EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

Preparing for growth

A long-established family-run engineering company in Warwickshire is preparing for a major new phase of growth after receiving assistance from a regional business support organisation.Henley Engineers, founded in 1942 and based in Henley-in-Arden, worked closely with Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub to modernise its operations, upgrade its digital infrastructure and identify new market opportunities. The support included help securing a £20,000 grant from Made Smarter West Midlands towards a £70,000 investment in a new ERP and CRM system. Henley is also investing in its first robotic welding arm.

More information https://cwgrowthhub.co.uk

Flexxbotics Expansion

Flexxbotics, delivering digital solutions for robot-driven manufacturing at scale, is expanding with new offices in Newlab at Michigan Central in Detroit. Driven by growing demand for manufacturing autonomy with autonomous process control, the new facilities position Flexxbotics for even tighter collaboration with customers and partners across the Midwest.Newlab operates five innovation centres around the world that connect high-growth technology companies with industrial ecosystems for cross-sector networking and deployment.

More information www.flexxbotics.com

Systems integrator ITI acquires AssetMinder

International systems integrator ITI Group has acquired AssetMinder, a provider of IoT condition-based monitoring SaaS solutions for industry. Dominic Murphy, CEO of ITI Group, says:“As factories continue to modernise and use data to manage and improve productivity and efficiency, AssetMinder complements our established expertise in helping clients optimise operations. Supporting our customers with reliability detail means we can deliver predictive maintenance data to optimise efficiency and reduce costly unplanned downtime.”

More information www.itigroup.com

Automation firm names trio of new partners

Automation firm adi Lean Manufacturing & Design has agreed new strategic partnerships with Schneider Electric, Desoutter Tools and Balluff, further strengthening its offer to UK manufacturers.Founded in 2011, adi Lean Manufacturing & Design specialises in designing and building bespoke engineering solutions, ranging from robot cells and assembly lines to manual workstations and trackside equipment.The partnership with Schneider Electric builds on a 10-year relationship and formally recognises the division as a Registered Alliance Partner system integrator within Schneider Electric’s Global Alliance Partner Programme.

More information www.bit.ly/4p6S1Q9

New Era of Physical AI for Industrial Robots

Factory robot and automation system specialist FANUC is formally partnering with NVIDIA to bring physical AI into mainstream manufacturing as part of a move to shape the next generation of smart factories. Under the agreement, FANUC robots will be integrated with NVIDIA’s advanced AI computing stack, including on-robot systems like NVIDIA Jetson and simulation platforms such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim.

For its part, FANUC has released support for the open-source robotics platform ROS 2, which allows programming via Python, lowering the barrier to building AI-driven robotics applications on top of FANUC’s industrial hardware. The partnership will also enable the creation of high-fidelity digital twins, where simulation can be used for training, testing and optimisation before committing to investment.

More information www.fanuc.eu