Energy saving strategies a key interest at IMR
Energy saving strategies are a key area of interest at Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR), David McCormack, director of sustainable manufacturing with IMR, explained at the event.
“What we do essentially is to de-risk and demystify and deliver emerging concepts and trends in technology for Irish industry,” said the Enfield man.
This it achieves across what he terms “four main pillars” – digitalisation, automation and advanced control, design for manufacturing and finally sustainable manufacturing.
“Digitalisation looks at getting data – essentially optimizing data, visualising data, all with the view of making data-intelligent decisions,” David continues.
“Automation and advanced control is the robotics or the cobotics – the robot and the human working side by side.
“Design for manufacturing looks at additive 3D printing technology and also traditional CNC (computer numerical control) machining technology.
“And then finally, sustainable manufacturing, which is where we’re looking to help place industry in the heart of the net zero transition and for that we leverage all of the other domain expertise areas to allow us to make a manufacturing company sustainable.
“So we would gather the data, we would visualise the data and then we would look to optimise the systems to reduce energy, to reduce material waste and to reduce water use.”
The facility helps enterprises of all sizes – from micro to multinational.
“We are an Enterprise Ireland founded centre and we’re here to help any industry on the island of Ireland,” says David, adding that among the ways it helps firms in the area of sourcing funding.
Also of note is that there is no fee for firms consulting with IMR, although in general most would be subscribed to a membership structure IMR operates.
“You pay for membership and that involves networking and a credit system where you can draw down expertise, but you do not have to be a member to engage with Irish Manufacturing research. So you can just walk in and have a conversation and the way we work is we will try to look at developing out what is the best road forward for that with the company.
As energy and materials costs rise, there can be real benefits to firms who opt to shift towards increased sustainability: “From an energy perspective over the last number of years with energy prices going up, there are significant savings and also significant reductions in [the time for] return on investment now when you’re investing in energy technology,” David concludes.