Industrial automation trends – why should we talk more about sustainability?

How will sustainability, the transformation of logistics, and cybersecurity change mechanical engineering and the future of process automation? What could we leave to artificial intelligence? 

In the past few years, the world has changed much faster than we have expected or could prepare for. Global crises have caused logistical issues and price increases and increased the urgency of finding alternative forms of energy.

Global trends also affect all of industrial automation. Even with the world in turmoil, we can look to long-term trends to see which investments can carry us through the storm. In this article, we review the trends shaping the future of industrial automation.

Sustainability is a megatrend that will see companies either compete or fail. The technology industry is not perhaps the first name that comes to mind in terms of the green transition or ethical working conditions, but the trend is evident to anyone who works with industrial automation.

Sustainability has been talked to death in various places, but one thing is clear: only actual deeds can make it a reality. The business environment of industrial automation has many places where people, the environment and sustainable development meet.

While sustainability is often only seen as reducing one’s environmental footprint, it also means supporting a safe and productive work environment. 

This is where industrial automation plays a major role. What can we do to build work environments that minimise human presence in dangerous, unergonomic and dirty zones?

The technology industry can promote sustainability by

• Developing solutions that improve occupational safety and remove the need for human hands in dangerous and exhausting conditions.
• Exploiting a variety of mechanical and ATEX safety solutions that prevent accidents at work. 
• Minimising the risk of human error in product design and production.
• Investing in solutions that save energy and reduce material loss, thereby reducing environmental loads.
• Carefully weighing the origin, raw materials and manufacturing of automation products and components.
• Preferring supervised local production – all of the European Union, in our case.

The transition to a carbon-neutral economy is also an increasingly greater part of the future of automation. Automation can be used to develop solutions that reduce our dependency on fossil energy.

For example, relatively inexpensive automation investments can already improve energy consumption monitoring and reduce material loss.

In terms of ethically sound industrial automation, developing the safety of machinery is a key theme today and tomorrow. 

According to statistics, the majority of accidents during machine operation occur in special situations such as maintenance and repairs, troubleshooting, accidental starts, worker carelessness or inadequate protection.

Safe machines improve productivity, protect workers, reduce absences due to illness and improve the comfort of the work environment.

Machine safety can be divided into two themes, which

1) Ensure machine and process safety.

2) Prevent human injury during machine operation.

Prevention can be accomplished with locking and monitoring systems that only allow access to production areas or their sections for the necessary personnel. Prevention can also be done with motion sensors and machine vision that stop robots when they detect abnormal movement, for example. The state of devices and processes can be monitored, and functions for alarms or shutdowns with preset thresholds can be included in systems.

Even before the events that occurred in spring 2022, cybersecurity issues have been central to the industrial internet and automation solutions. The more systems we digitise, the more versatile the protection must be.

Whenever the data of industrial infrastructure is sent online, there is the risk of unauthorised access, should the transfer’s protections prove inadequate.

The security of data transfers can be compromised with denial of service attacks, phishing and malware. High-risk systems include all those used to operate critical industries or defence technologies. Protecting the automation systems of all companies is equally important to prevent unauthorised access to business data and process functions.

Information security is one of the challenges for business in Finland. In its spring 2020 investigation, the National Cyber Security Centre of Finland discovered 33 unprotected industrial automation systems with spot checks.

Among Finland’s largest companies, one in six has suffered a data breach. Compared to the European average, Finnish companies encounter up to three times more data breaches.

The information security of industrial automation is always changing, and developing protection methods is a continuous process. The main thing is to include information security at the planning stage of systems and build continuous protections based on risk analyses. 

There is no need to overstate the case, however. Safe industrial infrastructure provides constant opportunities for developing and creating new business. In the best case, industrial automation systems mesh with national cybersecurity while supporting productive companies whose operational reliability has passed stress testing.

The global COVID-19 pandemic kicked off the return of production closer to the country of destination to reduce problems with logistics and production.

Long logistical chains have lost their reliability while customers are looking to have buffer stocks of components available from local or regional partners. The environment is another point to consider as shorter distances result in a smaller carbon footprint from transport. 

Our neighbouring market for industrial automation products is Europe where products are manufactured under reliable supervision and strict quality control. While European labour costs often surpass those of Asia, this may not directly result in a higher total cost.

Automation offers many opportunities for saving costs by replacing repetitive manual labour with smart automation. The explosion in logistics costs has also influenced the growing interest in local production.

The intense growth of e-commerce during the pandemic has also significantly increased the demand for logistics automation solutions.

In future, the role of human labour will be in overseeing and developing automation as machines take over the storing, picking, packing and transport of goods.

Trends in logistics automation:

• Optimisation of material flows and the whole logistics chain with automation solutions.
• Combination of robotics and machine vision for inventory management, article identification, etc.
• More emphasis on machine vision and artificial intelligence in process optimisation and quality control. .

Finally, it is good to address the eternal question in automation: What will happen to humans as automation keeps developing? In the best case, work will be made safer and more rewarding for us when automation can take over monotonous and hazardous tasks.

At its simplest, a safer work environment means emergency stop buttons on machines or round-the-clock monitoring of hazardous areas. More advanced solutions include robots that can handle heavy loads and other arduous work.

Smarter machines and data communications will increase the value of our labour inputs. We can focus more on the tasks that machines cannot handle. For example, people are needed for problem-solving, creativity and communications.

We can improve the ethical and ecological aspects of business by choosing trustworthy suppliers, but also by developing environmentally friendly solutions.

Industry 4.0 – next-generation trends in industrial automation:

• “Lights out” environments where production is fully automated. The name refers to the fact that unlike people, robots need no lights to work. 
• Machine vision and robotics
• Artificial intelligence
• Digital twins, digital copies of physical spaces or machines
• 5G communications
• Cloud computing
• Machine and ATEX safety

• We provide our mechanical engineering and process automation products and components in cooperation with our partners. We represent industry-leading brands.
• We provide machine safety solutions for machine manufacturers, production lines and process automation.
• Cybersecurity and information security products.
• Storage, maintenance and training services.