Category: Industry trends

John Deere deploys multiple MATE-XT exoskeletons to bring better ergonomic sustainability to its employees

Based on EMG analysis, the wearable robotic device can effectively reduce biomechanical risks by 50%, while keeping muscles at rest for 98.5% of physical activity time

The slim, highly breathable exoskeleton provides ergonomic all-day support, designed to improve the quality and precision of repetitive tasks

MATE-XT is waterproof, dustproof, UV-resistant and heat-resistant, making it an ideal choice for harsh working conditions and environments

Comau has equipped John Deere with multiple MATE-XT wearable exoskeletons to help maintain the physical health of workers, reduce physical stress and reduce the ergonomic risks they face in parts logistics operations. MATE-XT accurately replicates all shoulder movements, helping employees perform their work comfortably by reducing muscle fatigue without limiting mobility or feeling cumbersome. It is ergonomically designed and easily adjustable to accommodate a variety of body types – changing the length of the shoulder straps and the required level of assistance can be quickly achieved according to the worker’s body or the type of work in just a few simple steps. Comau worked closely with John Deere to deploy the exoskeleton in daily operations and conduct hands-on training at John Deere’s 75,000 square meter parts distribution center in Campinas, São Paulo State, Brazil.

With parts often delivered the next day, John Deere employees must select, sort and pack hundreds of parts every day. This work involves repetitive movements of the arms, shoulders and back. The highly breathable design of MATE-XT, like wearing a backpack, provides comfortable, ergonomic all-day support to improve the quality and precision of manual work. In addition to providing efficient postural support, MATE-XT is also EAWS (Ergonomic Assessment for Work) certified, which allows John Deere to objectively measure ergonomic improvements and expected benefits in terms of reduced muscle fatigue and execution speed.

Even when handling small and light objects, repetitive movements that seem effortless can take a toll on the body. To help John Deere quantify the benefits of using MATE-XT, Comau performed an electromyography analysis of ergonomic risk factors. MATE-XT allows muscles to rest 98.5% of the time (compared to 2.4% without MATE-XT).

In addition, Comau’s MATE-XT ensures proper muscle balance while optimizing the energy expenditure required to stabilize and maintain the weight of the arm. With the exoskeleton, only 10% of the operator’s maximum force is required to maintain arm stability. In addition to specific performance-based results such as process optimization and productivity gains, it also improves employee comfort and well-being. MATE-XT is helping John Deere reduce ergonomic risks and reduce muscle overload by 68%.

Laerte Scarpitta, General Manager of Comau Americas, said: “We extend our commitment to providing customers with innovative automation technologies to exploring new ways to ensure that workers can carry out their daily work safely in various markets and different application environments. With MATE-XT, an easy-to-use wearable exoskeleton, John Deere effectively reduces muscle fatigue and reduces mechanical stress on workers’ backs, waists, arms and shoulders, creating greater added value and more practical benefits. This is another example of the value that robotics brings to us.
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Help customers improve production efficiency, simplify engineering design, and speed up debugging

Integrated clean inverter technology can reduce harmonics by up to 97%

Fully integrated with TIA Portal, creating digital twins with Startdrive, enabling testing and optimization before hardware installation

Equipped with IIoT modules, it can be easily integrated into industrial edge and cloud applications

On the eve of the 2023 Hannover Industrial Fair, Siemens released a new product in the Sinamics series – the Sinamics G220 high-performance inverter. This innovative inverter product uses clean conversion technology and can reduce harmonics by up to 97% without the need for line filters or line reactors.

The space utilization and operating efficiency of the Sinamics G220 inverter have been significantly improved, making engineering design easier. At the same time, Sinamics G220 is fully integrated with TIA Portal, and can create a digital twin through Startdrive to test and optimize the behavior of the drive before hardware installation, significantly shortening the commissioning time. This new inverter is also equipped with an IIoT module, which can be easily integrated into cloud and industrial edge applications to further optimize performance and avoid unnecessary downtime. In terms of information security, Sinamics G220 comes standard with security integration functions that can ensure secure communications, perform integrity and authenticity checks to prevent firmware tampering, and implement user management and access control.

Sinamics G220 inverter offers a variety of hardware options and is equipped with rich software functions, which can flexibly adapt to diverse application requirements. For example, in response to relatively harsh operating environments, this product can provide a high protection level of IP55 and use a special high-protection coating. Thanks to high-quality components and hardware design, the drive has a prolonged service life. At the same time, the product’s safety integrated system meets the SIL3 standard, raising the safety level to a new level. Sinamics G220 can be used in various industries, especially in food and beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, oil and gas and marine industries.
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For enterprises, sudden equipment failure is like a bug hidden somewhere. You know it exists, but you don’t know when it will appear. This kind of “anxiety” is a huge crisis for any enterprise.

How to solve this bug and turn the “danger” that may appear at any time into an “opportunity” for strategic planning has become the key to the problem – the choice of predictive analysis software has become a strategic issue for enterprises in this process.

01

The premise of eliminating bugs

Predictive analysis and “foreknowledge”

The concerns about potential crises such as unplanned downtime have led to a huge increase in market demand for predictive analysis software:

“According to relevant research data, in the next few years, the global predictive analysis market size will grow from US$12.5 billion in 2022 to US$38 billion in 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 20%. ”

This broad prospect is due to the increasing maturity of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies and algorithms, new methods for large-scale deployment of predictive analytics, and the availability and maintainability of data and systems.

Faced with the wide variety of predictive analytics software on the market, enterprises must consider variables such as return on investment (ROI) when weighing their potential deployments. The final choice of predictive analytics software “is hardware-independent”, “is it the best way to leverage existing software investments”, “is the solution easy to deploy, maintain and expand” and many other factors are all issues that enterprises need to consider.

02

Let the tools fully integrate

The power of human insight

Human experience and intuition play an important role in assessing potential crises, but due to differences in positions and departments, different employees are in different specific professional fields, and therefore have very different “experiences” in troubleshooting. For example, people from engineering or operations backgrounds often have very different ways of thinking when facing the same problem.

Although many predictive analytics solutions can provide abnormal alerts, if there is insufficient experience and insight, the imminent crisis may be ignored when facing abnormal alerts. Therefore, while enterprises use “human insight”, they must also acknowledge the subjectivity of the team in discovering and solving faults. At this moment, the advantage of “tools” is highlighted.

Rational and precise digital technology and human perceptual “experience” complement each other. It can “predict” – provide timely fault diagnosis alarms through real-time data, and “analyze” – explain the reasons for the alarm. The closed-loop predictive analysis strategy enables enterprises to collect, organize and analyze data, including real-time sensors, historical operations and financial impact analysis data.

Based on these data, users can immediately lock in the crux of the problem and let the anomaly disappear in the bud. More importantly, record and reuse relevant data to achieve continuous improvement.

03

The importance of fault diagnosis

But the “early warning” of the machine is not 100% accurate. Sometimes the alarm is not a warning of unplanned downtime, but just a sensor failure. This “oolong” greatly reduces the accuracy of the analysis. Unreliable data will cast a shadow of “wolf coming” on analysis and decision-making.

Therefore, excellent predictive diagnostics require “the right medicine for the right disease”, providing precise, real-time insights through customized data and diagnostic tools. AVEVA’s predictive maintenance solution estimates the time when a failure may occur through efficient and accurate fault diagnosis methods, helping companies accurately prioritize maintenance.

The prediction of the time of failure helps operations and maintenance teams “have a plan in mind” to determine whether to let the asset run until the next planned maintenance stoppage or initiate an emergency stoppage. This also enables the team to more accurately predict potential supply chain problems and consider the preparation time of spare parts. At the same time, prescriptive analysis can also provide actionable tasks to remedy the problem.

In this way, unplanned downtime is eliminated.

Conversely, relevant predictions can also help operators determine whether to postpone planned maintenance tasks. Plant personnel can schedule maintenance and assess risks more effectively, helping companies prioritize safety and profitability.

04

And “Hug” with Data

Make the most of data

As digitalization advances at a high speed, industrial companies are collecting more data than ever before. According to statistics, 50% of all industrial data was generated in the past two years.

With the help of various software and hardware, enterprises may have a large amount of data in their hands to monitor their assets reaching a certain threshold, such as temperature, heat rate, fuel consumption, power consumption, etc.

While these indicators may represent valuable insights, they are static. When conditions change, enterprises need to use multiple parameters to track and anticipate any deviations of assets. Therefore, a more dynamic production environment requires a more dynamic process.

In order to explore the potential of data to a greater extent, enterprises must establish a comprehensive data infrastructure “from engineering to operations to asset management to corporate finance” and use solutions that can integrate all relevant information sources.

AVEVA’s predictive maintenance software solution analyzes historical behavior, takes into account multiple thresholds and change patterns, and tracks the actual condition and real-time operating conditions of assets in real time to predict possible problems in the future.

This makes maintenance planning more effective, avoids over-maintenance of assets, and provides a clear view of the relationship between asset models, fault conditions, fault modes, sensors and actual fault matching information, so that everything is under control and strategic planning is possible.

05

AVEVA Predictive Maintenance

Make unplanned downtime disappear

AVEVA’s predictive maintenance portfolio has quickly become the industry standard. Combining digital twin technology with AVEVA™ Predictive Analytics (predictive maintenance software), it has opened up a new path for many companies from industrial fields, from power to chemicals to manufacturing, to improve operations.

AVEVA Predictive Maintenance Software is a code-free solution that does not require the support of software engineers or data scientists, and can be easily mastered by developers. AVEVA Predictive Maintenance Software provides advanced alarm and case management based on artificial intelligence technology, enabling knowledge capture and reporting. Built-in templates accelerate the configuration, deployment and expansion of the software to ensure maximum return on investment. Efficient and accurate fault diagnosis can accurately diagnose fault modes.

With AVEVA predictive analytics software, companies can diagnose equipment problems in advance by detecting subtle changes in real-time system operating data and normal operating archives, and diagnose problems days, weeks or months before equipment failure occurs, thereby avoiding unplanned downtime. A large number of implementation practices have also confirmed the feasibility and advancement of AVEVA’s predictive maintenance software:

Mitsubishi Electric Power

Using AVEVA’s predictive maintenance software to improve the operational awareness of its energy system, it has achieved outstanding results in preventing unexpected downtime.

Duke Energy Corporation of the United States

Using AVEVA’s predictive maintenance software to centrally monitor its power generation assets, it maximizes the safety, reliability and production performance of assets. After the platform went online, it saved more than $34 million in just one early warning.

Siam Chemical Group of Thailand

With AVEVA’s predictive maintenance software, the reliability of the plant has been increased from 98% to 100% through sustainable real-time monitoring of equipment activities, avoiding equipment asset failures. This saving is equivalent to a 9-fold return on investment.

AVEVA Predictive Maintenance Software

Based on an asset library derived from more than 22,000 hours of experience, AVEVA Predictive Maintenance Software allows users to understand “how long until a failure occurs” and “which problem should be solved first”, comprehensively improving the prediction ability, effectively detecting enterprise performance problems and predicting their asset failures, helping enterprises transform from reactive maintenance to proactive predictive maintenance, and making unplanned downtime disappear.
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DETROIT — Stellantis is delaying the launch of its Ram all-electric pickup truck from this year to the first half of 2025 as the transatlantic automaker continues testing the vehicle.

Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares on Tuesday declined to give specific reasons for the delay in the launch of the electric truck, which is expected to be followed by a range-extended “Ramcharger” with a generator and gas engine.

“We have a very large workload and we want to validate the product in a very careful way, so we’re taking our time and making sure we can handle the peak,” Tavares said during an online media event. “We don’t want to rush it… It’s better to take a few weeks to validate it correctly than to rush it and then make a mistake in quality. That’s what we’re doing now.”

The all-electric pickup is expected to go on sale by the end of this year, with the Ramcharger to follow in the first quarter of 2025. The automaker declined to say when the Ramcharger would be available.

Tavares said work needs to be completed on the Dodge Charger Daytona and Jeep Wagoneer S EV, both expected to go on sale by the end of the year, before moving on to the new trucks.

Stellantis’ upcoming electric pickup is the first to be built on the company’s new “STLA framework platform,” designed for large trucks and Jeep SUVs. The platform is expected to be a “multi-energy platform” that can accommodate both internal combustion and hybrid vehicles, as well as electric models that use batteries, fuel cells and extended-range electric propulsion systems.

Stellantis said the Ramcharger Extended Range Electric Vehicle can operate as a zero-emission electric vehicle until the battery is depleted, then the onboard generator (powered by a 27-gallon, 3.6-liter V6 engine) kicks in to power the vehicle.

The automaker reconfirmed Tuesday that the REV can travel 500 miles on a single charge, while the Ramcharger is expected to have a class-leading range of 690 miles.

“We are managing the peak period between the products that are coming,” Tavares said. “There will be a lot of product coming to the U.S. market in the coming months.”

Stellantis’ U.S. electric vehicle offensive couldn’t have started at a worse time for the automaker, as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to roll back or eliminate many of the Biden administration’s goals and funding for all-electric vehicles.

Last week, it was reported that Trump’s transition team plans to eliminate the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicles as part of a broader tax reform bill. The move would make good on Trump’s campaign rhetoric about eliminating such incentives and electric vehicle programs.

Tavares, who has criticized government regulations on electric vehicles but has also touted their benefits, said the company “will adapt” to any changes made by the Trump administration.

Correction: Stellantis is delaying the launch of its all-electric Ram REV from this year to 2025. The Ramcharger truck is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2025. A previous version of this article misstated the timing of the Ramcharger.
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About IS200WEMAH1AEA

The IS200WEMAH1AEA is a General Electric printed circuit board assembly that is part of the company’s Mark VI turbine control system. The system is one of the final gas and steam turbine control architectures released by General Electric under the “Speedtronic” banner, specifically designed to provide reliable and flexible industrial turbine management. This is the third Speedtronic system to offer users the option of TMR or Triple Modular Redundancy. However, the Mark VI also offers a Simplex system option for smaller or less complex systems that cannot benefit from the TMR system.

Hardware Tips and Specifications

The IS200WEMAH1AEA is a fairly large and component-dense circuit board. It has a built-in standoff located in the center of the board. This is to allow the user to install auxiliary boards at a later date as per the convenience of the owner. In addition to the unique bracket that will benefit IS200WEMAH1AEA owners, the PCB features a number of components worth noting, including but not limited to:

At least four fuses

Multiple relays, each with a different label describing the relay function

Over five hundred individual resistors for current and voltage management

At least ten plugs and fuses for compatibility

A range of transistors

Four terminal blocks, labeled TB1 through TB4

Two different types of transformers, labeled T1 and T2

Nine heat sinks

Vertical pin connectors

Most of the components on the IS200WEMAH1AEA are surface mount, but some, like some resistors, are still through-hole mounted. Most components are marked with some kind of reference mark to aid identification.

The IS200WEMAH1AEA board is factory drilled in multiple locations, including the board corners and within the body of the board. These drilled holes are surrounded by conductive material for optimal mounting.
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