With the recently announced Government-backed Made Smarter calling for the widespread adoption of industrial digitalisation to boost the UK’s manufacturing sector, MindSphere - Siemens open cloud IoT operating platform - has been specified on a digital technology project designed to further optimise production and processing performance for Hosokawa Micron Ltd (HML), one of the UK’s leading contract processing companies.
Specialising in the single source supply of particle and powder processing equipment, technologies and services for a range of sectors, including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food and cosmetics, HML has a long-standing working relationship with Siemens going back over 20 years.
This partnership has now led to the two companies working together on a strategic project that will focus on obtaining performance improvements by using the benefits of industrial digitalisation – and in particular, Siemens MindSphere open cloud IoT operating system.
The project - Hosokawa Gen4 - will capture real time and essential operational data at the company’s Runcorn manufacturing facility which can then be analysed at both machine level on the local network, as well as stored and interrogated via the cloud platform. The ongoing data analysis will provide important insight into all aspects of the plant’s production performance and the status of production assets and aid strategic decision making.
Iain Crosley, Managing Director at Hosokawa Micron Ltd, says: “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.
“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.”
Iain Elsby, Chemicals Industry expert at Siemens, comments: “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. 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.”
- Ends -