First UK Cyber Factory training facility

Professor Mehmet Karamanoglu, Design Engineering and Mathematics Head of Department at Middlesex University, said: “Middlesex University prides itself in providing the best facilities to support its students. Everything we have developed over the years has been specified to industry standard. Expanding our provision in automation, smart technologies is no exception.

“We have partnered with Festo since the early ’90s and have kept that partnership active for over two decades. Festo is a dynamic, innovative and forward looking company, concentrating on the bigger picture.

“We are also grateful to Festo for bringing along some of their partner companies to enhance our provision, such as Siemens. All our automation labs are now fitted with technologies provided by Siemens. The benefit for our students, in working with such industry partners, is immense and will continue to have a huge impact on their employability.”

The University is committed to providing outstanding teaching facilities as part of its mission of putting students first and since the year 2000 has invested over £200m into its London Campus. The Ritterman Building forms an important part of the ongoing investment in the student experience.  

Babak Jahanbani, Head of Learning Systems at Festo Didactic (GB), said: “Festo and the University share a common goal to ensure that the key skills necessary to deliver the full potential of industrial automation are being developed alongside advances in the technology. We have collaborated closely on a number of topics and also partner the University for the annual Mechatronics Competition of World Skills UK.  

“As a result of our long-term partnership, Middlesex University is one of the best equipped centres for Festo Didactic and runs very successful engineering degree courses. This new training facility is the first of its type in the UK and will provide essential practical experience for the engineers of the future.”

The new building at Middlesex University houses a number of double-sided pneumatics and electro-pneumatics learning systems, PLCs, Modular Production Systems and a Process Automation System.  

The training equipment supplied by Festo comprises a comprehensive six-station table top unit (two production cells of three stations), as well as two bridging stations that enable an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) to deliver the logistics / transport between the cells.

Fully automated, the facility also features an energy monitoring system; RFID - a method for tracking components and goods by means of tags which transmit a radio signal; a digital maintenance system; augmented reality; near field communication (NFC) – which enables any object equipped with a chip to exchange information directly without the need for a computer or communications network; and a manufacturing execution system (MES).

Essentially, this means that the training facility is Industry 4.0 ready. Industry 4.0 is defined as the fourth industrial revolution, in which digitalisation is increasingly used to connect the real with the virtual world, blurring the technological boundaries.

Festo’s Jahanbani explains: “A simple example of Industry 4.0 in action comes from retail, where RFID is now commonly used so that products can be tracked and traced by customers from the warehouse, through the delivery process to their homes.

“By adopting Industry 4.0 more extensively, we could soon see factories where components can automatically “talk” to each other and the machines to share function and specification data, enabling us to create more complex products more quickly. It even makes batch size of one economical. Production lines will know when stocks are low and order more of what they need to continue making things, without human intervention.

“In addition, the smart factory will also constantly check for parameters like energy consumption and maintenance requirements, scheduling activity in the most efficient and cost-conscious way.”

Brian Holliday, Managing Director, Siemens Digital Factory adds: “I’m delighted that our advanced automation technology features in the new Cyber Factory training facility at Middlesex University in support of the leading edge, digital skills training the University is undertaking to prepare UK graduates for the industrial digital revolution - Industry 4.0."

The Ritterman building is Middlesex’s newest building on its London campus, housing subjects from the Faculty of Science and Technology as well as the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries.

It is named in honour of the University’s Chancellor, Dame Janet Ritterman, who has been an outstanding advocate for the University and its students since being appointed Chancellor in 2013.