Why is cyber security in machines and systems important?

Machines and production systems are no longer isolated. They are part of a larger network that exchanges data and processes information in real-time. This connectivity brings many benefits, such as increased efficiency and flexibility, but it also introduces new risks. If an attacker gains access to a system, the consequences can be severe: production downtimes, data loss, or even damage to machines and equipment.

That’s why machine engineers must integrate security considerations into their designs from the very beginning. It’s not enough to retroactively address vulnerabilities or hope that an attack won’t happen. To remain secure and competitive in the long run, cyber security must be an integral part of the entire development process.

Key requirements: NIS-2 and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)

For companies in mechanical engineering, there are now legal requirements governing cyber security practices. Two important are the NIS-2 Directive (Network and Information Systems Directive) and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Both aim to improve cyber security in critical infrastructure.

The NIS-2 Directive mandates that companies take measures to protect their networks and information systems (IT and OT). This involves not only defending against cyberattacks but also the obligation to identify and address vulnerabilities early on.

The Cyber Resilience Act contains requirements for the cyber security of products. The goal is for machines and products to be designed from the outset in a way that minimizes risks and is secure from potential threats. The CRA also contains requirements for the subsequent life cycle. Weak points in products must also be identified and rectified after delivery.

Staying secure with confidence

Cyber security in mechanical engineering is no longer an option— it’s a necessity. When machine engineers take these principles seriously and integrate cyber security from the outset, they can not only make their machines and systems more secure but also build trust with their customers. In an age when cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, it is essential to act proactively and with foresight. This means designing machines, plants, and systems not only to function but also to meet the highest security standards — and to do so sustainably.

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The specialist in drive and automation technology is also launching a new motor platform with the m500 series. An intelligent web-based planning and conversion tool will be coming in the summer of 2020. Lenze has set itself the goal of making the switch to the new m500 motor generation as easy as possible for its customers and to further optimise the machine with its consulting services in one fell swoop.

The new m500 motor platform is designed to be future-proof as a drive solution that can be used worldwide and which is primarily intended to be combined with Lenze gearboxes of the g500 family and the i500 inverter series. Lenze will be making a software tool available as of this summer to ensure that the switch to the new generation goes well, especially with regard to the Ecodesign Directive. The material number of the old drive is all that it takes – and the system uses the available data to propose how the motor being replaced can best be exchanged in conformity with the standard.

Another valid point: if you are making the switch, then do it right. For the OEM, this means that the effort required for the replacement and design modifications should be worthwhile to improve the machines with drives precisely attuned to the tasks they perform.

Savings in energy consumption of 20% to 50% can be achieved in the drive system, depending on the machine type and the specific requirements, if the machine is viewed holistically. The use of components with high efficiency forms the basis for this. However, the greatest potential can be exploited if the drive dimensioning and motion profiles correspond to the actual process requirements. The use of inverters to adjust the power or feeding the brake energy into the DC link are further possibilities for optimisation. Lenze's new motor platform also offers the opportunity for standardisation. The motors, which can be used all over the world, enable machine builders to significantly reduce the number of drive variants and thus cut process costs.

In this way, the motor replacement is not only driven by the need to comply with the Ecodesign Directive, but is also a way to generate sustainable improvements in efficiency and functionality.

As a machine builder, you want to be sure that your chosen supplier is able to meet all of your needs. It’s important to understand some of the aspects behind the selection process to help you make the best decision on the right partner. In order to maximise production throughput, manufacturing systems must operate perfectly and be reliable with zero/minimal maintenance; machine builders might know what they need their machine to do in process terms, but do not always know how to achieve essential motion requirements at the most economical cost.

There’s a lot that depends on specific needs. Machine builders with simple, unchanging designs probably feel they receive a satisfactory service from one or more simple component suppliers. Those involved in bespoke projects are more likely to recognise the benefit of close collaboration and expert assistance.

Working alongside a solutions provider, such as Lenze, rather than one of the ‘me-too’ component suppliers, can offer the best chance of success. Asking the design team if they have strong, relevant knowledge of your process is vital; as is ascertaining whether they will take responsibility for sizing and selection advice in the early stages.

No matter how innovative a solution is, it must at some point be converted into a list of components, and this requires a supply partner to have a comprehensive product portfolio and understand what components and accessories need to be purchased.

Can components be connected seamlessly? A single supplier would have parts that work with one another. However, portfolios sometimes grow through acquisition – so two parts from the same supplier may actually have been designed in isolation.

Many suppliers have portfolios like this, but do they understand which parts are not optimally matched or, which ones are not recommended for your application? It’s prudent to ask if their portfolio is fully scalable, fully integrated, complete and modular. And can their products cover the foreseeable power range providing the control accuracy needed?

Strong supply chain

The components are in place. Now, they need to be delivered – quickly and reliably – and a strong supply chain is critical. In many industries, supply continuity is critical; a machine builder may need a guaranteed supply of parts for many years.

Savvy customers need to be sure that if they make changes – such as opening a new production facility in a different country – it will be fully supported. It’s critical that the supplier’s production and quality control processes are equally strong in all locations. Asking if your supplier can demonstrate long-term financial strength as well as if they are geared-up to supporting a range of specific delivery options – such as to global locations – are key questions to ask.

Software development is crucial to streamlining implementation and support activities and is used across all stages of the machine’s lifecycle – from project planning through to programming, diagnostics and maintenance.

Lenze’s design concept offers modular ‘FAST blocks’ that machine builders can incorporate into their products, to achieve complex motion easily. Complex operations are broken down to a finite number of motion sequences. By combining the ‘FAST blocks’, a machine builder can equip their machine with a wide range of motion that suits their needs – without having to develop bespoke software of their own.

The best automation development environments provide ready-made, tested modules that handle a comprehensive range of machine functions. But do they offer easily accessible tools for a range of applications? Can their tools cope with multiple ‘what if’ scenarios like identifying the best option for energy efficiency?

Arming yourself with the right questions can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of a potential automation partner – and help you make the right choice.

Dave Randall is Lenze’s Business Development Manager

Founded as Simplatroll Ltd in 1969 and based in Bedford, the business quickly established itself as a leading drives and power transmission specialist. At this time, inverters were a new technology and designers that required variable speed mostly used DC drives or mechanical variators. Demonstrating a flair for innovation even in its infancy, the business offered market leading solutions to its growing customer base, along with a portfolio of supporting products such as clutches, brakes and couplings.

Over the five decades that followed, the UK operation adopted the Lenze brand from its parent company and flourished. An emphasis on recruiting and developing talented young engineers contributed to this growth and established Lenze as a pioneer of automation and control technology. Today Lenze helps customers to solve complex operational issues, enhancing their performance with an extensive solutions-based offering. It is one of only a few providers that work with customers through the entire development process of a machine, from initial ideas to after sales, from the control system through to the drive shaft.

“We are proud to be celebrating our 50th anniversary in the UK and all we have achieved,” says Eric van den Broek, business lead for Lenze Region West. “Technology has developed rapidly in the time since our inception and our business has evolved as a result. Today we are focussed on pioneering advanced motion control solutions for customers, making it easy for them to reap the rewards from Industry 4.0 initiatives while providing the same flexible and reliable service we are known for. We’ll be celebrating this exciting milestone with several special events and activities throughout the year.”

Maintaining its UK base in Bedford, Lenze now boasts sales of approximately £20m in the UK, employing 45 people, over half of whom are skilled engineers.

www.lenze.com/en-gb

Founded as Simplatroll in 1969, over the five decades that followed, the UK operation adopted the Lenze brand from its parent company and flourished. Today Lenze helps customers to solve complex operational issues, enhancing their performance with an extensive solutions-based offering. It is one of only a few providers that work with customers through the entire development process of a machine, from initial ideas to after sales, from the control system through to the drive shaft.

Maintaining its UK base in Bedford, Lenze now boasts sales of approximately £20m in the UK, employing 45 people, over half of whom are skilled engineers.

The Lenze Smart Motor offers a complete, scalable mechatronic drive system that combines motor, gear unit and electronic drive in one incredibly easy-to-use package.  It is the ideal solution for fast and exact baggage handling. Itsfreely adjustable speed control means that one geared-motor variant covers many conveyor requirements, reducing the need for multiple drive variants and offers endless retro-fit possibilities.

The Lenze Smart Motor provides the best solution for baggage handling systems, combining an intelligent variable speed motor with high efficiency gearbox for reduced energy consumption. The decentralised drive concept provides a reduction in wiring complexity and enables quick installation.

Neil Beaumont, Marketing Manager at Lenze says, “We are looking forward to further demonstrating at PTX how our technology can transform baggage handling. The Lenze Smart Motor is a simple, efficient and highly reliable decentralised drive solution for high speed baggage handling conveyor systems. Conveyor speeds can be quickly and easily controlled by an NFC-capable smartphone and Lenze app.

“Our customers benefit from our leading technology and our drive expertise too. In fact, we’re proud to say our motors and drives are the choice of baggage handling system integrators all over the world.”

Lenze will have experts on hand at the exhibition to answer visitor questions and to show why airport logistics goes blue.

Visit Lenze’s stand (booth number 6200/6210) for a coffee and a chat at Passenger Terminal Expo (PTX) 2019, London ExCeL, 26 – 28 March 2019.

On Sunday 29 July, Geraint Thomas sealed his victory in the Tour de France, wearing the famous Yellow Jersey across the finish line on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Over the previous three weeks, however, Thomas and his Team Sky team mates had carried something else on their shoulders. Their black and white jerseys were emblazoned with a stylised image of a whale, and the hashtag #PassOnPlastic.

A few years ago, it was unlikely that a prime advertising location on the strip of a leading team at one of the world’s major sporting events would be devoted to the issue of marine plastic waste. Today, things have changed dramatically. For many people, it was David Attenborough’s BBC Blue Planet II TV series that really brought home the impact of our careless handling of plastic materials. In truth, momentum has been building for some time.

More than eight billion kilograms of plastic waste is estimated to flow into the world’s oceans every year. The majority of that waste comes from packaging, which accounts for 40 percent of global plastic production. And once plastic reaches the sea, that’s where it stays. 90% of ocean waste is plastic materials of various kinds. On average, there are around 18,000 pieces of plastic on every square kilometre of ocean surface.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a high concentration of plastic debris trapped by currents in the middle of the North Pacific, is estimated to cover an area of around 1.6 million square kilometres. Scientists can’t agree on its exact size, in part because it is difficult to tell the difference between that highly polluted area and the slightly lower density of plastic in the surrounding waters.

Alternative approaches

There is wider agreement, however, that we can’t go on dumping huge quantities of plastic waste into the sea. Across the world, governments, industry and consumers are acting to find alternative approaches. Those actions are aimed at every stage of the plastics supply chain. A growing number of countries are introducing taxes to discourage the use of single-use plastic bags, or even banning their use altogether. In England, the introduction of a 5p charge on plastic bags led to an 85 percent drop in the consumption of single-use bags in the 12 months after its 2015 introduction.

Many European countries have outlawed the disposal of municipal plastic waste in landfill. Changes to packaging law in Germany are intended to drive plastics recycling levels up from today’s 36 percent to 63 percent by 2022. The EU has plans to raise plastic recycling across all member states above 65 percent by 2035.

Industry is already working to stay ahead of these regulatory changes. And many companies are facing growing pressure from consumers and environmental groups to move further and faster in reducing the impact of plastic waste generated by their activities. In the UK, 42 businesses, including major retailers and consumer-goods manufacturers, have signed up to the “UK Plastics Pact”, committing themselves to the elimination of unnecessary plastic packaging and a switch to 100 percent reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging material by 2025. Many of the world’s largest consumer goods companies have made similar commitments to introduce fully recyclable packaging across their global operations.

Making this shift isn’t going be straightforward. Households, municipal authorities and the waste industry will need to become even more rigorous in the sorting and separation of material. The plastic recycling industry will have to significantly ramp up its capacity. And western countries will no longer be able assume that developing nations will be willing to take on the recycling burden. China, for example, introduced a ban on plastic waste imports at the end of 2017. Researchers at the University of Georgia have estimated that, by 2030, that will leave 111 million tonnes of plastic waste with no route to disposal.

The change will also have significant implications for packaging processes, and for the manufacturers of packaging machinery. Over the next seven years, almost every major consumer goods company is likely to be re-evaluating, re-designing and re-tooling its packaging operations. For some products, the changes may be trivial, limited to labelling alterations, for example. For others, companies may be able to find like-for-like substitutions for problematic materials, allowing them to run their existing packaging lines with little modification.

Wholesale redesign

In a significant number of cases, however, the desire to introduce sustainable solutions will require the wholesale redesign of product packaging and handling lines, or the introduction of entirely new packaging approaches. That’s going to have significant implications for the machinery and equipment used on tomorrow’s packaging lines.

Machines may have to become smarter and more flexible, for example, capable of delivering high throughput and consistent quality while handling materials that may be harder to handle or more variable in their characteristics, due to the increased use of recycled content. Novel packaging solutions may require entirely new approaches to machine design and operation.

And customers will need new solutions quickly. Not only will they be under pressure to complete the transition to recyclable or compostable solutions across their facilities and product ranges, but there is also likely to be a period of change and experimentation. Not every new packaging approach will prove to be effective or economically viable. Materials companies and packaging designers are working hard on the development of new solutions, and it is likely that some of the packaging approaches in widespread use in 2025 may not yet have been proven in large scale production.

For machine builders, the rush to transform packaging creates opportunities to sell new equipment and capture market share with innovative approaches. It also creates significant challenges. Companies will have to innovate rapidly to keep up with the aggressive timescales of their customers. That’s going to put pressure on their ability to design, build and commission new machines.

As a motion-focused automation company, Lenze naturally stands to benefit from growth and transformation in the packaging equipment industry. But it is also our responsibility to ensure that we can support our machine-builder customers effectively. That’s a challenge we relish. We have been supplying components and systems for packaging equipment for more than 70 years, and throughout that time we have been working hard to develop solutions that address the changing needs of the industry.

Today, our offering encompasses a broad range of hardware and software solutions, from cost-effective modular motion components to the latest industry 4.0 technologies. Our aim is to make it as easy as possible for customers to integrate advanced technologies into their designs, using open standards and smart software tools so machine builders can focus on the things that differentiate their products, and deliver real value to their end customers.

Intelligent automation

Our Intelligent automation platform, for example, allow packaging machines to adapt to changes in environmental conditions or material characteristics. And our Lenze FAST software toolbox provides standardised modules for a wide range of common motion tasks, reducing software engineering effort by up to 80 percent.

Turning the tide on plastic pollution will require concerted effort by consumers, governments and industry. The packaging equipment sector has a critical role to play in that transformation, and advanced automation technologies give companies the power to make a real difference.

With a barista and coffee shop style seating area on the stand, Lenze will provide opportunities for machine manufacturers to network and consult with experts in machine automation solutions.

Lenze is actively involved with PPMA BEST (Business Education, Skills and Training), during the show and on Thursday 27th September, 60 students will attend the Young Peoples' skills seminar and workshop. As well as a visit to the Lenze stand and other key exhibitors, New Business Automation Manager, Michael Sachpekidis, will present and discuss the latest automation technology innovations within the industry. Stand J70

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Its commissioning and application training courses are tailored to the needs of engineers within machine and system manufacturers, to help them incorporate the latest drive and automation technology into their systems.

“These courses contain in-depth product detail, and plenty of opportunity for participants to independently extend their programming knowledge,” says Mark Turner, Applications Manager at Lenze UK.

Examples include courses on specific Lenze products, such as the i500 inverter or i700 servo inverter.

One new course, introduced this year, is a one-day workshop on how to apply Lenze’s FAST application software toolbox to robotics applications. FAST is a way of incorporating standard technology modules into a program, accelerating the development of machine software. In this new course, delegates learn how to commission a robotic PLC-program and adapt it to individual requirements.

In addition, Lenze has developed a ‘virtual machine’ to help delegates better visualise how a particular program or design will work in practice – such as when writing software for a robotics application.

“We don’t have a pick-and-place robot on site – but you can plug into our virtual machine and visualise exactly how everything will work,” says Turner. “This helps bring the training to life.”

At the same time, Lenze offers a wide range of more basic service training. This is aimed mainly at machine operators and maintenance engineers, helping them run diagnostics and eliminate faults in specific pieces of Lenze drive & automation equipment.

While application courses are typically run at Lenze’s training facilities in the Bedford headquarters, the service courses are usually carried out at a client’s premises. This is often down to practicality, as there tend to be more attendees on service courses, “It’s easier for us to send one application engineer to a company’s facility, rather than 10 customer employeescoming to Bedford,” says Turner.

Lenze also has an online training portal, acessable directly from the website to the registration system. Online courses areaffordable and flexible, allowing delegates to learn at a time and pace that suits them.

Online modules are also a useful way of preparing for more rigorous training: for instance, Lenze recommends taking the ‘Robotics Basics’ online training course prior to attending its ‘FAST Robotics’ course.

While many courses are tailored to the specific needs of the customer, training is standardised across Lenze’s global sites – meaning that a course given in Germany, for instance, will be equivalent to one given in France or the UK. This is a useful resource for global OEMs – whose employees will receive equivalent training from Lenze,

“It allows a significant reduction in the development time for basic functions,” says Stewart Hylden, Managing Director at Lenze UK. “The time saved can be invested in further developing special machine features.”

Lenze FAST covers around 80% of all software engineering requirements, meaning that the majority of a machine’s software development can be carried out automatically.

Lenze also demonstrated its ability to help customers embrace Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT) by enabling capabilities such as remote monitoring and storing machine data in the cloud.

The ability to capture and analyse digital data is becoming vital in manufacturing. Building on its history as a component supplier, Lenze has increasingly become a provider of solutions that can acquire and analyse machinery operating data, and store it in the cloud.

Connectivity to the cloud will become a standard feature in the next few years. Lenze uses standardised protocols such as OPC UA or the MQTT standard in its automation portfolio, to guarantee that its components are futureproof.