The Association for Electrical and Mechanical Trades (AEMT) has appointed James Stevens as its honorary president, succeeding Shaun Sutton, director of the Central Group. Stevens, a director of the coil-winding manufacturer Preformed Windings, has been AEMT vice-president for the past two years. Mark Brady, director of the electromechanical repair specialist Haley247, has taken over as AEMT vice-president, while Andy Patten from ADC Electrical has become junior vice-president and interim treasurer. Invertek Drives has promoted Adrian Ellam from finance and operations director to CEO. Ellam, who has been with Invertek since 2010, takes on the role from Shaun Dean, who has been CEO since Invertek was acquired by Sumitomo Heavy Industries (SHI) in 2019. Dean will continue as chairman of Invertek Drives in addition to his roles as senior vice-president of SHI and CEO of PTC EMEIA Group. Ellam will retain his responsibilities for finance and operations. Invertek reported a 45% sales growth in 2022, with a turnover of £79.3m, and now employs 380 people. Siemens has appointed Christian Grosch to lead its drives manufacturing plant in Congleton, Cheshire, succeeding Andrew Peters, who has run the site for nine years. Grosch has held managerial positions with Siemens for more than 30 years, including roles in China, Brazil and Italy. The move comes as Congleton is expanding into the heating and ventilation market and increasing its capacity. Congleton manufactures more than 1 million drives and controls each year and employs more than 550 people. ABB IS COLLABORATING WITH Microsoft to integrate the IT giant’s Azure OpenAI generative AI technology into ABB’s Ability Genix Industrial Analytics and AI suite, leading to safer, smarter and more sustainable industrial operations. They say the integrated platform could provide realtime insights for better decision-making and improved productivity, extending asset lives by up to 20% and cutting downtime by up to 60%. The companies will implement generative AI to help industrial users to unlock insights hidden in their data. They believe that the improved data collection and handling will lead to gains in efficiency and productivity, asset reliability and safety, as well as cutting energy consumption and environmental impacts. ABB plans to integrate generative AI technologies – including large language models such as GPT-4 – into its Genix platform and applications, to provide functions such as code, image and text generation. The new application – called Genix Copilot – will streamline the flow of contextualised data across operations. In addition, the application will help users to enhance sustainability and energy transition by monitoring and optimising their energy use. Genix Copilot will also be able to capture operators’knowledge and to facilitate collaborative decision-making across various roles, safeguarding data and knowledge within an enterprise. “This is an important step in ABB and Microsoft’s strategic partnership which will accelerate the digital transformation of the industrial sector,” says Rajesh Ramachandran, global chief digital officer for ABB Process Automation. “We believe Genix Copilot will help industrial customers achieve their combined objectives of sustainability, operational excellence and enhanced asset performance. Extending the generative AI capabilities across ABB’s industrial digital solutions will usher customers into a new era of AI enabling billions of better decisions.” ABB’s Ability Genix is a modular industrial IoT, analytics and AI platform that embeds industryspecific knowledge. Businesses running Genix are said to have achieved cost savings of up to 40%, productivity improvements of up to 30%, and energy and emission improvements of up to 25%. ABB and Microsoft bring generative AI to industry ABB and Microsoft say their collaboration will lead to safer, smarter and more sustainable industrial operations July/August 2023 www.drivesncontrols.com 10 n NEWS EVENTS EMO 18-23 September, 2023 Hannover, Germany The “world’s leading trade fair for production technology” returns for its first full show since before the Covid pandemic. More than 1,500 exhibitors have already booked stands in the 17 halls (two fewer than at the 2019 event, which attracted more than 2,200 exhibitors and 116,700 visitors – more than half of them from outside Germany). Themes for the 2023 show include the future of business, connectivity and sustainability. www.emo-hannover.de PPMA Show 26–28 September, 2023 NEC, Birmingham The PPMA Show returns to the NEC Birmingham, targeting the production line market. The organisers at the Processing and Packaging Machinery Association say there will be something for everyone involved in processing and packaging machinery, robotics and industrial vision systems. They add that more than 2,650 brands will be represented at the event. www.ppmashow.co.uk MachineBuilding.Live 4 October, 2023 National Motorcycle Museum, Coventry A new event aimed at machine-builders, systems integrators and OEMs. The organisers are expecting more than 100 suppliers to be exhibiting more than 1,000 new products. A series of free seminars is planned. www.machinebuilding.live Engineering Design Show 11–12 October, 2023 Coventry Building Society Arena Described by its organisers as “the UK’s biggest event dedicated entirely to engineering, electronics and embedded design,” the show gives design engineers access to the latest products, services and innovations in the sector. www.engineeringdesignshow.co.uk Advanced Engineering UK 1-2 November, 2023 NEC, Birmingham The organisers of “the UK’s largest exhibition for engineering and manufacturing professionals”say that more than 90% of the exhibition space has already been sold, and the show has been expanded to make space for new exhibitors. The zones present at previous shows are being removed to emphasise cross-industry working and to avoid segregation. www.advancedengineeringuk.com SPS 2023 14-16 November, 2023 Nuremberg, Germany The organisers of the Smart Production Solutions show are adding two new halls to this year’s show, taking the total to 16. They are expecting around 1,300 exhibitors at the Nuremberg venue, compared to the 999 for the 2022 event, which attracted 43,813 visitors. https://sps.mesago.com/nuernberg/en
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