Piab Vacuum Systems in Industry 4.0

With the fourth industrial revolution looming, Piab is seeking to boost their vacuum technology solutions further by providing smart sensor data to cloud-based big data tools for predictive analysis and simulation. Such highly interconnected services will form the basis for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) that will underpin the smart factories of Industry 4.0. Resting on four core principles – interoperability, information transparency, technical assistance and decentralized decisions – Industry 4.0 is expected to optimize energy-efficiency and productivity.

Piab's premium all-in-one vacuum ejectors piCOMPACT®23 and piCOMPACT®10X are already enabling on-board intelligence with self-optimizing features. Available with the generic and fieldbus-independent input/output technology IO-Link, the vacuum ejector offers sensor data output and actuator communication for real-time distributed control systems.

”But it is time to take things to the next level. Communication links, fieldbuses and PLCs (programmable logic controllers) represent the basic process control level. Just as with IoT (Internet of Things) for smart consumer products, we need to add another service level of sensor data to support the big data tools. Scalable data and analysis systems allow the swift and effective management of big data to create smart data,” says Josef Karbassi, Vice President of Piab's Automation Division.

A separate communication layer, directly from sensors and components such as piCOMPACT®, is needed to offer a link to the ”cloud”, providing on-demand access to huge amounts of valuable data, and piCOMPACT® is being prepared for this. The smart output data will assist operators and can be used to automate or accelerate decisions regarding maintenance, performance adjustments and quality, and to fine-tune autonomous functions on components such as Piab's piCOMPACT®.