To keep pace with the focus & demands, equipment suppliers need an innovative partner that can guide to strongly face challenges & demands together

– Himanshu Sharma, Head

Marketing & Corporate Communications, B&R Industrial Automation

Equipment suppliers nowadays need to be more and more customer focused with more customer-centric processes. Could you share such initiatives from your organization?

B&R has always been customer focused; it has always been the aim to provide a systematic support to all our customers. Our application engineers, support engineers, and service team are constantly in touch with our customers. We do not just provide business support, but we follow a collaborative approach. The whole market situation is ‘grow together to the top’. This way every equipment supplier feels the pull in market and needs a partner to lean on many aspects that feels little slower if done individually. Here, B&R with proven mobile automation portfolio gives all the toolsneed to build and defend your competitive edge as a technological leader in the market. With an innovation-driven technology partner at your side, your mobile equipment will stand out with best-in-class electronics and software. The market will remain volatile in years to come as the customer needs will increase. To keep pace with the focus and demands, Equipment suppliers need an innovative partner that can guide to strongly face challenges and demands together. The process begins with collecting the customer needs, then getting together and taking a strong note at what those needs are and what opportunities we must take up and to utilize this strategy in right manner, one needs a lot of focus. Thus, B&R is not only an automation partner but a business partner and works in coordination to achieve synchronised way.

There are a lot of impetus on green initiatives and savings in fuel costs and leaving a lesser carbon footprint in the CE sector. Could you please help us understand the green initiatives on product development undertaken by your organization?

The construction equipment sector holds a major part in global as well as local economy but in spite being a strong hold in economy, serving these industries the best quality product with lesser carbon footprint is not only our responsibility towards our customer but also a global initiative. One of the biggest challenges today in CE industry is to drastically reduce carbon footprint. This means that not only the machines and processes have to save energy and optimize operations, but also that the final product must be ecologically friendly. Less pollutant vehicles are under the spotlight and are no longer just part of a futuristic vision, but more present each day. One of the most effective ways to reduce the fuel consumption is to reduce the vehicle’s body weight without compromising its sturdiness to with stand collisions and payloads. To do so, it is necessary to combine different light weight materials like fiber composites and low-density metals and to bond such materials, welding and gluing process technologies are available at B&R with the help of robotics technologies. In every production cycle, machines are required to continuously accelerate and decelerate heavy loads. B&R’s ACOPOS multi drive system converts the kinetic energy generated during braking movements into power and then feeds it back into the mains supply. Therefore, upto 30% of overall energy consumption can be regenerated – for considerable cost savings. Power regeneration prevents additional heat from being generated by braking resistors, making it no longer necessary to install and maintain expensive cooling systems. The integrated power regeneration system is not only highly efficient, but also environmentally friendly.

What efforts are being made to make your product more versatile and value for money for customers?

Equipment manufacturers looks for a robust, out of the box solution with a comprehensive technical approach in every project or production line they start with. To achieve all these, B&R is one stop solution. An intelligent production system with best-in-class technology makes mass customization profitable.

A solution and product that is both ecologically and economically optimized must account for every process involved in generation and making the production process run smooth. Most importantly, the solution must be custom designed in a way that allows for intelligent interaction between the systems and proper utilization of the technical innovation surrounding the market. B&R continues to open new possibilities in mobile automation with its innovative X90 mobile controllers. The comprehensive set of standardized components is perfect for implementing flexible automation concepts. The heart of the X90 mobile control system is a powerful ARM processor and multifunction I/O channels. Basic features include interfaces for CAN, Ethernet, and the real-time POWERLINK bus system. To add to the list of support towards building an amalgam of innovation in production process, the B&R Hypervisor can turn your PC into a high-end embedded controller with processor speeds up to 2.8 GHz.

With the heavy increase in the expenditure for infrastructure development by the government, how do you plan to utilise the opportunity?

Infrastructure developments holds onto a major stake in overall development of the country. The pace at which the opportunities are arising is huge. The market looks fresh and an exponential jump in opportunities. The construction equipment manufacturing sectors are already investing in innovative and new technologies. Thus, innovation is the only to go with the trend in market and in grabbing every valuable opportunity.

The private participation has also gained a lot of importance within the sector which again has maintained a steady economy balance between the big and small players of the sector. Thus, maintaining an equal opportunity with the help of newer cutting-edge technology will always help remain the baton in one’s hand.

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