DAC February 2022

27 www.drivesncontrols.com February 2022 TALKING INDUSTRY n Mike Wilson Chief Automation Officer, Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) Mike has more than 35 years’ experience of applying automation to manufacturing in many sectors and is one of the UK’s leading authorities on industrial robots. He is chief automation officer at the Manufacturing Technology Centre, leading the drive to boost the take- up of automation in the UK. Martin Kidman Market Product Manager (UK & Ireland), Safety Solutions Sick Sensor Intelligence After gaining a BEng (Hon) and MSc (Eng), Martin started his career working for a notified body testing equipment to the Low Voltage Directive. He took a four-year break to gain a PhD at the University of Liverpool, and since 2006 has been involved in industrial automation, working for various sensor manufacturers. He has been with Sick since 2013 providing services, support and consultancy for industrial safety applications. Stuart Coulton Market Development Manager, Omron Electronics UK Having worked for Omron for 13 years, Stuart is passionate about empowering businesses to solve complex challenges with high- impact robotics and automation solutions. Stuart holds a BEng Hons in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and an MSc in Operations Management, both from the University of Nottingham. Andy Pye Webinar Chair and Consulting Editor DFA Media Andy has edited many leading UK design and manufacturing titles over the past four decades. He is a graduate material engineer and spent five years in engineering consultancy before entering technical publishing in 1980. in plant and machinery. Wilson pointed out that tax credits “have been around for a long time, but are generally perceived as being something that’s only applicable to the development of new products. Accountancy firms will help you apply for those. If you’re investing in the design of that product, you can offset your costs, in terms of the amount of time that you invested and any finance against your tax bill. If you're an SME, you can get 130% – getting more back than you put in! “If you’re developing a new automation solution, because you’re performing some r&d activity in terms of the development, it qualifies,”Wilson continued. “And your suppliers can do the same thing. You can then collect that information together and submit as part of the company’s tax return to claim some r&d tax credit. In effect, that reduces the overall cost of the actual installation in the first place.” Net-zero The session ended with a discussion of how robots can help to achieve net-zero targets. Automation has a significant role to play in terms of hitting these targets, partly through ensuring that our manufacturing is as efficient and effective as possible, reducing energy consumption. Less waste means less re- working, thus ensuring the benefits from using the automation. Mike Wilson pointed out that Brexit and Covid have highlighted issues in terms of our supply chains. “Over the past 20 to 30 years, we have offshored much of our manufacturing, and Covid in particular has demonstrated that those long supply chains can be a problem and that we shouldn’t necessarily rely on them in the future,” he said. “We are going to start to see more and more reshoring and manufacturing, which I think is good for us anyway. “But reshoring will also provide positive impact in terms of net-zero. When we’re looking at our carbon footprint as a country, we can't offshore all our manufacturing and then pretend it doesn't matter,”Wilson continued. “We need to look at the whole carbon footprint of everything that we do. Shipping things all the way around the world is not necessarily a good thing to do in terms of carbon footprint. So we need to make more of what we use local. And to do that competitively, we need to use more automation. So automation will have a positive impact on our net-zero future.” Net-zero will also be a focus topic at this month’s National Manufacturing Summit, taking place at the MTC in Coventry on 8 and 9 February. Mike Wilson is heavily involved, and Andy Pye will be chairing several sessions ( https://nmsummit.co.uk ). T he Talking Industry Web site ( www.talkingindustry.org ) carries links to the archive of past Talking Indu stry events. You can also register for future events via the site. n Talking Industry The Panel Chat forum: questions and comments The session on robotics and automation was lively, with many questions being posted in the chat forum. A copy of the chat is available on request. Sources of further information posted in the chat included: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/designated-standards- machinery https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/collaborative-robot-applications-industry- dr-martin-kidman-phd/ https://www.the-mtc.org/news/automation-is-the-key-to-improving-uk- productivity/ https://www.sick.com/gb/en/virtual-classroom-online-functional-safety- training-and-sistema/w/online-functional-safety-training/