Industrial Automation Magazine India

Adaptable and efficient The factory of the future

Published on : Monday 12-04-2021

Bosch highlights at Hannover Messe 2021 – The factory of the future is adaptable, connected, and flexible.

Stuttgart and Hannover, April 2021 – While demand sets the pace, the product determines the process. Machines and robots are constantly reconfiguring themselves. Autonomous transport vehicles deliver components, sophisticated robotic systems pick up workpieces and sort them, assistance systems support workers, and artificial intelligence takes over quality control. Industry 4.0 software can visualise processes and machine statuses at any time. But control over all this remains firmly in human hands. That is how Bosch envisions the factory of the future – and the company is setting up just such a factory for Hannover Messe: a model factory which will be open to visitors at Bosch Rexroth’s new customer and innovation centre in Ulm starting in summer 2021.

Highlights at the Virtual Hannover Messe 2021 include:

·         The factory of the future is movable – and Bosch Rexroth’s intelligent floor makes the factory floor itself flexible and capable of adapting to the manufacturing process.

·         Using a modular manufacturing system, Bosch’s special-purpose machinery unit will demonstrate how adaptable manufacturing will be in the future.

·         Bosch Rexroth’s ctrlX AUTOMATION solution is helping hardware and software grow together.

·         Bosch Connected Industry’s Nexeed industrial application system also offers maximum flexibility.

·         Bosch Rexroth’s smart item picking solution is a self-learning robotic system that will support labour-intensive picking tasks in intralogistics in the future.

·         The APAS automatic production assistant has revolutionised interactions between people and machines.

·         Track and trace provides the necessary transparency about products’ journeys to retailers and customers.

·         Bosch Climate Solutions is a newly created unit that advises manufacturing companies on how to reduce their carbon emissions, based on Bosch’s own experience of becoming climate neutral.

·         Bosch combines knowledge and technology: the company’s Energy Platform is an intelligent software solution that controls the consumption of heat, electricity, and compressed air at more than 120 of Bosch’s locations.