Trends

Safe automa­tion is changing. Issues such as digi­ti­sa­tion, Indus­trial Secu­rity or open com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dards deter­mine the future. We’ll keep you up to date on the key trends in safe automa­tion.

Green light for engine parts

On an exten­sive crack testing machine, how can you ensure that only autho­rised employees gain access to the indi­vidual process steps? With the flex­ible oper­ating mode selec­tion and access per­mis­sion system PIT­mode fusion, only autho­rised per­sons now get the “green light” at Rhode + Wagner.

3 minutes with …
… Jan Falb

Jan Falb works in the Quality Man­age­ment depart­ment at Pilz, where he is pri­marily respon­sible for sus­tain­ability man­age­ment. In our “3 min­utes with …” column, he answers the most impor­tant cur­rent ques­tions about his area of work.

Spotlight on Security!

Along­side machinery safety, the stan­dards land­scape is focusing increas­ingly on Indus­trial Secu­rity. Because with digi­ti­sa­tion and net­working the envi­ron­ment is ­cur­rently under­going change. We are high­lighting what the most impor­tant changes to stan­dards in 2023 mean for machine man­u­fac­turers and oper­a­tors.

“Responsibilities are not yet clarified”

In all hon­esty, Secu­rity has already arrived on fac­tory floors. But how well informed about Indus­trial Secu­rity are machine builders and users really? David Machanek, Gen­eral Man­ager of Pilz Aus­tria, had his team survey their cus­tomers on this. In this inter­view he reports on his find­ings.

Tapping into retrofit knowledge!

It’s on tap: In Wiesel­burg in Aus­tria, for once this doesn’t apply to the beer – but to the know-how that Pilz shared with Brau Union to enable the brewery to upgrade an existing barrel cleaning and filling plant to the state of the art.

State-of-the-art Security

Secu­rity has become an indis­pens­able part of automa­tion, but with new require­ments and nor­ma­tive spec­i­fi­ca­tions, man­u­fac­turers, inte­gra­tors and oper­a­tors are faced with the ques­tion of how their staff can become qual­i­fied for the new chal­lenges. In response, Pilz has expanded its range of training courses for the pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment of spe­cial­ists to become Secu­rity experts.

All fired up for Safety

Let’s take a look at a cold rolling mill in which steel strip coils are processed. The pro­duc­tion process includes five steps: pick­ling, cold rolling, annealing, tem­pering and then fin­ishing. The chal­lenge? The fre­quent shut­ting down of the start-up burners, which ignite the main burners.

IO-Link Safety is ready

IO-Link is the open market stan­dard for sensor com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It should soon be pos­sible to also use the com­mu­ni­ca­tion system for data exchange in func­tional safety.

Security affects us all

Indus­trial Secu­rity not only includes the pro­tec­tion of data, but at the same time also guar­an­tees the integrity of safety func­tions and mea­sures. If a pro­duc­tion ­worker starts up a plant, for example, even though they are not autho­rised to do so, this is already con­sid­ered a secu­rity inci­dent. This manip­u­la­tion, even if ­unin­ten­tional, endan­gers the safety of other employees. This makes it even more impor­tant to con­sider safety holis­ti­cally – because it also plays a key role in ­ques­tions of lia­bility.

“There is much uncertainty”

Increasing digi­ti­sa­tion in the smart fac­tory is accom­pa­nied by new chal­lenges when dealing with safety. Thomas Pilz, Man­aging Partner at Pilz, is inter­viewed about cur­rent devel­op­ments and the changing under­standing of safety and indus­trial secu­rity.

In step: Retrofit on the points

What can you do if the rail infra­struc­ture for regional and local trans­port is ageing, ham­pering the imple­men­ta­tion of attrac­tive clock-face sched­ules? When mod­ernising out­dated points con­trollers in Kraków and four other Polish cities, the com­pany ZUE put its trust in the automa­tion system PSS 4000. This now reli­ably and ­safely con­trols these points.

Three minutes with …
… Nils Brücker

Senior Product Man­ager Soft­ware and Tech­nolo­gies

Maintenance without restart

When a machine is being main­tained, it is impor­tant that the per­sonnel can per­form the work con­sci­en­tiously and that the plant and machinery never starts up during this work. Dig­ital main­te­nance safe­guarding there­fore ensures that only autho­rised per­sons gain access.

Fast, faster, Safety Check!

A simple and quick overview of the safety and con­for­mity status of your own machines is often worth its weight in gold. Do I still have full lia­bility pro­tec­tion? Are upgrades nec­es­sary? This is pre­cisely where the new ser­vice Machinery Safety Eval­u­a­tion – or MSE for short – from Pilz comes in.

Managing access

A mod­ular system offering that pre­vents unau­tho­rised access and can be ­adapted to the respec­tive appli­ca­tion is impor­tant because of how indi­vidual ­access to plant and machinery is. The most effort is in the main­te­nance of ­per­mis­sions and this can be sup­ported by the appro­priate soft­ware tools.

From cyber attack to safety award

After Pilz was the victim of a cyber attack in October 2019, the com­pany launched a com­mu­ni­ca­tion offen­sive. As part of the 4th Cyber­Sicher­heits­Forum, a forum for cyber secu­rity pre­sented by the state of Baden-Würt­tem­berg, Pilz received the safety award for their response.

Digital CE conformity

In the research project SDM4FZI, around 30 part­ners are working together on the devel­op­ment of soft­ware-defined pro­duc­tion for the auto­mo­tive and sup­plier industry. Pilz is involved as a research partner for a uni­form dig­ital safety con­cept.

Pilz development is extra safe

Pilz prod­ucts ensure the safety of human, machine and the envi­ron­ment. It thus comes as no sur­prise that even their ­devel­op­ment processes have to sat­isfy cer­tain require­ments. TÜV Süd has now cer­ti­fied Pilz: Pilz devel­op­ments not only safe, but also secure!

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