Industry 4.0 enablement prompts NXP investment
NXP Semiconductors has opened an Industry 4.0 development centre in Hamburg, in Germany, to support global manufacturing customers in pursuit of bespoke industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions.
The new Industrial Competency Centre (ICC) will help manufacturers with machine learning, industrial communications, edge computing, and robotics and automation, said the Dutch semiconductor company.
The laboratory in Hamburg will be led by Christian Wiebus, as chief technology officer. Wiebus commented: “NXP’s ICC is already delivering key solutions to its customers and we look forward to further advancing our partnerships.”
NXP said it will use the facility to cooperate more closely with customers, standards bodies, system integrators and research partners on IIoT hardware, software and service solutions.
Sylvain Gardet, director of the new site, said it will provide the “missing link” for manufacturers seeking to developer their own solutions.
“We want to provide the missing link to give manufacturers the flexibility to build their own solutions covering today’s Industry 4.0 hot topics,” he said.
Specifically, NXP said the ICC will target customers seeking to tailor solutions for core IIoT applications such as time sensitive networking and industrial Linux enablement.
At Electronica 2018 in Hamburg last week, NXP went hard with its showcase of edge-based machine learning solutions, featuring applications for facial recognition for access control, object recognition for operator safety, local voice control commands, and artificial intelligence based anomaly detection for predictive maintenance.
