How smart sensors can add value to your business

Over the last few years, Manufacturing practices across the world have changed considerably; creating leaner and smarter manufacturing facilities that reduce waste and downtime.

In this article, we speak to sensor and measurement advice experts, Baumer UK, who believe that the integration of smart sensors in industrial applications works to improve overall process efficiency and reduce potential wastage.

What is the difference between Sensors and Smart Sensors?

Choosing the right sensor for your application can be difficult, and it is important to understand how each sensor operates; and can support your manufacturing application to improve overall efficiency. To make this choice, you need to understand the difference between sensors and smart sensors.

A standard sensor tool is used to detect changes in physical and chemical environments within industrial applications. There are a number of different sensor types, including; proximity sensors, light sensors, pressure sensors, encoder sensors, temperature sensors and more. These operate to detect changes and consistency in industrial applications, without any form of further interaction.

Whereas, a smart sensor consists of a standard sensor to understand a particular stage of the manufacturing process, whilst also interacting with the industrial application to implement changes to the environment through a process of industrial automation, roboration or control systems.

Whilst a sensor produces raw data, a smart sensor produces meaningful, actionable information. This meaningful data can be interpreted to deliver smarter and more efficient applications, in turn reducing costs, wastage and the impact of potential downtime.

What are the typical applications of smart sensors?

Smart sensors for industrial applications can deliver numerous applications to various stages of the production process, including;

Testing and Inspection

Within testing and inspection processes, smart sensors work to check and verify object geometries for inline quality control. Smart sensors also work to undertake presence and completeness checks to deliver consistency and quality control across a process.

Measurement

Smart sensors can measure a variety of metrics within an industrial application, or production facility, including axel diameter, or edge, gap and flushness measurements whilst also conducting image-based dimensional checks.

Control and Regulation

Smart sensors are uniquely designed to assist with not only the determination and inspection of objects and their positioning via pick & place activities, but they can also assist in checking for object overlaps, and clearance.

Robot supported quality control enables robot supported object identification and measurement, alongside image-based object tracking to deliver incredible levels of quality control. This removes the impact of human error, and inconsistencies within the production process; therefore working to reduce wastage and increase production efficiency.

What are the advantages of using Smart Sensors?

Smart sensors are transforming the way we manufacture and do business by delivering a new breed of unobtrusive, wireless sensors to provide accurate, real-time information, for a stronger holistic view of industrial applications.

The biggest benefit of smart sensors is their ability to capture data, by allowing us to collect and analyse rich data to assist in understanding the operating environment. Coupled with real-time feedback and analytics can assist operators with identifying trends and insights to drive further improvement and reduce distriptions within the manufacturing process.

Baumer UK’s range of smart sensors for industrial applications can have a positive impact on almost every area of a business and its operations, by driving down energy costs and boosting productivity. This range can work to monitor capacity and inventory, to assess how much needs to be produced and how much storage space is available. This ensures that industrial manufacturers are consistently producing optimum levels of stock, without over producing, and therefore being unable to store products.

A further benefit of implementing smart sensors within your manufacturing process is that they can enable the collection of data to make smarter energy decisions. Live, real-time data can inform staff where energy is being used, and track its usage to identify energy wastage and areas for savings. Therefore, passing on a cost-saving to the business.

Smart vision - Simpler than ever before

With simple handing and implementation, Baumer UK smart vision sensors are the ideal solution for industrial applications looking to achieve greater efficiency and reduce costs, wastage and downtime. Featuring an extensive range of integrated measurement functions, Baumer UK smart sensors support efficient inline or offline tests. The VeriSens vision sensor delivers quicker and easy access to vision-guided robotics applications than ever before.

Baumer UK’s range of smart profile sensors offer powerful 2D measurement performance with unique usability, in a compact sensor design. VeriSens vision sensors combine everything you need for image-based inspections, product identification and robot control in a compact industrial housing for hard-wearing environments.

The VeriSens smart vision and profile sensors are incredibly easy to set up, with fast setup times. They are capable of being adapted to individual applications without the need for programming; making these one of the most user-friendly solutions available. With a large selection of interfaces and compatibility protocols, including PROFINET, Modbus TCP, IO-LINK and Ethernet, Baumer UK smart sensors can be integrated quickly, easily and seamlessly into existing systems.

The Baumer UK range of VeriSens smart sensors work to quickly and easily integrate smarter sensor data into your industrial application, by collecting intelligent data for interpretation by production team members. Real-time, live data can be used to reduce waste, improve process efficiency, reduce electricity consumption, enable stricter quality control, and a range of other factors.

To find out how smart sensors can be used to improve your industrial application, speak to the team of sensor specialists at Baumer UK