Last Wednesday Accialini Training & Consulting attended Automation & Testing at Oval Lingotto Fiere, Turin, Italy. It has been a great opportunity to meet companies, experts and Industry 4.0 passionate.
What is A&T – Automation and Testing?
Automation & Testing is the annual fair dedicated to the world of Industry 4.0 where large companies from the Italian industry, SMEs, Start-ups meet to give concrete answers to all the players in the Italian production chain on what Industry 4.0 is and why it’s important to know how to deal with it.
The Automation &Testing 2020 edition, staged at the Oval Lingotto Fiere from 12 to 14 February 2020, aimed to be the gathering moment for all the players of the Italian industry, not only through a large exhibition appointment as evidenced by the over 15,000 visitors of the past edition, but also through an important training and practical moment, aimed at solving the problems that Italian SMEs face daily.
What’s going on with Industry 4.0?
Industry 4.0 is a blurry topic. Recently, I found a funny definition about that:
Industry 4.0 is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks anyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it…
This definition fits perfectly to what the common sense about Industry 4.0 is. However, trade fairs like A&T are helping people to have a better understanding regarding the impacts and implications of new technologies on a real shop floor environment.
Following, I will provide you a top 3 list of main topics and companies who impressed me the most.
Training
Training is probably the number 1 topic to support companies to understand what Industry 4.0 is. The Italian Government is going in this way by creating Competence Centers spread around the Peninsula:
- Start 4.0 (Genova)
- Artes 4.0 (Pisa)
- Bi-Rex (Bologna)
- SMACT (Padova)
- MEDITECH (Napoli)
- CIM 4.0 (Torino)
- MADE (Milano)
- Cyber 4.0 (Roma)
In addition to these Competence Centers, many other services were provided by training & consulting companies.
Virtual Reality
In my career, I had the opportunity to exploit VR to design facilities, therefore I have been a big fan of this technology, but I have always had the feeling that an aura of skepticism covers this solution.
Thanks to Headapp (https://headapp.eu/) I was able to change the battery on an Aermacchi M-346 in a virtual environment by using HTC Vive headset. This solution is great to speed up the learning curves in several situations, like:
- Maintenance
- Set up
- Assembly
Moreover, big benefits can be found in
- Facility Design
- HS&E training
Inspection
When I talk with colleagues about Inspection, we always argue whether it must be considered a value added or a non-value added operation. Indeed, if your process is under control, repeatable and reproducible, inspection might not be necessary. However, data collection is the basis of process improvements, and measurement instruments are required to gather data.
In this scenario, optical instruments are becoming more and more useful: they are accurate, ripetible, faster than probing and able to provide 3D scanning rather than 2-dimension output. QFP (www.qfp-service.it) provides solutions by using such optical systems combined with cobots, which create a high-flexible and reconfigurable system, ideal to achieve Industry 4.0 goals.
What about us?
Accialini Training & Consulting collected more than 10+ years of international experience in the aerospace business working side by side with shop-floor people. Therefore, we the right partner to bring #innovation and #i40 technologies in your production site.
We also developed SkillS4i (www.skills4i.com), the online marketplace for industrial skills. Check out our catalogue to find out our Industry 4.0 Training Program, you can create your learning group and monitor progresses. You can also exploit the platform to create your own courses!
Contact us to discuss more in detail your needs.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter!
Stay tuned.