January/February 2019

ANNUAL BOARDROOM REPORT abreast of the latest product innovation and challenges that customers face to marry the two together,” he said. “We are absolutely committed to investing in our people to ensure they are equipped to carry out their job and provide customers with the best possible solution, every time.” The future What are our commentators’ predictions for the near future with regard to further technological developments or enhancements? Smith cited safety over network, wireless technology and the integration of smart components, larger application of sensors and sensing type devices (such as RFID). He also pointed to more self-serve web-based applications, as well as further adoption of Industrial Ethernet and IO-Link connectivity. Additionally, he anticipates more customers moving away from hardwired systems, and believes mechatronic training will become important because our industry maintenance people are established to understand pneumatics/hydraulics/electrical or electronics. “Products coming out of manufacturing are all integrated now – a pneumatic valve has electronics and electrical integrated into the pneumatic manifold,” he said. Sands believes that in the near future our workforces will have many interesting and potentially challenging changes to adapt to. “I can already see how they will be supported with Artificial Intelligence, interacting with Augmented Reality, working at interactive desks and pro-actively supported by Cobot assistants,” he said. “What will be the social and emotional impact of these changes? Will they fear the technology and change, or embrace it as a way of releasing them from boring, awkward or repetitive tasks? That depends on the quality of the change management process and the managers leading the change. Are they explaining and engaging with the workforce so they are part of the change, or is it something ‘done to them’? Technology will be available to make these changes, we have explored many of these concepts and can demonstrate their application and uses. Ensuring our people are properly led is a potentially more important and harder task to achieve, within the same timescales.” One of the main areas where Medlock currently sees innovation is that of decreasing maintenance by increasing quality. “Increased corrosion resistance, increased cleanliness, traceability and our quality policy all speak to this focus,” he said. Another area of development highlighted by Medlock is the rapid design and manufacture of bespoke fittings and adapters designed to meet a customer specific or even application specific need, reduce leak points, increase reliability and accommodate other overall design parameters. Pavlov predicts that in a few years global connectivity will get to the next level, allowing end users, manufacturers and distributors much better diagnostics of their machinery remotely. Jeavons reflected that based on the trends he has experienced over the past couple of years, he anticipates that the ability to respond in real-time to customer requirements will become more imperative with more engineers and buyers looking to source information and buy products online. “This will make this process easier for customers and provide tools such as configurators, which will likely gain traction with the fluid power market over the next couple of years,” he said. Environmental momentum Also, as the cost of energy continues to increase and the emphasis on becoming greener continues to gain traction, Jeavons believes the need for environmentally friendly and energy savings solution are likely to become part of the requirements of customers, especially the larger OEMs and end users. One of the biggest trends Jeavons has seen is the significant benefits Fluid Power Group customers are experiencing from obtaining a complete fluid power turnkey solution. “From commodity parts and technical components to systems design, manufacturing and installation as well as aftersales service contracts, the benefits of dealing with a single source who has full knowledge of the operation, has substantial inherent benefits in terms of administration, trouble-shooting and reaction times,” he said. Cuthbert reiterated the point that users and OEMs are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of Digital Transformation and what the concept offers in terms of greater levels of control and analytics that can benefit their equipment from an uptime and maintenance perspective. Joel foresees that further technological innovations associated with Industry 4.0 will enable companies to further share and analyse compressor data throughout every step of the production process. “These detailed data-driven opportunities, combined with real-time monitoring that can help reduce the risk of downtime, will improve compressor performance and – invariably – a business’ bottom line,” he said. “The most impactful innovations will move from closed, proprietary performance-monitoring products to open ones. Products traditionally operate and connect to a brand’s own proprietary protocols and data transfer mechanisms, which can be problematic. This is because most businesses, over time and throughout various product lifecycles, will have purchased units from a range of different brands. “The compressed air industry needs open and secure IoT analytics support to help them realise the true value of Industry 4.0. The development of open platforms like iConn, capable of supporting ancillary and compressed air products from multiple brands, will be key to making this happen.” 54 HYDRAULICS & PNEUMATICS January/February 2019 www.hpmag.co.uk