Industrial 4.0 also known as ‘Smart factory' or ‘Smart manufacturing', aims to innovatively transition business models and revenue sources with use of advanced information and services. The transformation is driven by mass adoption of technology and digitisation across sectors, including automation, manufacturing process improvement and productivity/production optimisation. The use of Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) and Big data analytics has maximized the efficiency of manufacturing ecosystem. The need for factories to be future ready has influenced thoughts and actions of manufacturers to implement technologies to make smart factory a reality. Smart cables and connectors play a vital role to empower smart factories and increase production efficiency.
Being the world's leading suppliers of cable and connection technology, Lapp is already shaping smart factory initiative. The future began long ago at Lapp when we partnered with SmartFactoryKL, a non-profit association founded in 2005. It is a network of industrial and research partners, which initiates and implements together research and development projects, ranging from base technologies to the development of marketable products in Europe. In association with SmartFactoryKL, Lapp has developed a hybrid plug within the frame work that combines data, power supply and pneumatics in one connector and significantly reduces the retrofit times of a modular production plant.
Lapp is dynamically working towards making smart factory a reality by developing solutions to meet the challenges of the future. The product range that will be displayed at the Automation Expo'17 will showcase some of Lapp's offering for smart factories. To further strengthen Lapp's offering for the smart factories, the company will launch ETHERLINE ACCESS, the managed and unmanaged switches, at the Automation Expo 2017. The switches along with data cables and connectors from one source will ensure reliable connectivity for industrial network. The other product range that will be displayed at the Automation Expo 2017, include:
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