New technologies are opening up a new era for automation in industries. Over the past few years, the global automation industry is experiencing a positive growth. The use of automation techniques is on the rise and will continue to be so in the coming years.
With its hardware and software solutions, B&R is the technology and market leader in various industry segments, providing best-in-class machine and factory automation solutions. Whether a machine builder belongs to consumer goods processing or industrial goods, and whether the machinery is stationary or mobile, the company offers a comprehensive portfolio of versatile products and a wide array of pre-programmed technology functions for machinery and equipment. B&R is a leading automation solution provider for machines and factories of sectors such as plastics, pharmaceutical, textile, packaging, F&B, metal, energy, etc., as well as for automating off-highway, agriculture, mining and construction equipment.
In an interview to The Textile Magazine, Mr. Jhankar Dutta, Managing Director, B&R Industrial Automation Pvt. Ltd., elaborates his company’s products and solutions offered to the textile industry and its expansion plans.
He said: “For the textile industry we offer the most advanced automation technologies for production management, yarn and fabric production, finishing and making up to achieve maximum performance not only for individual machines but also for the entire production line. We provide complete automation solutions for the textile industry. Our product range covers everything needed for machine and factory automation.”
With this background, B&R is currently expanding its production facilities in Gilgenberg, just a few kms from its headquarters in Eggelsberg. The company is also in the process of boosting its production capacity in the main plant. B&R will continue dedicating its full attention to the needs of the customers and working to add exciting innovations to its portfolio.
“ABB is to invest €100 million to build a state-of-the-art innovation and training campus at the home of B&R in Eggelsberg, Upper Austria. We also have support from ABB, including a readiness for substantial investment and increased access to global markets. With our ground-breaking solutions, we are changing the world of automation. We are proud of the fact that B&R is a preferred automation vendor for leading machine builders in various industry segments”, Mr. Dutta explained.
Talking about how important the textile vertical is for his company, Mr. Dutta said: “The textile industry has been around for centuries and has taken big strides. In response to growing competition, increased labour costs and lack of skilled workforce, automation is making inroads in the global textile industry and the demand is continuously growing. B&R has many years of experience in automating textile machines and factories. Many well-known machine manufacturers place their trust in the innovative strength of the B&R technology and solutions; in doing so, they have gained competitive advantage in their respective markets. B&R provides integrated automation solutions for all types of textile machines, making us an ideal partner for those seeking a complete solution.”
B&R’s comprehensive control, motion, safety portfolio is a perfect fit for the textile industry. The Automation Studio, the single tool for programming all B&R hardware, makes project management and version management much easier. The Studio is an excellent tool for machine building and systems engineering. Through its sustainable and efficient approach to software development, it helps machine builders keep the quality up, engineering costs down and time-to-market short, even in the face of ever-increasing product complexity. ACOPOS drives provide a wide-ranging drives portfolio for its customers. ACOPOS P3 reduces the machine cabinet footprint by 69%, helping machine builders to not only save space but also reduce costs.
With POWERLINK, openSAFETY and OPC UA, B&R offers its customers the perfect tool to meet the high connectivity demands of Industry 4.0 from the shopfloor to the IT or cloud.
The Automation Studio supports the OPC UA client and server directly on any controller and therefore allows vertical communication with SCADA, MES and ERP systems as well as vendor-independent communication from PLC to PLC. All its controllers are capable of communicating on open source protocols to upper layers such as OPC UA, MQTT & AMQP.
He further observed: “In order to operate with maximum efficiency, a textile factory floor must work together as a single, co-ordinated unit like a closely-knit piece of fabric. For individual machines to function as an integrated unit, you need open standardized communications between supervisory systems and the production floor. B&R products are capable of integrating machines with different MES and ERP systems enabling IT / OT convergence. APROL, our factory automation solution enables systematic analysis of recorded operating and process data coupled with business intelligence. Users can gain valuable information for the decision-making process with the help of standard, personalized, interactive and ad hoc reports. APROL EnMon, ConMon & PDA easily meet the increasing customer demands of energy savings, reducing environmental impact, reducing unplanned downtimes, predictive maintenance and data acquisition. As an expert textile partner, we offer intuitive diagnostic functions, remote diagnostics and open interfaces, which ensures unobstructed production without unnecessary downtime”.
B&R in India
The Indian economy is registering rapid growth and the ‘Make in India’ has since its launch has further fuelled this growth. Make in India and Digital India have come in time with the fourth industrial revolution, which emphasises the need for advanced automation concepts and best manufacturing practices. This campaign, along with Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0, is tremendously influencing machine manufacturing in India. Best manufacturing practices, together with next-generation automation solutions, are paving the way for Indian machine builders to leapfrog in industrial development and achieve global leadership. Through a careful analysis and selection of all components used, B&R ensures that all its products meet the highest technical standards of quality, reliability and long-term availability. Its scalable and interoperable hardware provides a solid foundation for reusability.
The textile industry in India is cost sensitive, and several factories still are semi-automated or manually operated. To meet the rising demand it is essential for factories to focus on higher productivity with efficiency. Commenting on his company’s presence in the Indian market, Mr. Dutta said: “According to reports, around 70% of the Indian textile machinery requirements are met by imports. At B&R India, our vision is to be an automation partner for Indian machinery manufacturers enabling them to build high-performance, efficient machines to become competitive globally. We are proud of the fact that we are already working with market leaders from the textile industry. In addition, the assistance provided by the Government will play an important part to increase domestic production of machinery. Factories in the textile industry should encourage the domestic machine manufacturers rather than relying on machinery imports. We offer a range of automation and control solutions, specifically for yarn and fabric production, finishing and production management which improves operation and helps achieve high quality and on-time delivery. Our portfolio includes a range of products like control systems, drive systems, motor control, safety systems and open industrial networks and fieldbus modules.”
B&R has perfect solutions for time and resource saving with intelligent incident reaction. ACOPOS multi drives have a capacity of auto detecting dips in the primary power supply and initiate an emergency shutdown. It prevents waste during production. ACOPOS P3 drives provides extremely fast, event-based cam transitions that today’s high-speed machines need. With no programming whatsoever, the drive is capable of compensating for cam deviations. This outstanding performance is completely independent of how powerful the controller is or how many real or virtual axes are used in the application.
With the mapp technology, machine builders can reduce their programming effort by 67% as mapp allows them to configure more and program less. mapp Motion enables machine builders to synchronize various motion components such as servo, VFD, stepper with ease. B&R offers machine builders a comprehensive selection of motor types with the software developed being independent of the motor technology.
With the real-time Ethernet POWERLINK protocol and B&R’s comprehensive range of motion control solutions, optimizing production lines is virtually effortless. B&R allows to simultaneously boost both quality and productivity. Together with its secure remote maintenance, machine builders can be connected with their machine 24/7, helping reduce downtimes, costs and providing quick response to errors. For weaving machines with different weft insertion methods, for example, the elimination of special hardware means that it is possible for speed to be significantly increased while processing quality remains high and costs are reduced.
Market presence
B&R has been in India for over two decades. All its knowledge and creativity has been put into developing products that become trendsetting innovations. Elaborating further on his company’s Indian presence, Mr. Dutta said: “At B&R, we offer our customers a complete automation solution that provides maximum flexibility and economic efficiency. We do not consider relationships with our customers and suppliers to be short-term or one-off situations. We look for partnerships based on lasting trust and a high level of expertise. Our philosophy together with our technologically advanced and innovative solutions have enabled us to become a preferred choice for Indian machine builders for automating their machines and factories. Thus, enabling us to increase our presence in the Indian market.”
Challenges faced in India
In India, there are many textile factories with decade-old infrastructure. Upgradation of the existing equipment, machines, devices and sensors incur high costs, and this acts as a major barrier for the Indian textile industry to adopt advanced technologies. Another challenge these brownfield factories are facing is collecting data and moving it to upper layers and IT. Even today, many industrial operators collect data manually and enter it into a spreadsheet. This approach is prone to human error, and there is a possibility of data manipulation.
Manual data collection does not give real-time information and hence can restrict or slow down the ability to find the root cause of downtime and take corrective action. This result in unsatisfactory performance drastically lowers RoI. To overcome these challenges, textile industries need continued push towards enhanced automation without modifying the existing setup. Although this may sound abstract, its impact is tangible and fundamentally changes business models in many organizations.
Talking on these lines Mr. Dutta observed: “B&R has a solution, which provides greenfield installation benefits to brownfield installation in a cost-effective method. Our Orange Box enables users to access energy and process data from previously isolated machines and lines, making them Industrial IoT ready with minimal effort. An Orange Box can substantially reduce downtime and boost availability of existing machines and lines, which makes operations more productive and profitable. Orange Box consists of a controller and preconfigured software blocks. The controller is able to collect operating data from any machine via its I/O channels or a fieldbus connection. With this data, the software modules generate and display OEE ratings and other KPIs, and can share the information with higher-level IT systems using open source OPC UA communication. Installing the Orange Box requires no changes to existing hardware or software in the factories. Equipment owners can achieve a substantial boost in productivity with a remarkably small investment in time and cost. It is as simple and intuitive to operate as a smartphone. Orange Box is also equipped with advanced energy function, which can evaluate energy data collected from the machine. Energy consumption is measured directly on the machine and viewed on an industrial HMI screen. The software is also able to break down energy consumption by device and displays it in a clear graphical overview. At a glance, operators are able to get an overview of any machine or entire factory power consumption.”
Apart from the Orange Box, “we have many more solutions for machine builders and factories enabling them to become ready for future and cost-effectively adopt new technologies”, he added.
Advantage B&R
B&R is an innovative company and is consistently looking at providing its customers with technologically advanced solutions. It helps its customers globally to gain a competitive edge and stay ahead of competition. “We collaborate with our customers and help them right from the project-designing phase to execution and commissioning. With products and software coupled with our expertise, we provide our customers a complete solution under a single roof. With our World Class Support initiative, we ensure a dedicated support hotline that will serve as a single point of contact for our customers nationwide. Our World Class Support hotline will further enhance our customers’ experience, in turn enabling them to offer their customers faster service and reduced machine downtime. Our highly qualified support team is committed to our customers’ success and has the expertise it takes to help them gain a competitive edge in their market. Our customers and factories can reach our World Class Support on +91 83 80 800 008”, he said.
Future market outlook
According to reports, the Indian textile industry is now estimated at around $150 billion and is expected to reach $250 billion soon. India’s overall textile exports are expected to triple by 2021. The entire market outlook is very positive and is providing immense encouragement to SMEs and MSMEs. With a 100% FDI allowed in the textile sector it also adds to growth and employment opportunities.
B&R India is already on the right path for leveraging this growth to be experienced in the textile sector. “We are already working with market leaders. In order to enable us to keep pace with the market, we have invested in our infrastructure and people and are well placed for supporting our customers with not only technology and innovations, but also our expertise”, he concluded with this assertive statement.