Industrial

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Mo Farah became the first British track and field athlete to win three Olympic gold medals, after winning gold in both the 5,000 and 10,000 metre races. The secret to his success was careful control of speed to navigate bends and avoid early fatigue. Likewise, in many industrial processes, precise control of micromotor speed is essential.

Plastic is still the material of the future. The plastics industry, and the plastics processing industry in particular, provide a platform for technological advancement and form the basis for a range of other industries. However, there are also growing challenges facing the plastics industry.

SME manufacturers supported by Made Smarter are using emerging technologies to navigate the impact on business from the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses signed up to the North West pilot to support the Industry 4.0 revolution have adapted in a variety of ways, including switching production to make medical scrubs, ventilator parts and PPE to help the front-line fight against the disease.

With the Coronavirus crisis continuing in the UK and worldwide, many are rightfully looking to ways they can minimise the risk of the virus spreading in public places, such as supermarkets, train stations and petrol station forecourts. Many such locations now depend upon self-service touchscreens and anxiety over their use is on the rise.

Job roles within tech increased by 40% in the first third of the year thanks to a surge in-demand within the ‘hybrid tech sector’ – namely fintech, edtech, healthtech, and agritech – according to global recruiter Robert Walters.

The explosion of data has resulted in huge growth in AI and machine learning. Here, Arthur Sanio, Director of Product Marketing, SMART Modular Technologies, explains the role memory and storage are playing in the success and speed of their associated applications.

When an obsolete component or  automation part breaks, manufacturers might struggle to find a replacement. This is especially true in highly regulated sectors like pharmaceuticals or food processing, where alternative replacements are not an option and the exact same part has to be sourced.

KI-PREDICT, a project funded by the BMBF, aims to use artificial intelligence (AI) at various levels of the manufacturing process to enable condition-based, predictive maintenance for factory equipment and to monitor product quality on the fly during production.

When industrial product OEMs such as those in automotive, aerospace, and transportation need flash storage, it must be designed and tested to provide mission critical reliability despite regular subjection to vibration or temperature extremes in harsh environments. 

The days of the hard computer chip may be numbered with the growth in stretchable electronics. Covered in transistors and other semi-conducting elements, these rigid devices likewise render the devices in which they are found - our televisions, laptops and smartphones - similarly inflexible.