Many paths, one goal: The smart factory - SICK at SPS IPC Drives 2016

SICK: At SPS IPC Drives 2016, SICK will show customers and visitors alike the various options and paths they can take to achieve their goal – the smart factory. The sensor manufacturer’s wide range of products and solutions is creating a foundation for making processes more flexible. This involves the concepts of digitization, intelligence, and networking, which will enable production and logistics systems to optimize and control themselves autonomously.

In the Industry 4.0 environment, SICK sensor technology will enable customers to capture their real-life scenarios in data format and then use this data in specific ways for their applications. In order to process unprecedented volumes of data, sensors will need to become more reliable and powerful, and above all more intelligent. Yet with data too, quality counts over quantity. The more compact and meaningful the supplied data is, the more efficiently resources can be used, and the more accurate analyses will be. Intelligent sensors that preprocess, compress, and filter data directly in the sensor will perfect processes for Industry 4.0.

Sensors for an automated production process

An automated production process needs sensors that communicate not just at controller level but also at the higher data level. The additional interface to the data or software system enables new analyses and functions to be performed there. These increase flexibility, quality, efficiency, and transparency in production, effecting a radical change to the industrial pyramid. As a result, the sensor has to transmit the recorded data first in parallel and independently to both outputs.

Backward compatibility means that SICK sensors can already do both: They send data reliably to the PLC, but also to the data world. Where the customer benefits is that this proven technology can continue to be used going forward, but it is still possible to take advantage of the additional benefits on a gradual basis.

Looking further into the future of Industry 4.0, sensors will even play a disruptive role: As soon as data systems are powerful enough, they will control the machines directly and exclusively via the data level.

Hall 7A, Stand 340

SICK is one of the world’s leading producers of sensors and sensor solutions for industrial applications. Founded in 1946 by Dr.-Ing. e. h. Erwin Sick, the company with headquarters in Waldkirch im Breisgau near Freiburg ranks among the technological market leaders. With more than 50 subsidiaries and equity investments as well as numerous agencies, SICK maintains a presence around the globe. In the fiscal year 2015, SICK had more than 7,400 employees worldwide and achieved Group sales of just under EUR 1.3 billion.