Thinking about the factory of the future

APPLIED RESEARCH Created following a far-reaching global survey and consisting in numerous models with open architecture that respond to users’ diverse needs, the new Unidrive M range launched by Control Techniques, with one eye on the present and the other on the future, is an innovative line of drives for electric motors dedicated entirely to manufacturing automation.
E.P.

Urging its audience to “look at things from a new perspective”, Control Techniques (Emerson Group, NYSE: EMR) announces its new range of products dedicated to manufacturing automation and alludes to the methodology and outcomes of the vast R&D process that led to its characteristics and functions.
Unidrive M, officially launched at SPS/IPC/Drives in Nuremburg, was previewed last September 21st in Milan. To host the event, nothing less than the 31st floor of Pirelli Tower: the celebrated “Pirellone” designed by Gio Ponti, which with its 127 meters was the city’s tallest building for nearly 50 years and remains a symbol of Milanese pride to this day. And indeed the view from up there is truly a new perspective, one which reveals a grander and more beautiful Milan before it is lost beyond the skyline, just like the perspective of Control Techniques’s designers, who used the information and requests provided by manufacturers and users from around the world to create “the world’s most complete range of transformers for manufacturing automation”. And this with the clarity of those who bear in mind, on equal terms, present and future necessities. Those of the customer, that is.

The customer as the center of everything
The Unidrive M story was introduced with the help of Carlo Previderé, general manager of Control Techniques Milan. «We are convinced that, now more than ever, it is fundamentally important to keep close ties with concerns and look for common strategies to overcome challenges», the manager declared following an acknowledgment of the seriousness of the current economic climate, the social repercussions of the crisis and the distressing veil of resignation that seems to be stifling Italy’s usual ability and willingness to reinvent itself.

It is a solemn appeal to rebellion, that of Previderé, who to rouse exuberance and passion quotes Churchill when he defines success as “the the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”.
Control Techniques makes itself a poster child for a positive spirit and announces a new product line as a solid contribution to the difficult but now undelayable task of developing new models for work and for the factory. The Unidrive M range of drive systems, Previderé stipulates on the matter, put the user at the center of the project from the outset, and for this reason it is able to respond as much to a concern’s current requirements as to its expectations for the future.

The way in which they were conceived and developed is a testament to this orientation toward future prospects and guarantees, in addition to performance, that “user-friendliness” which represents the lead thread of Control Techniques’s many historic and more recent patents.
Guido Colombo, the concern’s marketing manager for Italy, explains how and why.

Asking (and listening)in order to know
Unidrive M drives are the result of the largest market research campaign ever promoted by Control Techniques. The preliminary survey consisted in a qualitative phase, targeting one hundred or so large manufacturers from around the world to gather their evaluations of the present and expectations for the future, and in a quantitative phase, which, directly or through the web, enabled the concern to contact 800 international players in order to understand their needs and priorities.
«These interviews - Colombo affirms - have enabled us to systematically monitor the demands of the market and, in many cases, to concretely implement those general marketing principles that are so often talked about, but as a general rule only in the abstract. It’s one thing, for example, to know that the market requires the ability to produce more and to do so more quickly, but it’s something different to understand how. The same goes for taking for granted that the ideal machine should have as few stops as possible, but only realizing after the fact that identifying the cause of a problem is harder than solving it…».
And that’s not all. «This research has enabled us to group the many diverse requests of automation users, from speed and flexibility to low cost and advanced safety systems, into large, uniform categories. We have arrived at 7 macro-areas of users and 7 corresponding requirement types to orient designers in developing the characteristics and functions of the right products for each group, so as to cover the entire market with targeted and effective proposals.
Lastly, the name: Unidrive was unanimously elected, as was the existing range from which it is only distinguished by the added “M”, which stands for Manufacturing. One could (understandably) think that the new Unidrive line replaces the previous one, but on the contrary it supplements it, integrating our offer with its own characteristics and targets».  

The world in seven models
Each of the 7 transformers that make up the Unidrive M line has thus been carefully designed to satisfy the needs and increase the productivity of a specific sector of the manufacturing market.
They are numbered in order from the entry level model M100 (open loop inverter with basic performance, aggressively priced, easy to use, with a power range of 0.25 -7.5 kW) to the M800 with advanced integrated motion control and maximum performance (power up to 1.2 mW).

In between we find the M200, featuring greater flexibility of integration, and the M300 for productivity and safety objectives; the top of the line is the M400 (up to 110 kW), with rapid configuration and diagnostics, real time display and an optional CoDeSys-programmed onboard PC, and the subsequent three models with more sophisticated functions: the M600 with sensorless permanent magnet and induction motors, the servo version M700 with onboard Ethernet and the M800 with advanced integrated motion control.

This is a range of solutions for the most diverse drive requirements, from which all users can select everything they need and nothing more, «from the highest performing transformers, capable of guaranteeing a printer with maximum register synchronization, real time communication, torque and speed control, etc., to the most basic automation necessary for ink pump management», Colombo notes, to give a few examples (packaging in its various forms represents one of the primary outlet sectors of this product line, Editor’s note).

What’s more, the various Unidrive M models have in common many features and performance characteristics, based on certain fundamental design choices. The manager provides a few examples: «We have enhanced the motion control functions and chosen to use a common programming language to facilitate switching from one platform to another. At the same time, we have enhanced our platform in all its functions, achieving a highly functional tool with decidedly improved precision. Also, knowing that reducing startup times is a common and priority necessity for all machine builders, we have focused on high performance motion control, with ultra high speed, latest generation Ethernet (10 gigas), that is open to all, which is to say that it can be easily integrated with custom protocols. Finally, we have adopted everything that makes the drive system easy and intuitive to use and dedicated careful attention to the diagnostics, which have been perfected for real time monitoring of alarms and events».
These, the manager points out, are achievements that could not have been reached without the involvement of the hundreds of concerns that, on all continents, agreed to respond to the interviews, nor without the direct collaboration of the greatest planning minds of Emerson Group’s various subsidiaries, who have made possible a truly global creative process, to the benefit of a market that spans the entire globe.