Industrial robots become smarter when integrating peripheral control, drives and other industrial control products, combined with machine vision, force sensing and other sensing technologies. Software helps.

Learning Objectives
- Delta provides intelligent manufacturing, sustainability, with expansions, acquisitions, and integrated automation products.
- Enabling technologies include SCADA, motors, PLCs, machine vision, robotics.
Insights on intelligent automation, manufacturing efficiency
- Delta, an automation manufacturer, says Industrial automation upgrades help manufacturing efficiency, sustainability goals.
- Digitalization with automation saves time and resources.
In recent years, due to the impact and spread of COVID-19, as well as the complicated and uncertain changes in the external environment, such as inflation and supply chain disruption, people have paid more attention to the brands, long-term quality, stable supply and service responses of automation, control and instrumentation products. Strengthening the resilience of enterprises has also become an important task that cannot be ignored in the process of high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.
Resilient automation supply chain
Delta, a manufacturer of industrial automation, has four efficiently operating plants in mainland region of China. To meet challenges of the external environment, Delta began planning for a new plant in Chongqing in 2021. Relying on a resilient supply chain, Delta maintained stable supply during the epidemic by increasing inventory at the right time, increasing short-term chasing and adjusting material resilience, said Chen Minren, general manager of electromechanical department of Delta Greentech (China) Co., Ltd.
Delta also expanded its business territory in response to changing customer and market needs, including power and heat dissipation products to automation and intelligent energy saving products. It continues to strengthen and improve intelligent manufacturing.
Automation equipment, SCADA
In recent years, Delta has several high-profile acquisitions including March Networks, a video monitoring service company; Universal Instruments, an American automation equipment company, and Trihedral, an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software company. These aim to complement its product lines while better leveraging its strengths in green, low-carbon, digital and intelligent manufacturing.
These moves have delivered results. For decades, Delta has helped many customers globally achieve digital and intelligent upgrades. Chen Minren said digital, green, low-carbon and intelligent manufacturing goals help with stable development of Delta industrial automation, delivering considerable year-over-year growth.
To implement intelligent manufacturing, enterprises need to consider intelligent equipment, the production line and the whole plant in a reasonable order. Chen said Delta helps customers achieve the goal of intelligent manufacturing beginning with “equipment, production line and factory” as the entry point.
Automation efficiency upgrades: Motors, PLCs, machine vision, robotics
At the level of intelligent equipment, relying on a rich product layout of inverters, ac servo systems, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), motion controllers, sensing and instrumentation, machine vision, and industrial robots, Delta can help customers to upgrade their equipment. For example, the intelligent vision system, vertical multi-joint robots, and 3D human-machine vision measurement system can effectively help customers in electronics manufacturing, semiconductor, new energy vehicles, metal products, food packaging, logistics and other fields to obtain measurement data and improve production efficiency and product quality.
At the level of intelligent production line, Delta can develop customized production line solutions for customers. By linking various machine equipment and combining advanced technologies such as IoT, big data and artificial intelligence, Delta can deliver future-oriented and complete intelligent manufacturing solutions to customers.
For example, with an integrated equipment automation control platform, a manufacturing management platform, a production monitoring and control center and an intelligent plant monitoring system, customers can collect production information in real time and improve the management of people, machines, materials, methods, environment and measurement in production, quality, equipment and storage.
At the smart factory level, Delta, to help green manufacturing in the industry, can develop smart factory solutions for customers and provide integrated industrial configuration systems with fast installation, secure backup, complete database, and alarm event management for large and advanced programs or factory automation fields. Enabling technologies include its industrial configuration software VTScada, helping water treatment, petrochemical, natural gas, energy and electronics manufacturing users to achieve green intelligence goals.
More intelligent, digital-era automation
Market insights integrated with cloud services, production energy saving and automation equipment have increased intelligence of products, production lines and factories. These help customers crack intelligent manufacturing challenges from point to line and from surface to surface, and reap the dividends of the digital era. By empowering original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to enter into smart manufacturing, Delta continues to focus on expanding energy-saving business and is making great strides into the factory automation and process automation fields, said Chen Minren.
Industrial robots can be made smarter by integrating peripheral controls, drives and other industrial control products, combined with machine vision, force sensing and other sensing technologies, software, and more, from one automation provider.
A one-button calibration function can reduce the user’s operational threshold and help companies meet the production requirements of the small-volume flexible manufacturing model. In addition, with the help of a simulation integration platform, customers can complete modeling and design with the help of industrial robot path simulation and 3D computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) functions. By creating an exclusive intelligent robot workstation with an application database, planning time and manual effort are reduced.
Stone Shi is executive editor-in-chief, Control Engineering China. Edited by Mark T. Hoske, content manager, Control Engineering, CFE Media, [email protected].
KEYWORDS: IIoT, SCADA, automation
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