Smart solutions Thomas Donato, Rockwell Automation EMEA President, explains to Peter Mercer how the fourth industrial revolution is transforming manufacturing efficiency.
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the summer of 2017 Rockwell Automation, the global leader in industrial automation and information, opened its first EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Customer Centre in Karlsruhe, Germany. The new facility is designed as a one-stop source for customers seeking personalised advice on the right digital strategies that will help them develop their own ‘smart’ factory – in which the interlinking of production and IT systems can reduce costs, improve quality, save resources and enable a faster response to market changes. Rockwell Automation started its own journey to what it now calls ‘The Connected Enterprise’ around ten years ago with the introduction of intelligent monitoring of production data across its own manufacturing facilities. Its customers can now use the new Centre to leverage Rockwell Automation expertise and 18 Industry Europe
experience the benefits of digitalisation live on site. In theory, of course, most enterprises understand the potential of the smart factory but the Customer Centre is designed to bring these advantages to life though interactive demos, application examples and advice from Rockwell Automation specialists on how the smart factory precepts may be implemented to meet the specific needs of each company. “When we began the process of connecting production and IT systems across our own manufacturing operations – connecting assets across multiple locations – we were able to achieve up to 5 per cent gains in productivity,” explains Thomas Donato, Rockwell Automation President for the EMEA region. ‘Now we can help our customers to realise similar benefits through reducing inventories, optimising supply chains, improving product quality and unlocking cash resources.
“Essentially the Customer Centre enables us to show customers how we have done it ourselves and where they themselves can start. We can offer them an Execution Model, that we have developed as part of our Connected Enterprise concept and which we can use to help them tackle each of the stages in their own realisation of the smart factory. We start by reviewing their current situation and clarify their expectations. Then we define the goals together, decide on the scope and create a concept that will meet exactly their individual needs.” The new Customer Centre also hosts staff, PartnerNetwork members and customer training sessions as well as seminars on smart factories, big data and the Internet of Things. The Connected Enterprise is the foundation of the Rockwell Automation approach to
