The factory floor at Coating Excellence International is an ode to automation. From robotic arms to automated sewing equipment, from the latest process controls on production equipment to automated inspection systems, the production areas bristle with advanced equipment and technologies that allow the company to reduce costs and increase efficiency, as well as improve safety, gain better control over quality and more.

"To me [automation] is a key way to battle against foreign imports," says company president Mike Nowak, a founder of the Wrightstown, Wis.-based packaging company formed in 1997. "It has let us keep our business growing. It's been a key to our growth. We have to keep getting more efficient." Indeed, even as the economy flags, Nowak's company continues to invest in new production equipment. He is even contemplating opening an additional manufacturing plant.

Get more efficient. That's been the mantra for many manufacturers even in good economic conditions. It gains ever-greater significance in the current economic downturn and the continuing march of globalization and increased competition. And just as manufacturers continue to seek means to become more efficient, automation equipment and controls are evolving to provide the necessary tools to make that happen. The end result includes factory automation that is growing smarter, leaner and finding entry into new markets.

More Intelligent Automation

Earlier this year, ARC Advisory Group forecast the worldwide production machinery automation market would reach $21.2 billion in 2013, up from $18 billion in 2008. That market includes programmable logic controls, general motion controls, computer numerical controls and low-power AC drives. "Increasingly more machinery applications are moving to much higher speeds of operation as well as providing more capability to reduce changeover time. Production raw materials are becoming less consistent as recycled materials enter the market. The result is that machine builders need to consider a wider range of operation in the original design to accommodate changes," according to ARC Advisory research director Sal Spada.

Coating Excellence International says automation is the key way it battles against foreign competition.

Many of the companies Spada has spoken or worked with are seeking greater intelligence about their manufacturing processes to enable them to adapt even as they perform a process. It is driving greater interest in automation that brings intelligence with it. An arena in which Spada has observed the impact of this is end tooling for robots. In automotive spot welding for example, he points out that the dominant solution is pneumatic tips. "Now we are seeing some introduction of the servo-based spot-welding tips which use electric servo motors instead of pneumatics," he says. The servo-based tips can provide greater information about the process, such as how thick the materials are, how much pressure is being applied, and more. "It's a smarter tip," Spada says.

That intelligence is finding its way into the metal-cutting industry as well. The research director outlines a scenario in which a casting or forged steel part is delivered to a machining shop. Because the shop providing the forging couldn't control its process well enough, the forging has hard spots. As a result, the machining shop doing the work is breaking tools, wearing out tools more quickly than anticipated, or it needs a human being standing by to monitor the process and manually adjust it as necessary. Spada says he is beginning to see adaptive solutions play a greater role in helping machine tools automatically adjust to material variances.

Another market that has some commonality with these issues is packaged, notes Spada. Much of the material used to packaged goods contains recycled paper or cardboard, and presents machinery with inconsistencies to which they must adjust. Likewise, many plastics contain recycled components with differing melt rates and other variations.

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