GLASS & SEALEDUNITS
Like clockwork- automation in fenestration
Chris Alderson, Managing Director of warm edge pioneers Edgetech, explains how automation is already changing the way fenestration businesses operate.
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AUTOMATION IS OFTEN presented as a destabilising phenomenon – and there’ s no question, it’ s set to drastically change the way companies, industries and even whole economies work.
But in doing so, it’ s got enormous potential to help businesses improve – and face the increasingly complex and ever-multiplying challenges of the twenty-first century.
There were 1.9m industrial robots in the world in 2014, according to respected US think-tank the Brookings Institute. By 2020, that’ s expected to have risen to almost 3m.
But automation isn’ t about replacing your human workforce with robots. It’ s about using technology to run your factory like clockwork. In manufacturing, fewer points of contact reduces human error, while allowing managers to reassign workers to more valuable and specialised tasks.
At the same time, it also offers a way through one of the biggest problems facing the construction sector over the next few decades – the skills shortage. The Manufacturing Institute estimates 3.5m construction jobs will need filling in the next ten years – and that the lack of qualified candidates will mean that as many as two million of those could go unfilled. We’ re already seeing highly efficient intelligent machines that could help us to bridge this gap- for example, one company in the US has developed a brick-laying robot that can work up to six times faster on average than a human.
But automation also has particular benefits for fenestration. For a number of years, the fenestration industry got used to seeing the energy efficiency and overall performance of glass units improve all the time.
Ground-breaking innovations appeared – polyamide thermal breaks, warm-edge spacer bars, and others. Manufacturing techniques improved. And now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the best window products offer a level of thermal performance that wouldn’ t even have been conceivable not that long ago.
Now, those drastic gains have flattened off. Exceptional thermal efficiency is the new norm. Fabricators, installers and end-users don’ t just expect great performance from the most expensive windows anymore, they expect it from all products, no matter the price.
And that presents IGU manufacturers with a challenge – the need to produce huge volumes of windows, all of which offer best-in-class energy efficiency.
At Edgetech, we’ ve watched the make-up of the IGU market shift quite dramatically over the decades that we’ ve been operating in the UK. Back in 2007, there were approximately 1,300 companies making glass units. Today there are only 848.
But despite the number of IGU manufacturers dropping by over a third in just a decade, the total number of units being made has increased. So how has that happened?
The answer is unsurprisingly complex, with all number of different factors at play. But one of the biggest has undoubtedly been automation.
Going forward, it’ s likely that automation technology will allow us to make even greater efficiency gains. More and more businesses around the world are coming to rely on what’ s known as the Internet of Things – a term given to all sorts of different machines and devices communicating with each other using the internet.
The pace of change is only going to accelerate – which means the earlier you embrace automation, the easier you’ ll find it to adapt to the world that lies around the corner.
At Edgetech, we’ ve worked with IGU manufacturers all around the world to successfully implement automation technology, and watched them thrive as a result. If you want us to help your factory run like clockwork, call Edgetech today.
For more information on Edgetech’ s range of spacers and to stay up-to-date with the latest developments from the company visit: www. edgetechig. co. uk
64 » MAY 2018 » CLEARVIEW-UK. COM