electronics engineers. Therefore, the goal of CELUS is to support humans and allow developers to dedicate their valuable expertise to the important things, the functionality, creativity, but also the perfection of an electronics design.

Are you interested how to integrate the CELUS Design Platform into your current electronics development? Learn more