Transferring Industrial Automation Technology to the Laboratory

Over the past few years, there has been much discussion about transferring industrial technology to laboratories. While it is easy to look at the superficial similarities, it is more important to examine the different requirements of different industries. In this way, it is possible to identify the technologies and techniques that can be successfully transferred to the laboratory to improve performance. This paper takes three very different industries — the bakery, High Throughput Screening (HTS) and mobile phone assembly and examines their different requirements. These industries have been selected from among the many sectors where the RTS Group operates — thus allowing real data from a number of situations to be used. One of the most important areas in automation design is the relationship between flexibility and throughput. This paper focuses on this relationship and its influence over machine configuration when comparing the requirements of the different industries.