Diabetes is on the rise worldwide with around 10 million people being diagnosed with the disease every year. This pushes up the demand for insulin pens for self-injection. Syntegon's Danish subsidiary has developed an automated system for assembling these pens using the Festo automation platform.

The Festo Motion Terminal VTEM combines digitalisation and pneumatics. Quickly activated Motion Apps are revolutionising pneumatics by increasing flexibility and energy efficiency, and accelerating production processes. This also has benefits for handling technology, because the automation platform VTEM opens the door for positioning using pneumatics.

The electric standard gripper EHPS from Festo is the electric version of the pneumatic standard gripper DHPS. The EHPS can be used wherever pneumatics is not permissible. The concept of the electric standard gripper is based on simplicity and low complexity – all the electronics are integrated in the gripper, which means that an external motor controller is not required.

The patented Nereda process from Royal HaskoningDHV offers wastewater treatment plants that take up 75% less space than conventional plants, require just 50% of the energy and are also odour-free, while delivering excellent purification performance. Pneumatic automation technology from Festo ensures reliable and exact process sequences, while experts from Festo provide support with planning the plant.

As of immediately, technicians and engineers arrive at the right ready-to-install handling system at a record-breaking tempo in the areas of project engineering and planning. They can now order new system solutions intelligently and intuitively via the new Festo Handling Guide Online – without any interruptions in the value chain because the new configuration and ordering platform is integrated into the online product catalogue from Festo.

Digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) are mega trends that are also opening up the potential for savings in all phases of a plant's lifecycle in process automation. A digital field device, the Festo Motion Terminal VTEM, is already available. Festo Dashboards also visualise plant conditions and even artificial intelligence is no longer far removed from becoming a reality in process automation.

The enormous rise in the quantity of data and in the complexity of plant networks and company divisions makes it necessary to develop products that make the flow of data easy to project and to use – at production level, but also for training and developing workers’ skills.

Highly flexible and modular production plants with decentralised automation enable the process industry to react to fluctuations in demand. This is the case in water treatment, in the pharmaceutical, fine chemical and food industries and also in energy generation. Decentralised controllers from Festo are perfect for this. Festo developed the PA-Toolkit for programming these controllers to enable simple application engineering in line with the ...

Protective masks are in short supply in these times of coronavirus so why not just produce some yourself?! With a system from Mikron, this is almost within everyone’s reach. This scalable system produces 50-100 face masks per minute, depending on the version. With engineering support from Festo, Mikron managed to develop the system in just six weeks.

The implementation of Industry 4.0 is an ongoing process that involves challenges, but also offers great potential for the automation industry – Festo recognised this at an early stage. The key elements of industrial digitalisation are the individual components, which communicate with each other within the overall system and can control and regulate themselves. The tasks of the human employee are also changing from merely operating machines to ...