Keywords: Machine Safety, Machine Builders, Lifecycle Costs, Diagnostic Capabilities, Safety Standards.
Summary
As the manufacturing industries in China continue to expand, automating production operations is beginning to play a pivotal role within the manufacturing sector. At the same time, the use of more complex machines brings safety issues to senior management's attention. For today's manufacturers, advanced automation and safety technologies help improve worker productivity and production efficiency, while enhancing worker safety.
As ARC Advisory Group's China team learned during a recent customer event, in addition to the company's comprehensive automation and safety product portfolio, Rockwell Automation helps machine builders and end users in China and elsewhere around the world conduct audits and assessments to help ensure compliance with the variety of safety standards – existing and emerging. By proactively addressing safety issues, the company can help machine builders increase value to end users by reducing both design and hardware costs.
Machine Safeguarding Market in China Evolves
As a manufacturing center, China is one of the largest global producers and consumers of machinery. Along with the growth of the machinery market, the machine safety market in China is also growing rapidly. In the past, most end users didn't emphasize machine safety due to the lack of strict domestic regulations and standards on the manufacturing industry of China. As a result, machine builders were not inclined to integrate safety functionality into their machines due primarily to cost concerns. However, due to a number of reasons – including the need to meet the requirements of both export markets and foreign manufacturers with plants in China – this situation is changing.
By leveraging the most advanced technology, machine safeguarding suppliers can help machine builders in China and elsewhere deliver a cost-effective safeguarding solution. By implementing standard machine control in conjunction with machine safeguarding, it's possible to reduce engineering design time and complexity. Moreover, hardware cost can also be reduced because machine control and safeguarding can share the same platform.
Nowadays, China's machine builders want to expand their business in overseas markets, particularly into high-end machinery segments in Europe, North America, and foreign domestic plants in China. This requires in-depth knowledge of the myriad safety regulations involved. Here, leading global suppliers of machine safeguarding systems can help Chinese machine builders understand these regulations and attain the required certifications. Suppliers such as Rockwell Automation that supply both machine safeguarding and machine control expertise can provide integrated platforms that can help improve overall machine safety and performance. ARC China believes, that with this assistance, smaller Chinese machine builders could compete better with larger machine builders having greater access to safety specialists.
Integrated Machine Safety Meets the Challenges
Today's integrated programmable machine safeguarding solutions can help end users and machine builders realize significant benefits, including:
Compared to traditional hardwired systems, integrated programmable machine safeguarding solutions reduce lifecycle costs, including design, engineering, installation, and maintenance effort. Combined with the latest safety-integrated servo drives, which perform additional safety functions that comply with the latest standards and regulations, integrated programmable machine safety solutions can further reduce implementation costs and improve productivity. Integrated programmable machine safeguarding solutions also make it easier to implement zone control, safe speed monitoring, and other productivity-enhancing functions within the work cell or machine.
In addition, the diagnostic capabilities available with the latest programmable safeguarding controls enables maintenance personnel to identify faults faster than with conventional hardwired safety relay solutions. All the above can help users improve both overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and return on assets (ROA).
Rockwell Automation's Approach to Safety Automation
In 2005, Rockwell Automation expanded its machine safeguarding product portfolio with the inclusion of GuardLogix integrated programmable safety PACs. More recently, the company added Compact GuardLogix for smaller applications, plus motion safety functionality for AC and servo drives. According to the company, it offers a complete safety solution business that includes components, systems, and services. The company has invested in resources to be able to offer machine safety consulting services to machine builders that need to keep abreast of the latest OSHA, ANSI, EN, and IEC standards. Rockwell Automation will help machine builders and end users conduct audits and assessments to verify and document compliance with the variety of safety standards emerging in each region of the world. Overall, the company strives to provide comprehensive safety automation solutions built around the widely accepted safety lifecycle.
Global Food & Beverage Manufacturer Employs Integrated Machine Safeguarding Solution
A large international food & beverage manufacturer with plants in China requires both uncompromised machine safety and 100 percent reliability to sustain its brand value and customer loyalty. This demanding end user required all its plants around the world to meet uniform safety standards for production machinery. To meet the customer's requirements, Rockwell Automation offered a comprehensive machine safeguarding solution incorporating a variety of safety-certified products, plus risk assessment and design services. Today, the end user continues to upgrade its practices and facilities to increase machine safety, while improving production through reduced downtime.
Conclusion
Many machine builders are attempting to transition from low-end suppliers to domestic manufacturers in China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, to suppliers of more sophisticated high-end machinery for global manufacturers. To succeed in this, they will need to produce machinery that complies with international safety standards. As a result, while the machine safeguarding market in China is still relatively small compared to the market for other automation products, ARC believes it will grow significantly in the near future.
Leading global automation suppliers that specialize in machine safeguarding, such as Rockwell Automation, can play an important role here by helping Chinese machine builders understand international safety standards and regulations, implement the appropriate machine safeguarding technology, and attain the required certifications.
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