Imagine a packaging factory where you can change everything directly from the floor, roof and walls within a few days or even hours. Increasingly short production life cycles, smaller batch sizes, and individual product design and forms mark the requirements for future production, which have full flexibility, and are individual and scalable. Bosch Rexroth showcased this "Factory of the Future" during Pack Expo 2018.  

Bosch Rexroth offers maximum flexibility when it comes to (re)configuring production equipment: greatly reduced set-up times allow for greater variety. As a logical consequence, decentralized automation designs using distributed intelligence and interoperability are necessary. 

Rexroth’s Factory of the Future showcase is a multi-technology exhibit featuring intelligent, distributed drive and control components, connectivity modules, compact and versatile linear products, innovative chain conveyors and a wide selection of structural framing. All of which make it possible to expand machines and systems as necessary in a modular fashion. 

This motor-integrated drive technology, IndraDrive Mi, reduces machine footprint of packaging and processing machines thanks to reduced components generating savings with up to 90 percent less wiring, and reduced cabinet size and energy consumption. Ideal for all packaging, factory automation and motion logic applications, the intelligent IndraControl XM is easy to commission and features high-performance real-time data processing capabilities, and Rexroth’s Open Core interface allows the integration into a wide range of systems.

Rexroth’s connectivity modules allow end users to communicate with their equipment, production lines and manufacturing facilities. Data collection is done with SCD (Sense Connect Detect), a new, low-cost generation of sensors that are particularly easy to integrate. Bosch Rexroth showed how data from a certain number of SCD sensors can be collected, as well as analyzed and managed in the cloud. Products such as the Rexroth IoT Gateway Rack connect all areas of production from sensors to machine data in just a few steps and allow full shop floor transparency and monitoring of the overall production system. Next, Rexroth’s OpenCore Engineering builds the crucial bridge to the world of IT, enabling new levels of engineering flexibility. Learn more at the link below.