Smart Industry 1/2017

Advertorial
Technologies, products, and expertise for the future
of manufacturing
building the
Smart Factory
With a full range of
solutions—sensors,
connectivity, embedded
processing, and power.
STMicroelectronics is
committed to playing a
key role in making the
Smart Factory revolution
occur seamlessly.
Although acronyms and names
for the concept differ—IIoT
(Industrial Internet of Things),
Industry 4.0, Smart Industry,
Intelligent Factory—the definition is
the same: the convergence between industrial
infrastructure and cloud computing,
giving rise to the Smart Factory.
This transformation of the industry is
destined to open new opportunities
for economic growth and competitiveness.
"Automated production lines are
the heart of every factory," said Matteo
Lo Presti, Corporate Vice President, General
Manager Analog Products, Analog
& MEMS Group (AMG) at ST. "Together
with electric motors, these production
lines use most of global electricity demand.
The most advanced technological
solutions can guarantee huge savings
in energy consumption. But saving
energy is just the start: technological
advances can help machines anticipate
failure conditions and activate preventive
maintenance procedures, or build
a production chain that learns how to
cope with changes in demand. These
advancements set the scene for major
developments and ST is positioned to
make significant contributions in the
industry.”
ST’s enabling technologies
for Industry 4.0
"ST enables the smart factory with advanced
solutions for driving automated
lines and electric motors with high efficiency,
embedding diagnostics and
protections, as well as real-time connectivity,"
adds Lo Presti.
"Our broad portfolio provides all the
key elements required for Industry 4.0:
smart power management ICs, motor
drivers, microcontrollers, sensors and
actuators, wired connectivity with IO-
Link and powerline communication or
wireless with sub-1GHz long-range RF
networks and WiFi to mention a few.
And more: ST’ s on-chip galvanic isolation
technology brings benefits to a
wide variety of industrial equipment,
as well as general programmable logic
controller (PLC) applications, with enhanced
space savings, noise immunity
and reliability. User’s safety is guaranteed
by our actuators satisfying the
Matteo Lo Presti
Corporate Vice President,
General Manager Analog
Products, Analog & MEMS
Group (AMG) at ST
requirements of Safety Integrity Level
(SIL2 and SIL3) compliant systems.
We have all the elements for a true
technology revolution that can significantly
reduce the cost of ownership,
the downtime of machine tools, and
the price of automated production
lines. "There are many ways ST can
contribute to this revolution, each
with enormous potential for growth
and business. Among them, our increasingly
sophisticated smart-power
and BCD technologies and embedded
non-volatile memories facilitate the
integration of complex functions for
smart control, top power efficiency,
and increased robustness. Our successful
components and modules are based
on the system expertise we’ve gained
over the years, as well as our strong relationships
with market leaders.”
Joint developments with
ecosystem partners and
serving medium-sized
enterprises
“We have partnered with major players
in factory automation and provide
products to develop increasingly
smarter systems, which combine
higher efficiency with increasing intelligence,
decentralized diagnostics,
communication and flexibility to
adapt in real time to external events.
Lo Presti concludes, "In addition to
collaborating with large companies,
ST also serves small and mediumsized
enterprises by offering reference
designs and prototype solutions
closer and closer to their needs. Technologies,
products, system expertise:
that’s what is needed to succeed in
building Smart Factories--the fourth
industrial revolution.”
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