Plant & Works Engineering September 2022 Issue

32 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk September 2022 Energy & Environmental Management Focus on: Drives, Motors & Controls S ince the time of Henry Ford, the consensus among manufacturers has been that bigger is better. Economies of scale would provide increasing profits, and this necessitated ever larger manufacturing facilities. For some, the emergence of automation technology will power ever larger factories, or gigafactories as Elon Musk called them. For others though, automation opens the opportunity to do things in a radically different way. From Ford to Musk A long-standing staple of economic thinking is the benefits of economies of scale. Put simply, this refers to the idea that when you scale up production, the cost of each unit of production comes down. In laymen’s terms, bigger is better. Despite its association with innovation and ‘breaking things’, Tesla has not strayed too far from Ford’s original method. The company’s approach retains the production line, it simply relies on much higher levels of automation, with robots working around the clock. As for the mantra that bigger is better, Tesla’s celebrated gigafactory in the Nevada desert is clear evidence that Musk subscribes to this maxim. It is expected that, once completed, Tesla Giga Nevada, or Gigafactory 1, will have the largest footprint in the world. A new arrival? However, for many manufacturers, greater automation is offering the benefits of operating with a smaller footprint. This is especially so for those embracing the microfactory concept. At its heart, this approach dispenses with the traditional production line, using automation to underpin a modular approach on a much smaller footprint. British EV start up Arrival has quickly emerged as the standard bearer for the microfactory. Like Tesla, the company is an innovative EV maker whose production processes involve high levels of automation. However, whereas Tesla is building ever larger production facilities, for Arrival the answer is manufacturing on a smaller footprint, with multiple microfactories deployed closer to the markets the company will serve. An Arrival microfactory can be built in a standard 200,000ft 2 warehouse. It can be up and running in a matter of months, and in contrast to the extortionate capital costs of gigafactories, it costs a mere £38 million. For Arrival CEO Mike Abelson, this will be key to the company’s success and Steven Hayes, managing director of Beckhoff Automation UK, explains why some manufacturers are using automation to operate on a smaller footprint. Automation and the rise of the microfactory