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.

Operational Safety Intelligence: Production adapts to the person

On the journey to net­worked pro­duc­tion, Safety & Secu­rity remain a crit­ical factor for suc­cess. The archi­tec­ture of new flex­ible machine mod­ules must con­sider the cor­re­sponding safety tech­nology from the start, and inte­grate func­tional safety into the pro­duc­tion processes.

Safely into the future

The automa­tion world is changing. Now more than ever. Key­words such as Indus­trial Secu­rity, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI), as well as open­ness and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion, are hot topics. As a reli­able partner for plant and machinery safety, Pilz takes its cus­tomers by the hand and walks the journey with them – through the trans­for­ma­tion and into the future.

“IT and automation technology are a continent”

Harald Wes­sels, Vice Pres­i­dent Product Man­age­ment at Pilz, takes a look into the future of safe automa­tion. What hap­pens if IT and automa­tion tech­nology become fur­ther entwined? In an inter­view, he talks about the oppor­tu­ni­ties and threats.

Can Artificial Intelligence be safe?

Since the pub­li­ca­tion of ChatGPT, everyone is talking about Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence. But can clever algo­rithms, which gen­erate texts for example, also be ground­breaking in safe automa­tion? Yes, they can. How­ever, the ques­tion that remains is: how?

A standard for safe communication

A gen­uine mile­stone en route to open com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dards: with IO-Link Safety, a non-pro­pri­etary, stan­dard­ised com­mu­ni­ca­tion system for func­tional safety is avail­able for the first time. At SPS 2023, Pilz will be pre­senting some­thing new on the market: a com­plete system with Master and sen­sors – an eco­nom­ical and flex­ible solu­tion.

The future is formed through cooperation

Where the future is con­cerned, Pilz not only looks to exchange with cus­tomers, but also works inten­sively with research ini­tia­tives. But the secret recipe for suc­cessful research is not digi­ti­sa­tion …

Comprehensive service for Industrial Security

Increased cyber attacks, secu­rity require­ments in the new Machinery Reg­u­la­tion and manip­u­la­tion pro­tec­tion – pres­sure is growing on industry to deal with Indus­trial Secu­rity. But where to start? And how to imple­ment it? In Ger­many, Pilz is launching the Indus­trial Secu­rity Con­sulting Ser­vice.

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.

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