At Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week 2024, Pilz Automation UK was one of the key exhibitors on the Drives & Controls show floor. The Manufacturer sat down with Head of Sales and Marketing, Jamie Walton, to discuss how the show went, what Pilz is currently up to and industry trends for 2024.
Can you give us an overview of how Pilz serves the manufacturing industry?
JW: Pilz are a third-generation family-run business with its headquarters near Stuttgart, Germany. The company has 42 subsidiaries around the world and pride themselves on being ambassadors for safety.
To put it simply – we automate, safely. Pilz supply the world with automation products, systems and services, which are all underpinned by our vision of safety. Our solutions can be found in all walks of life, from huge food and beverage production lines and machinery through to rollercoasters.
I’m the Head of Sales and Marketing for Pilz Automation UK and work on setting strategies and implementing plans with the goal of providing the correct automation solution for our customers.
How was your experience at Drives & Controls (part of Smart Manufacturing Week 2024) this year? Were there any specific highlights or key takeaways that stood out?
For 2024, our stand was the largest we’d ever taken at Drives & Controls, and it was just as well. We were flat-out with visitors for the entire two days of the show.
It was a record-breaking event, and we took away our largest number of sales leads, which were of fantastic quality and some have proved extremely fruitful.
Drives & Controls had a great atmosphere overall and started right from the moment the doors opened, continuing over the show’s two days. The scope, size and innovation of some of the solutions presented across the whole exhibition was impressive too (when any of us managed to get away from our stand to have a look around)!
What kind of feedback did you receive from customers and partners?
They were impressed by the amount of buzz and traffic at our stand. Some suggesting we make it even bigger next year!
For the wider show, they were blown away by the scale of it and of the variety and innovation of solutions being presented by all exhibitors. They also found the talks and seminars to be insightful, relevant and beneficial.
What are some of the biggest challenges and opportunities you see in the current automation and safety industry, particularly in relation to human, machine and environmental safety?
The biggest challenge we are facing right now is also our biggest opportunity. This is the growth of connectivity and digitalisation in plants and machinery. Productivity could rise with this implementation, but there are increasingly complex threats to man, machine and data.
Growing connectivity also means that now machinery safety can no longer be considered without industrial security and Pilz’s IAM range provides a solution to this, ensuring safety and security in one system.
Industrial security is still thought of as an abstract concept and being ambassadors for safety means we are also now ambassadors for security, and we feel we have a duty to educate people on this subject. There are free resources on the industrial security page on the Pilz website explaining the foundations of the topic, as well as the development of our Certified Expert for Security in Automation (CESA) course.
Regulations and legislation is always changing and more recently, machinery regulation have been revised with more focus on industrial security and AI. There is now an opportunity for plant and machinery to be even safer, which is something we always strive for. Pilz UK has a free webinar coming up on machinery safety legislation and the current/upcoming changes.
Another challenge is sustainability, and our latest project is the Pilz Sustainability Warehouse. Returned products are repaired if needed, tested and then sold to customers at a reduced rate. Although this is not always the most profitable way to do business, it is far more sustainable.
Where do you see the future of automation and safety heading over the next few years, and how does Pilz plan to stay at the forefront of these developments to continue ensuring safety?
We see even more networked machines and plants; however, this is dependent on open communication standards. OPC UA (OPC Unified Architecture is a machine-to-machine communication protocol used for industrial automation and developed by the OPC Foundation) is the standard. Pilz are actively involved in the steering committee and working groups of the OPC Foundation with a focus on safety.
Another development will be artificial intelligence (AI); the technology will be able to take the increase in data from machines and utilise it in a productive and advantageous way. AI has the potential to identify and assess risks with a view to introduce safety measures that are simple to install and easily adaptable in future.
Pilz sit on several committees and collaborate in various research projects, ensuring that we are involved in the decision making process and are aware of any new developments, innovations and changes in legislation and standards. We’re always on the cutting edge and want to share that knowledge with our customers so they are too.
Looking ahead to next year’s Drives & Controls, what new innovations or developments can we expect Pilz to bring to the show?
We have only just begun looking at next year’s plans but we’re thinking of taking a different approach. It will be a stand that focuses and specialises on IO-Link Safety. We will be demonstrating to attendees how it can increase productivity, save time and optimise processes!
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