OREANDA-NEWS. ABB is paving the way for its customers to the Factory of the Future presenting a growing range of integrated digital hard and software solutions at the SPS IPC Drives tradeshow in Nuremberg. For the first time, ABB together with recently acquired B&R showcases the industry’s most complete offering for machine, factory and process automation.

On the first day of SPS IPC Drives, B&R is unveiling on its booth a new system that revolutionizes the transportation of products through the production process in machines and factories. This most flexible system will pave the way for individualized mass production in multiple industries.

In an Industrial-IoT demonstration, B&R showcases how a digital twin in a cloud environment can be handled in real time. This enables manufacturing companies to reduce significantly their time-to-market and facilitate better alignment of different production processes.

Other highlights of B&R cover the first fully integrated vision system to optimize handling of machines as well as new mapp features to parameterize automation software instead of having to program it. B&R’s mapp technology together with B&R’s Automation Studio are key elements that help customers save substantially in their development efforts.

ABB also shows its virtual commissioning software solutions “Drive Composer Pro”, “Automation Builder” and “RobotStudio. They are part of ABB Ability™, the company’s unified, cross-industry digital portfolio — extending from device to edge to cloud — with devices, systems, solutions, services and a platform which enables customers to know more, do more, do better, together. ABB Ability was launched earlier this year and already offers more than 180 solutions across industries.

ABB’s virtual commissioning solutions save time, reduce risk and increase engineering productivity in the development and operation of industrial automation systems. They provide benefits at every stage of the automation lifecycle. Integrators can test design concepts, save engineering and commissioning time and de-risk projects. In the virtual setting, machine operators can improve training and test configurations offline.

The solutions reduce up to 20% of engineering time, up to 25% of capital outlay, and up to 50% of training costs. On a €600,000 project, savings could be as much as €120,000.

ABB’s virtual commissioning solutions consist of various elements, including virtual drive tuning “Drive Composer Pro”, “Automation Builder” to compose the automation of the machine or process, and “RobotStudio” to utilize existing 3D designs, enhancing them with kinematical and physical models. The environment includes a virtual reality interface which enables effective operator training and helps in the sales process.

For customers in processing industries, increasingly facing challenges to further improve performance of over 40-year old equipment, ABB offers solutions such as ABB Ability Manufacturing Operations Management and ABB Ability Collaborative Operations. ABB Ability Manufacturing Operations Management gathers and analyzes data to provide actionable decisions that help optimize production processes. With ABB Ability Collaborative Operations, ABB experts support operators 24/7 to reduce, for example, energy consumption, impact on the environment, while optimizing productivity.

Showcasing the entire portfolio, ABB, together with B&R, emphasizes its holistic approach, underlining the combined industry leadership. With products ranging from wireless sensors to the new transportation system, from scalable modular process controllers to the most complex process control systems, integrated with ABB Ability digital solutions, ABB is the one-stop shop for customers across manufacturing and process industries.