Digital technology project unveiled to boost industrial digitalisation of UK manufacturers

A digital technology project, Contract Manufacturing 2020, has been unveiled by UK based contract processing company, Hosokawa Micron, and global technology company, Siemens.

The project is aimed at boosting the industrial digitalisation of the UK’s manufacturing sector. It will involve Siemens open cloud internet of things (IoT) operating platform — MindSphere and Hosokawa Gen4 technologies, in particular.

“We are delighted to be working alongside Siemens on this important project, which is designed to harness the business benefits digital technologies can deliver for us. Capturing, storing and interrogating operational data from across our production and processes is vital to provide the intelligence we require to further enhance our performance, and I am determined that Hosokawa will be at the forefront of digital technology adoption,” stated Iain Crosley, managing director at Hosokawa Micron.

“The MindSphere platform brings with it capabilities for remote monitoring, data driven analytics and secure cloud connection. It will allow us, for example, to reduce our production downtime and associated maintenance costs, quickly highlight the potential for any production anomalies and, ultimately, aid our competitiveness by allowing us to get products to market more speedily.

“It is a robust and affordable industrialised solution with configurable connectivity that will not only assist with our own contract processing performance, but also enable us to better support our customer base.”

“Hosokawa is a long-standing partner and we are pleased to be collaborating with them on the Gen4 project. The widespread adoption of digitalisation — the technology behind Industry 4.0 — is vital to enhance the country’s competiveness and productivity,” added Ian Elsby, chemicals industry expert at Siemens. “The MindSphere project for Hosokawa is a clear illustration of the many benefits digital technology can deliver for UK manufacturers.

“This is an exciting project and we look forward to securing the tangible and quantifiable advantages it will deliver for Hosokawa as the project progresses over the coming months. The solution will demonstrate sensor to digital twin models and highlight the advantage of digital technology impacting productivity in a positive manner.”