Future manufacturing seminars

The 'Future Manufacturing Event' is a combination of seminars, exhibitions and one-to-one contact with experts from leading software and hardware vendors.

Held at the AMRC (Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre) at Sheffield University, it will look at the big topics of today which are most likely to have a lasting effect on industry including energy, Industry 4.0 and new technological innovations.

The event is being hosted by AMRC, organised by Mitsubishi Electric Industrial Automation and sponsored by gear specialist Radicon, electric motor maker Brook Crompton, vibration monitoring group Schaeffler, specialist energy management company Rumm, power quality expert PQM and Copadata, a developer of process control software.

Seminar papers will include sessions dedicated to the key subjects of the day. For instance, the energy solutions session will include the new ESOS legislation, the G5/5 Harmonic regulations, strategies for effective energy management and meeting the requirements of ESOS and a review of the IE motor legislation that is driving manufacturers to refine motor designs for better efficiency.

Industry 4.0 has been one of the buzz topics for industrial exhibitions and similar gatherings for a year or two. This topic introduces other similar terms such as the Industrial Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. In the industrial automation world, data gathering is not new but engineers are beginning to understand that new and advanced technologies now make it possible to collect huge amounts of data related to machine and process control, process it in real time so that production efficiency and quality can be improved significantly and then integrate that information to a vast variety of related systems.

The seminar sessions covering Industry 4.0 will discuss this topic in industrial automation terms, looking at multi-vendor integrated solutions and will also introduce some key hardware and software technologies such as Mitsubishi's new iQ-F and iQ-R platforms.

The exhibition part of the event will include displays from companies such as: Mitsubishi Electric Rittal/E Plan (control cabinets and wiring)  Lutze (automation solutions)  Cognex (vision)  CLPA (CC-Link open communications)  EPlan P&F Wittenstein. The event will be an opportunity to learn about the main technologies that will be driving the development of manufacturing and processing in the coming years.