The Industry 4.0 trend is sweeping the globe, creating challenges for factories to upgrade toward the new smart manufacturing concept. On July 12th, the leading global industrial automation brand, Delta, announced its newly developed smart factory solutions at its Taoyuan Technology Center. Delta introduced two integrated solutions: the “Smart Factory Energy-Saving Solution” and the “Digital Factory Solution” and presented a clear blueprint of the future with smarter and greener factories. The event gathered together many industry partners to participate and share experiences. Delta also demonstrated actual results from adopting its own developed IEMS (Industrial Energy Management System) and SCADA system (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) at its Taoyuan Technology Center.
Delta's Senior V.P. and Industrial Automation Business Group (IABG) General Manager Mr. Simon Chang said, “Since 1995, the Delta Industrial Automation Business Group (IABG) has focused on automation technology and launched a variety of automation products including AC motor drives, programmable logistic controllers (PLC), human machine interfaces (HMI) and motion control systems. Based on our extensive market experience, we foresee a trend for a new industry revolution. In the last five years, we have developed and launched several key solutions for Industry 4.0, including robotic arms, smart sensors, machine vision systems, and application software. Today, Delta is ready to provide our partners with integrated solutions for a smarter and greener factory. We are well-prepared to assist customers in establishing environmentally- friendly, energy-saving and smart factories and developing a prosperous and sustainable business.”
Delta IABG Assistant General Manager Mr. Andy Liu further explained, “The popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile devices have changed global consumers' buying behavior. Manufacturers are facing the challenge to break the traditional business model of a pure products producer, and move forward to become product and services providers. In the future, the manufacturing industry needs to deliver not only customized products, but also instant and interactive services based on precise demand predictions based on big data analysis. High speed, high efficiency, and cost control are three critical elements for future manufacturers to fulfill customer requirements.”
With over 20 years of experience in the industrial automation field, Delta embraces the new smart manufacturing trend. Its outstanding products and technologies have become the basis for its newly introduced smart manufacturing solutions. During the event, Delta launched two integrated solutions, the “Smart Factory Energy-Saving Solution” and the “Digital Factory Solution”. Both solutions deliver hardware and software integrated solutions to construct a complete factory automation system, from the application layer, and operation layer, to the management layer. In addition, Delta's software products feature high flexibility and are suitable for businesses of different scales developing their own smart manufacturing models.
Smart Factory Energy-Saving Solution
As energy issues continue to simmer, energy policies are more common and are becoming stricter in many countries. Under the consensus of an environmentally-friendly and sustainable business, it is imperative for factories to adopt energy-saving programs. Delta's smart factory energy-saving solution provides three step energy-saving strategies including machines and equipment energy-savings, system energy-savings and management energy-savings. In addition to energy-saving control devices such as variable frequency drives and power regeneration units, Delta also provides services for system diagnosis, revamping, and power efficiency optimization through data visualization and real-time monitoring systems. Key products include:
• Industrial Energy Management System (IEMS) DIAEnergie automatically collects electricity usage data through power meters and visualizes energy consumption for statistics analysis based on different categories. It provides regular reports, energy-savings results, and automatic abnormal power consumption alarms for real-time energy management. IEMS DIAEnergie helps companies on energy cost control from various perspectives including energy efficiency improvement strategies and planning for energy-intensive equipment or areas; instant alarm and automation control to prevent fines for excessive power consumption, and electricity prices analysis for energy cost control. DIAEnergie has been successfully applied at Delta's Taoyuan Technology Center for real-time energy consumption monitoring and analysis of different regions and facilities, and it continues to help improve energy efficiency.
• Power Meter DPM Series features high precision, multiple functions and stable communication and offers precise measurement of various electrical energy values and power quality parameters (power factors, harmonics and current/voltage unbalance) with functions such as off-limit alarms and history logs. It is especially suitable for sectors where power quality is critical. The Delta Power Meter DPM Series currently offers recently released standard, Din-rail and advanced models with Wifi and Ethernet communication for more applications.
• IP55 Fan and Pump Drive CFP2000 Series provide superior energy-saving performance for factories. About 50% of the electricity in factories is consumed by motors, so using efficient variable frequency motor drives is the key to equipment energy savings. The Delta IP55 Fan and Pump Drive CFP2000 Series feature built-in EMC filter and DC reactor, providing high integration for enhanced efficiency. It supports induction motor and permanent magnet motors, built-in STO (Safe Torque Off) function, PLC programming (10k steps) and a variety of industrial communication protocols. With parameter pre-setting and a multi-language interface, the CFP2000 Series offers simplified adjustment process and user-friendly interface for flexible applications.
• Delta power regeneration products: the Active Front End AFE2000 Series and the Power Regenerative Unit REG2000 Series can be used for power regeneration and energy-saving in four-quadrant load applications such as elevators and cranes. In addition, the APE2000 Series greatly improves power quality by decreasing harmonic distortion and recovering power factor to more than 99%.
Digital Factory Solution
Traditional production relies heavily on human operations and management. It will not be sufficient to fulfill the customer needs of the future. The idea of smart manufacturing is to execute data acquisition, big data analysis, and achieve the goal of prompt, smart and high quality production. To begin the factory revolution, the first step is to establish a digital factory.
The Delta Digital Factory Solution assists customers in establishing a complete factory network, and collecting data from different critical functions for visualization and management. The solution mainly consists of four systems including factory management and control system (FMCS), production visualization system, overall equipment efficiency (OEE), and manufacturing execution system (MES). Delta provides comprehensive products and services including hardware, software, system building and construction consultants. Key products in the Digital Factory Solution include:
• Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) System DIAView collects real-time operating data such as manufacturing and plant facility status and provides information visualization. It helps managers acquire the overall plant production and machine operation status for management including monitoring, troubleshooting, trend analysis and key problem identification to prevent and solve problems such as sudden downtime, unmanaged manufacturing processes, or delayed response to abnormal incidents. SCADA System DIAView provides a flexible and stable system structure, robust and efficient alarm management, and third-party software database compatibility. It supports the latest graphic technology and graphical symbol library, and a variety of data visualization tools with flexible and safe user authorization and network settings.
• Equipment Data Acquisition Platform DIALink can monitor all industrial robots, CNC machines and any equipment under the PLC architecture of major brands to achieve equipment data transparency. The data acquired by DIALink can be further uploaded to the SCADA System DIAView or overall equipment management platform OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) for analysis and management of processing speed, utilization rate and yield. DIALink helps optimize production scheduling, prevent abnormal processing quality, and effectively improve the overall efficiency of equipment.
• Cloud Service Platform DIACloud stores and manages factory information and data for remote monitoring and factory operation status acquisition. Through Industrial 3G / Ethernet Cloud Router DX Series and wireless AP, real-time equipment data acquired by DIAView or DIALink can be uploaded to DIACloud, an indispensable element in smart manufacturing.
• Delta IEMS DIAEnergie and SCADA System DIAView can perfectly operate on the Industrial PC IPC Series and the Industrial Tablet PPC Series for factory, building and equipment monitoring and data management. The IPC Series and PPC Series are built-in with the Windows 7 operation system and 64G SSD / 500G portable hard drives. The PPC Series also provides different models with 15" and 19" high-resolution display screens, suitable for critical industry applications.
• Mid-range PLC AH500 Series is the perfect solution for sequence control systems and high-end machinery and system integration. It features a modularized hardware structure and provides a variety of function modules for different needs. All modules support the hot-swap function so users can replace modules without stopping the operation of the CPU module which helps increase system efficiency, reliability and maintainability when I/O modules fail.