Making the switch to green chemicals in manufacturing: Challenges and opportunities

whitePaper | October 26, 2022

Reducing energy costs and optimizing production processes are among the key factors of a complete digital transformation for manufacturing companies. By adopting innovative smart manufacturing solutions, companies can increase machinery efficiency, improve their production cycles as well as increase product quality. IoT platforms have proven themselves to be supportive for monitoring industrial machine processes, thus, allowing quick recovery of investment, within months, in IoT technology. IoT platforms ensure greater production efficiency.

whitePaper | January 9, 2023

Modern manufacturing theory, tools, and best practices are focused on how to make thousands or millions of identical parts or products at a low cost per unit. Custom and low volume production pose unique challenges that require manufacturers to adapt from typical mass production models. Thanks to the rapid development of technologies and materials over the last decade, additive manufacturing has grown more capable as a true manufacturing tool and can now enable the fabrication of these custom and low volume end-use parts rapidly and cost-efficiently. This white paper presents Formlabs 3D printing hardware and material solutions for end-use part production. It documents various users' case studies and includes stress testing results to verify the suitability of 3D printing materials for end-use applications.

whitePaper | January 10, 2023

Now COVID-19 has made it even more pressing to switch to digital, it is high time to say goodbye to manual, paper-based workflows in mass production factories. Digitization is the way forward to Industry 4.0. Because that’s the key to an Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of world-class level (85%). In reality, most plants today have an OEE closer to 60%. We believe the solution lies in a digital manufacturing platform that supports all plant work processes and utilizes advanced technologies like Machine Learning, IoT, AI and mobile. In this whitepaper, we will show you how such a digital manufacturing platform could work by describing three manufacturing processes: Task Management, Deviation Management and Root Cause Analysis, and how digitalization of these processes can help you achieve an OEE of world-class level.

whitePaper | May 20, 2022

Manufacturing and industrial technologies are major drivers of societal wealth. In 2019, the manufacturing sector accounted for two million enterprises, €2,078 billion in gross value added, and 32.1 million jobs in the EU-27 area.1 The European economy is highly dependent on the manufacturing industry and exporting of manufactured goods. Around 10 percent of all enterprises in the EU’s non-financial business economy are classified as manufacturing.2 The transition of societies to climate neutrality and circularity pushes for changes in operations and creates new business opportunities for companies. Markets are shifting towards green products and services to meet conscious consumers’ needs and comply with the new and upcoming EU regulations that strive to reduce net greenhouse emissions by at least 55% by 2030.3

whitePaper | March 16, 2022

Today’s supply chains are driven by the competitive tenets of e-commerce – speed, accuracy and access to a broad inventory – all delivered at low cost. This mandate has driven distribution centers to become increasingly complex and dependent on automation systems, while raising the stakes to threaten critical damage in the event of cost overruns or project delays. Concentrating supplier responsibility for these automation projects with a single, lead provider simplifies vendor management and accountability, enabling companies to approach a single point of contact and avoid juggling delays and charges from multiple contractors.

whitePaper | December 6, 2022

Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) create significant challenges for users and manufacturers of systems and devices. Most machine and system manufacturers as well as most production companies lack adequate experience when it comes to using smart networks. Even though, modular automation concepts with increasingly decentral distribution of control intelligence have already been around for some time. The decentral components – including safety controllers – communicate more and more via network technologies. However, many manufacturers and users hardly think about security issues. Cybercriminals use this fact to sabotage or extort companies, or to carry out espionage