ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION
Delta | December 20, 2021
Delta Electronics, Inc., later referred to as "Delta", announced an agreement to acquire UI Acquisition Holding Co. on December 18, 2021. It is the owner of Universal Instruments Corporation and its worldwide branches and subsidiaries, for an estimated US $88.9 million (approximately NT $2,471,420 thousand) through its subsidiary Delta International Holding Limited.
A global pioneer in precise automation solutions for smart manufacturing, Universal Instruments has over 100 years of experience in industries such as automotive, computing, medical, industrial, and odd-form insertion of printed circuit boards.
The acquisition will extend Delta's smart manufacturing capabilities into the electronics industry realm.
Universal Instruments has built a remarkable track record and long-lasting customer relationships in the electronics manufacturing field, which is a key focus of Delta's industrial automation business. Furthermore, by adding Universal's precision automation machine offering and leading technologies to our highly diversified industrial automation portfolio, we can offer customers total solutions capable of enhancing the productivity and carbon footprint of their production lines. Universal Instruments' rich experience in standard automation machines will also enhance Delta's product development processes. We look forward to cooperating deeply with Universal Instruments to accelerate the development of Delta's next-generation smart manufacturing solutions."
Mr. Ping Cheng, Delta's chief executive officer
Delta has been a long-term customer partner of Universal Instruments, and we are privileged to now be part of the Delta family. Delta's global scale, strong presence in Asia, smart manufacturing prowess, and deep understanding of electronics automation needs support our technology development and growth strategy. This unique combination will expand our scalability, improve our global reach, and also complement our supply chain and manufacturing footprint, thereby greatly benefiting all of our customers."
Jean-Luc Pelissier, Universal's chief executive officer avers
Based in Conklin, New York, Universal Instruments has dedicated itself to technological research and development over its 100-year history, as evidenced by its 500+ patent portfolio and close to 30,000 systems deployed to date.
The company offers precise automation solutions for advanced applications demanding high accuracy, high-speed handling, assembly, and inspection.
Furthermore, Universal Instruments created the Advanced Process Lab (APL) platform, which aids customers throughout the product's lifecycle.
Following the transaction mentioned above, Universal Instruments will continue to operate under the guidance of its original management team.
** The transaction is subject to fulfilling certain closing conditions outlined in the Purchase Agreement.
About Delta
Delta Electronics, founded in 1971, is a market leader in switching power supply and thermal management devices on a global scale. It also manufactures thermal management products, with a diverse portfolio of smart energy-saving systems and solutions for smart manufacturing and sustainable cities.
Delta, a world-class corporate citizen, uses its core skills in high-efficiency power electronics and its CSR-embedded business model to address critical environmental concerns, such as climate change.
Delta serves customers from approximately 200 sales, R&D, and manufacturing locations spread across five continents.
Delta has garnered numerous global honors for its business achievements, innovative technologies, and commitment to CSR.
Listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability TM Indices (DJSI) World Index since 2011, Delta's ESG performance was acknowledged with the top score in the global electronic equipment industry by DJSI in 2021.
In 2020, Delta received two "A" leadership ratings from CDP for its significant contribution to climate change and water security problems, as well as Supplier Engagement Leader.
Read More
MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY
iBASEt | September 24, 2021
iBASEt, the company that simplifies how complex products are built and maintained, today announced the completion of a think tank series with Frost & Sullivan. The discussion brought together industry experts to gain insights on successfully achieving a digital transformation across manufacturing operations.
The findings from the discussion were the basis for three published reports:
"Digital Persistence: The Path to Digital MRO"
"Achieving the Promise of an MES"
"Becoming a Digital Enterprise Starts with a Digital Thread"
"Digital Persistence: The Path to Digital MRO," brought together representatives from Lockheed Martin, FRC East, and Magellan Aerospace. The research identified that while digital adoption has been slow in the Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul industry, enterprises now recognize the value of new digital tools and processes. The limits of paper-based operations became acutely understood during the pandemic, which placed big pressure to utilize remote working.
"Achieving the Promise of an MES" was based on a discussion with experts from Pratt & Whitney and Northrop Grumman. The report validated the business value of implementing an MES while pointing to what can be done to overcome the typical challenges with such a project.
"Becoming a Digital Enterprise Starts with a Digital Thread" combined executives from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon Technologies to explain their vision of becoming a model-based enterprise, which starts with a digital thread. A maturity curve became apparent reflecting each organization's progress on digitalizing their operations and the value of connecting and sharing data as part of an Industry 4.0 strategy.
We're delighted to have teamed up with Frost & Sullivan to share our vision for the future of manufacturing.The findings published in these reports should help both large enterprise and midsized manufacturers who build complex, highly engineered products in addressing the challenges of how to migrate over to completely digital operations. These challenges are increasingly becoming more manageable and can be accomplished today with fewer resources and budget.
Tom Hennessey, CMO, iBASEt.
iBASEt is committed to helping shape the future of the digital, model-based enterprise. This research project is one of several future forums and reports that will be shared – coupled with the company's model-based practice, to help mid-sized and large enterprise manufacturers further advance their digital journeys.
"MES is the layer that ultimately all of these IoT devices are going to be mostly interacting with," suggested Erwin Balmater, Solution Architect at Northrop Grumman, as shared in the research report, Achieving the Promise of a Manufacturing Execution System.
About iBASEt
iBASEt is a software company that simplifies how complex products are built and maintained. Founded in Southern California in 1986, iBASEt solutions ensure digital continuity across manufacturing, quality, and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations on a global scale. The iSeries, powered by Solumina, is a cloud-native platform that establishes a digital ecosystem to drive innovation and improve operational performance. iBASEt customers include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney, and Textron.
Read More
Landing AI | October 22, 2020
As organizations manufacture goods, human inspectors survey them for abandons. Think about a scratch on cell phone glass or a shortcoming in crude steel that could have an effect downstream when it gets transformed into something different. Landing AI, the organization began by previous Google and Baidu AI master Andrew Ng, needs to utilize AI innovation to recognize these imperfections, and today the organization dispatched another visual investigation stage called LandingLens.
“We’re announcing LandingLens, which is an end-to-end visual inspection platform to help manufacturers build and deploy visual inspection systems [using AI],” Ng told TechCrunch.
He says the company’s goal is to bring AI to manufacturing companies, but he couldn’t simply repackage what he had learned at Google and Baidu, partly because it involved a different set of consumer use cases, and partly because there is just much less data to work with in a manufacturing setting.
Adding to the level of trouble here, each setting is novel, and there is no standard playbook you can fundamentally apply over every vertical. This implied Landing AI needed to concoct an overall toolbox that each organization could use for the extraordinary necessities of their manufacturing process.
Ng says to place this trend-setting innovation under the control of these clients and apply AI to visual investigation, his organization has made a visual interface where organizations can work through a characterized cycle to train models to see every client's assessment needs.
The manner in which it works is you take pictures of what a decent completed item resembles, and what a damaged item could resemble. It's not as simple as it would sound, since human specialists can differ over what comprises a deformity.
The producer makes what's known as an imperfection book, where the examiner specialists cooperate to figure out what that deformity resembles through an image, and resolve contradictions when they occur. This is done through the LandingLens interface.
Whenever investigators have settled upon a lot of marks, they can start emphasizing on a model in the Model Iteration Module, where the organization can train and run models to get to a condition of settled upon progress where the AI is getting the imperfections consistently. As clients run these tests, the product creates a report on the condition of the model, and clients can refine the models varying dependent on the data in the report.
Ng says that his company is trying to bring in sophisticated software to help solve a big problem for manufacturing customers. “The bottleneck [for them] is building the deep learning algorithm, really the machine learning software. They can take the picture and render judgment as to whether this part is okay, or whether it is defective, and that’s what our platform helps with,” he said.
He thinks this technology could ultimately help recast how goods are manufactured in the future. “I think deep learning is poised to transform how inspection is done, which is really the key step. Inspection is really the last line of defense against quality defects in manufacturing. So I’m excited to release this platform to help manufacturers do inspections more accurately,” he said.
Read More