< Previous© Allied Electronics & Automation, 2019POWERSPREAD_AW.indd 2SPREAD_AW.indd 21/20/20 12:54 PM1/20/20 12:54 PMWe stock enough power to brew a 12 oz. cup of coffee for the entire population of New Orleans. Put that in your mug and drink it.alliedelec.comGet your A&C fill at1.800.433.5700SPREAD_AW.indd 3SPREAD_AW.indd 31/20/20 12:54 PM1/20/20 12:54 PMIt’s easy to find advocates for the idea that servomotor, drive, and controller combi-nations work best when sourced from a single provider. It’s also not difficult to find those who will argue it’s better to select best-of-breed components and integrate them for optimal performance.That’s why the question of which path is the best—single-vendor or best-of-breed—contin-ues to reverberate across industry. Automation World received several questions about this very topic in response to a recent survey.To help answer this question for our “Auto-mation World Gets Your Questions Answered” podcast series: http://awgo.to/servo, we con-nected with Eric Roggeman and Greg Dieck of Omron Industrial Automation, a supplier of automation technologies ranging from sensors, control, and safety components to motors, drives, robotics, and power supplies.Roggeman began the interview by noting motors and drives are most often purchased together, with controller preference often being the biggest factor driving the decision. The exception to this rule occurs when the application requires a special type of motor, for example, an explosion-proof or hygienic motor. Driven by controller preference, the sin-gle-supplier advantage usually comes down to the software, said Dieck. “If you have a single software package from one vendor, it’s easier to build and maintain a single tag database and the learning curve with a single software package is easier. It’s also easier to replicate machines in the field when you’re using one software package for drive param-eters.”Because drives are typically connected to the controller rather than the motor, these two components tend to be purchased from the same supplier. “This helps simplify com-munications between the servo and control-ler,” Roggeman said, “It makes the connec-tion more plug-and-play.”Speaking of communications across ser-vomotor-drive-controller combinations, Roggeman advised selecting devices so that the same protocol is used across all three components. As part of this communications review it is important to consider encoder communications, such as SSI, EnDat, and quadrature, he advises. “[Encoders] talk to the drive differently to ensure positioning is correct, so it’s important to ensure all three components are on same page. Also be sure to consider the cabling and connectors to make sure everything fits together.”Dieck added that, when collecting data from a controller, there are multiple net-works you can use. “But when it comes to motion applications, you need a high-speed, deterministic network between the drive and controller,” he said.Another advantage to having a single sup-plier for your servomotor, drive, and control-ler combinations is that it simplifies trouble-shooting. “When you’re troubleshooting a system sourced from the same suppler, the controller will recognize error handling for the drives,” said Dieck. “[This means] you can bring centralized error handling into the machine. This is especially helpful with OEE [overall equipment effectiveness].”Outside of the special applications Rogge-man and Dieck noted—such as the need for explosion-proof or hygienic motors—are there any instances where best-of-breed component selection is preferred over a single-source provider? Roggeman said the issue of motor size requirements can make a best-of-breed selection necessary. “If you have a controller and drive that works well together, but the motor you need—maybe one with a higher horsepower—is not offered by that brand, you will need to source the motor from another provider. This is also encountered if you need a specialty motor, such as a direct drive or pre-geared motor that may not be offered by your drive and controller provider.”As for the driving factors behind these buy-ing decisions, Dieck said that performance is more typically the most important consider-ation—even overriding cost concerns.Roggeman added that, with the increas-ingly litigious nature of society, safety is becoming an issue of equal importance to performance in these buying decisions. More users want safety aspects built into the proj-ects from the onset, he said. Single-Provider vs. Best-of-Breed for Motor, Drive, Controller Combinations10AW JANUARY 2020EDITORIALBy David GreenfieldEditor-In-Chief/Director of Content of AutomationWorlddgreenfield@automatioworld.comINDUSTRY DIRECTIONS“When you’re troubleshooting a system sourced from the same supplier, the controller will recognize error handling for the drives. This means you can bring centralized error handling into the machine.”2001_E1.indd 182001_E1.indd 181/20/20 1:41 PM1/20/20 1:41 PMAUTOMATIC PRINT INSPECTION MADE SIMPLESICK has been at the forefront of vision innovation for many years and now, in partnership with AutoCoding Systems, is providing a breakthrough innovation in automatic print inspection. Utilizing the latest vision technology from SICK and the AppSpace programming environment, AutoCoding’s 4Sight software inspects codes for accuracy, legibility, and location to maximize performance. The system can detect something as simple as print presence to comprehensive OCR capabilities. This is a complete solution for today’s world. We think that’s intelligent. www.sick.comFull Page Ad.indd 73Full Page Ad.indd 731/20/20 12:02 PM1/20/20 12:02 PMIn 2018, women who were full-time wage and salary workers usually had median weekly earnings that were 81% of the earnings of full-time wage and salary work-ers who were men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So here we are in 2020, and women in corporate America still face a gender wage gap, making 79 cents for every dollar men make.In an effort to understand what’s going on, McKinsey Global Institute and LeanIn.Org set out on an exhaustive research project that began five years ago, giving updates each year following. Over the years, close to 600 companies have participated in the study and more than a quarter of a million people were surveyed on work experiences. This past year, the Women in the Workplace 2019 report is based on information from 329 organiza-tions. The research includes a survey of more than 68,500 employees in order to under-stand day-to-day work experiences.Here’s what they found: Progress is being made, specifically for women in leadership positions. In the C-suite, representation of women has increased from 17% to 21% since 2015. Still, women—and particularly women of color—are underrepresented at every level. And, it is not the “glass ceiling” that is preventing women from rising through the ranks, rather, it is the “broken rung” effect.According to the report: “Conventional wis-dom says that women hit a glass ceiling as they advance that prevents them from reaching senior leadership positions. In reality, the big-gest obstacle that women face is the first step up to manager, or the broken rung. The broken rung results in more women getting stuck at the entry level and fewer women becoming managers. As a result, there are significantly fewer women to advance to higher levels. To get to gender parity across the entire pipeline, companies must fix the broken rung.”People may say it’s a two-way street and that women are looking for more work/life balance and therefore are satisfied with lower-level jobs. But the data points to a very different conclusion.“Despite conventional wisdom, women are staying in the workforce at the same rate as men,” said LeanIn.Org president Rachel Thomas during a “Secrets of Wealthy Women” Wall Street Journal podcast. “Despite con-ventional wisdom, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, research would have said that women did not negotiate as often as men, that they didn’t ask for promotions as often as men. And yet, we see year over year that is not the case. The story the data tells is that women are leaning in and doing their part. So what we found is that it really is a story about what companies need to do better.”Companies need to focus on culture and treat diversity and inclusion as a business imperative, putting best practices in place that eliminates bias from hiring and promo-tions. According to McKinsey, “inclusiveness is fundamental to enhancing gender parity and overall diversity, and results in financial and organizational performance.”But women face yet another obstacle—or perhaps an opportunity—in automation.Careers in the age of automationA McKinsey companion report called “The Future of Women at Work: Transitions in the Age of Automation,” says that creative approaches are needed to help women seize new opportunities in automation or women could fall further behind.Facing a skills gap, the industry is encour-aging more women to enter into manufactur-ing to fill science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) roles. However, globally, women account for only 35% of STEM stu-dents, according to the report. “A review of recently created occupations in the U.S. suggests that up to 60% of entirely new jobs such as roboticists and machine-learning spe-cialists are in male-dominated fields.”But if women can reskill as a way to meet the current STEM-based job demands, it could result in higher-paying careers. “Looking ahead to 2030, our scenario suggests that gender wage disparity may lessen slightly in certain mature economies if women are able to gain the necessary skills and successfully navigate transitions between occupations,” the report said.It is now up to manufacturers to encour-age and enable women to make these job transitions by supporting skill-building efforts, embracing more flexibility and mobility in these new roles, and providing an avenue for women to participate in the cre-ation of technology as the industry begins to work in new ways to embrace the next-generation workforce.Women in the Workforce: Fixing the Broken Rung 12AW JANUARY 2020By Stephanie NeilSenior Editor of AutomationWorldsneil@automatioworld.comBATCH OF IDEAS“So here we are in 2020, and women in corporate America still face a gender wage gap, making 79 cents for every dollar men make.”OF ICH 2001_E2.indd 182001_E2.indd 181/20/20 1:42 PM1/20/20 1:42 PM24 hours5 days or lessFast Shipping Guaranteed!Improve your bottom line with our top-line performersNeed a star performer that won’t send your production over budget? Festo’s Stars of Automation offers a vast inventory of over 4,000 affordable core products ready for delivery. It’s a simpler shopping process, resulting in fewer P.O.s, fewer suppliers and a faster time to market.For great value, look to the stars. Choose Festo.Discover all the Stars that will brighten your automation process at www.festo.us/starsFull Page Ad.indd 73Full Page Ad.indd 731/20/20 12:03 PM1/20/20 12:03 PMFull Page Ad.indd 73Full Page Ad.indd 731/20/20 12:04 PM1/20/20 12:04 PM15AWJANUARY 2020PERSPECTIVEST�e Edge-to-Enterprise StrategyBy David GreenfieldEditor-In-Chief/Director of ContentThe past three decades have seen numerous changes take place in the automation technology industry. As Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things initiatives push the manufactur-ing industries to connect as many of their plant floor devices to enterprise systems for higher-level analytics and decision-making, there is a clear effort underway for automation technology suppliers to more closely integrate their own organi-cally developed technologies with those they have acquired over the years.Though these companies have, in most cases, already integrated their acquired technologies to work well with their own products, the difference today is that auto-mation suppliers are aiming to deliver com-plete end-to-end systems—not just com-patibility. This is happening largely at the direction of end users looking to ease the process of the digital transformation they know they need to undertake.While the various large automation tech-nology suppliers each have their unique way of approaching these end-to-end systems, Aveva is claiming to be the first to achieve a complete edge-to-enterprise system.During a presentation at the Aveva World Conference 2019, Harpreet Gulati, senior vice president of planning and operations, said Aveva is the only software company delivering end-to-end value chain integration and collaboration capabilities as part of the company’s edge-to-enterprise Value Chain Optimization offering.“We differ from other technology suppli-ers in the market in that we connect multiple tools—from production planning and moni-toring and control to corporate and invest-ment planning—to link operations analyt-ics, targets, and plans to actual operations data, fiscal targets, and strategic decisions,” Gulati said. “We condense these functions into a unified value chain for one version of truth contained in one database with hooks between business and operations modules as well as external systems. We’re doing the same thing SAP did for the financial indus-try by connecting and integrating operations that were historically separate.”The principal differentiator in Aveva’s approach to the connections Gulati refers to is its open attitude toward plant floor and enterprise level data. At the company’s conference, it was repeatedly stressed that Aveva is hardware and software agnostic, meaning that its products are designed to work with a company’s existing devices and data platforms.Connection of value chain activities for collaboration is critical because today, every-one in the plant is trying to maximize what they do with their own tools, while manage-ment wants to look across it all, said Gulati. “As a result, the business workflow view doesn’t match reality because legacy point solutions require manual data transfer as well as custom codes and support. Value Chain Optimization is designed to reduce these silos. By connecting the entire value chain, we can enable collaboration across functions both upstream and downstream.”While Aveva’s products target produc-tion processes and related data capture and analytics, edge computing supplier Stratus Technologies is one of Aveva’s partners at the edge.Stephen Greene, vice president of global marketing at Stratus, said the relationship between the two companies started 10 years ago. “Within the edge-to-enterprise strategy, our role is bringing edge technology into play in a tangible way for customers,” he said. “We make edge computing easy by inherently pro-tecting mission-critical business applications with no downtime risk to the user through our products’ autonomous self-management capabilities. This protection creates assur-ance from an infrastructure point of view. Pairing our zTC Edge computing platform with Aveva’s software connects the software from the enterprise level down to that last physical mile—the point of data collection on a device at the edge of the network.”Greene noted that Stratus has been work-ing closely with Aveva during the past year to “ensure complete compatibility with Aveva’s System Platform, InTouch HMI, and InTouch Edge software. We provide the software to manage and monitor the edge device and up to four virtual machines into which you can bring Aveva’s software applications, such as MES [manufacturing execution system], Uni-fied Operations Center, and Asset Perfor-mance Management. Our edge devices pro-tect those software investments with built-in cybersecurity right out of the box,” he said.Harpreet Gulati, senior vice president of planning and operations, AvevaStephen Greene, vice president of global marketing, Stratus Technologies2001_Perspectives.indd 152001_Perspectives.indd 151/20/20 1:16 PM1/20/20 1:16 PM16AW JANUARY 2020PERSPECTIVESQuality – The standard of something as measured against other things of similar kind, the degree of excellence of something.Every item Fabco manufactures reflects the highest standards of quality. Working in unison, our team takes every measure necessary to assure that our parts adhere to these standards. Only after they have passed our critical quality checks at every step of their production will they be deemed ready for our customers. If quality and reliably high performance in your pneumatic automation applications matter to you as much as they do to us, then Fabco’s pneumatic cylinders are your only choice. A member of Festo GroupFABCO-AIRTechnical supportPh: (352) 373-3578Fx: (352) 375-8024 service@fabco-air.com Fabco-Air, Inc.3716 N.E. 49th Avenue Gainesville, FL 32609-1699 www.fabco-air.comAt Fabco, our machine centers make Quality parts for pneumatic cylinders. Tronrud Engineering, a Norwegian machine builder, faces the same problems as every other OEM in the world—its customers want more flexibility in the machine, and they want the equipment delivered faster and cheaper. But what sets Tronrud apart from other OEMs is that it has actually found a way to do all that.In fact, the release of its latest packag-ing machine for the food industry—the new high-speed TCP PN12 unveiled at Hannover Messe 2019—can pack 300 flow-wrap bags into boxes per minute. Plus, it was designed in 10% less time than usual and the company reduced the commissioning phase by 25%.The secret to their success is twofold. First, it’s a group effort. “The main differ-ence is in the way we work together,” says Erik Hjertaas, general manager packaging technology at Tronrud Engineering. “His-torically, mechanical designers are in one part of the business and software engineers are in the other waiting for the designs to be ready. We put them together and everyone puts data into the same 3D model to cut the time-to-market. We work better together.”But all of this chumminess wouldn’t be possible without the help of technology—the second part of the success story. Specif-ically, a combination of 3D computer-aided design (CAD) and simulation software that creates a digital twin of the machine.A digital twin is a virtual model of a physi-cal product or process. In manufacturing, a digital twin can be a dynamic virtual rep-resentation of an entire plant, or it can be focused on a single asset, like a machine.At Tronrud, they were building a new packaging machine that works at twice the speed of the current model and can handle rapid product changeovers—all in the same footprint. The machine was evolving from pneumatic to full electric operation, and that meant that there would be fundamental changes in the way the machine needed to be designed in order to deliver a fast, com-pact system that can handle different types of packaging.And, of course, it had to be fully tested—which Tronrud did with a digital model using Siemens technology, including NX Mecha-tronics Concept Designer (MCD), a multi-discipline integrated system engineering Digital Twin Double-TakeBy Stephanie NeilSenior Editor2001_Perspectives.indd 162001_Perspectives.indd 161/20/20 1:16 PM1/20/20 1:16 PM• Weatherproof and Waterproof• Resilient to Temperature Extremes • EMI and RFI Resistant • Shock, Vibration, Corrosive Materials ProtectionAvailable for Same-Day Shipping!Operating in a Harsh Environment?Are you operating in a harsh environment where cabling and interconnectivity components must withstand temperature extremes, moisture, corrosive materials, shock and vibration? 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