Drives & Controls September 2022

September 2022 www.drivesncontrols.com 10 Mika Kulju , previously president of ABB’s Drive Products division, has been appointed president of Danfoss Drives, succeeding Vesa Laisi who is retiring after eight years in the job. Kulju, a Finn, worked at ABB from 1992 to 2021, and has more than 25 years of experience in the drives business. He will join Danfoss as the president of Danfoss Drives and a member of the Danfoss Group Executive Team, on 1 October. Laisi joined Danfoss in 2014 when Danfoss acquired the Finnish AC drives manufacturer Vacon, where he had been CEO. Juergen Banken has succeeded Dr Chris Harris as CEO of Oxford-based Yasa, the axial-fluxmotor developer that Mercedes-Benz bought last year. Banken has held several positions at Mercedes- Benz over the past 26 years, most recently as senior manager for developing integrated electric drives. He joinsYasa at a time of accelerated growth andwill focus on delivering drives for Mercedes and AMG electric vehicles and for OEM supercar customers. Harris joinedYasa in 2012 when it had 20 employees. It now has 300. He is stepping down to pursue other ventures, andwill be a non-executive director at Yasa. n NEWS SCHAEFFLER IS INVESTING €50m in a new centre of excellence for electrified mobility at its Automotive Technologies headquarters in Bühl, Germany. The complex will consist of two buildings connected by a bridge. It will cover a floor area of 15,000m 2 , providing space for around 400 employees to work collaboratively on customer projects and electric powertrains. The centre is an expansion of Schaeffler’s existing electromobility development and manufacturing campus in Bühl, where it is already building an ultra-modern plant for producing electric motors known as the UltraELab. This flagship plant is being built in accordance with the principles of the“ultra-efficient factory” developed by Schaeffler and others. “As well as raising the bar for efficiency and productivity, our aim with the UltraELab is to make a real contribution to greater sustainability,” explains Dr Jochen Schröder, head of Schaeffler’s E-Mobility business. This will be achieved primarily through the agile and flexible production of electric motors. Instead of using fixed production lines, motors will be manufactured using flexible digitalised technology modules that can be re- arranged and re-scaled as required. Thanks to standardised interfaces and advanced IT integration, the modules will be simpler and quicker to set up and configure than conventional systems. This manufacturing concept is being developed under a €33.7m collaborative project called AgiloDrive2 led by Schaeffler with 17 partners including Kuka, Schunk and Siemens. Funding is coming from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. “Our goal is to achieve flexible and efficient production of innovative electric motors,” says Schröder. A pilot plant for testing the agile production concepts already exists at the site. Paired with digital twins, it will serve as a blueprint for the planned industrial-scale manufacturing facility. “By closely integrating electric motor development and production at a single location, we are leveraging key synergies for continuous product improvement,”Schröder says. The new 8,000m 2 campus is due to be ready by late 2024 and will allow Schaeffler to scale up its electromobility business. Last year, the company achieved powertrain sales worth more than €1bn and secured new projects worth €3.2bn. In the first half of 2022, it picked up a further €3.2bn of orders, reaching its full- year target for 2022 in the first six months. €50m e-mobility centre will include flexible motor production plant Schaeffler’s €50m centre of excellence will help it to scale up its e-mobility business to meet soaring demand Photo: Schaeffler (wurm + wurm architekten ingenieure) PPMA Total Show 2022 27–29 September, 2022 NEC, Birmingham The show’s organisers say PPMA will be “the UK’s largest-ever event dedicated to state-of-the-art processing and packaging machinery”. They expect to attract more than 400 exhibitors and more than 2,500 brands. Technologies being featured include robots and industrial vision. https://www.ppmashow.co.uk Engineering Design Show 12-13 October 2022 Coventry Claimed to be UK’s biggest event dedicated to engineering, electronics and embedded design, the exhibition will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with more than 200 exhibitors and more than 30 hours of conference sessions and seminars. Parking and entry are free. https://www.engineeringdesignshow.co.uk Advanced Engineering 2022 2–3 November, 2022 NEC, Birmingham The 13th edition of Advanced Engineering will celebrate innovation, collaboration and sustainability in the engineering and manufacturing industries. Across the two days of the show, engineering professionals from all sectors can network, learn and discover new technologies and suppliers from the engineering supply chain. www.advancedengineeringuk.com SPS 2022 8–10 November 2022 Nuremberg, Germany The huge automation event returns as a live event for the first time since 2018, after the 2021 event was cancelled at the last minute. It will take place two weeks earlier than in previous years and will be supplemented by a digital- format “SPS on air” event. More than 1,100 exhibitors have already signed up for the event. https://sps.mesago.com/events/en.html Drives & Controls 2024 16–18 April, 2024 NEC, Birmingham, UK The automation, robotics and motion engineering show will return to the NEC alongside the co-located Smart Industry Expo, Air-Tech, Plant & Asset Management, and Fluid Power & Systems events. https://www.drives-expo.com