OMRON Corporation has announced its plan to successively incorporate artificial intelligence (AI)/Internet of things (IoT) technologies into its factory automation (FA) equipment up to 2020 in a bid to offer solutions to the social issues facing many manufacturing businesses, such as the shortage of skilled engineers and rising labor costs.

By equipping FA equipment with optimal AI algorithms to replace the knowledge and intuition of skilled engineers with AI, OMRON supports manufacturing businesses that are troubled by the lack of engineering workers and surging labor costs, thus working to realize the "manufacturing floors of the future" in which "machines bring out human capabilities and creativity".

OMRON is the only FA equipment manufacturer in the world that has all of the necessary equipment for automating manufacturing sites under one umbrella, including sensors and other input devices, motors and other output devices, safety devices, and robots, claims company.

At present, OMRON is conducting demonstrations at its own and customers' factories in the Netherlands, China and Japan to determine how different types of FA equipment can be equipped with AI algorithms and how such equipment can be made IoT-capable.

Following its 2015 statement that it would make all of its 100,000 varieties of FA equipment IoT-capable, OMRON has begun releasing related equipment, while at the same time acquiring know-how on AI-equipped mobile robots and other industrial robot types, as well as the world's finest motion control technology, and offering such technologies globally. This April saw the release of a temperature controller featuring AI, the first of its kind in the FA industry. By integrating the world's most extensive FA equipment line with AI, IoT, robotics and other state-of-the-art technologies, OMRON is enhancing its products and technologies that help solve issues on manufacturing floors.