Supplement of ipcm® - International Paint&Coating Magazine n. 74.
Two key phrases appear in almost every article in this issue of ICT: responsible consumption and smart production.
It is well known that the philosophy of smart manufacturing has revolutionised production times and methods, bringing into the factories different technologies and strategies that fall under the umbrella of Industry 4.0, with the aim of optimising Products, Processes, and People. In the cleaning sector, all machines and systems are now 4.0: interconnected to each other and to the factory management systems, they ensure complete traceability of products, collect data, and transform them into useful information to reduce downtime while improving productivity and the efficiency of the entire manufacturing process.
Responsible consumption, i.e., taking purchasing and usage decisions by paying attention to their impact on both the environment and social justice, is a concept that cuts across many industries and areas of our daily lives. There is pressure to consume food more responsibly by buying local and in season; to reduce fast fashion in favour of responsible clothing consumption, by buying less and better; and, in general, to use non-renewable resources.
The latter point, in particular, is of most interest to the industrial cleaning sector, where electricity and water are the two most important resources for operating machines.
Promoting the ecological transition of the cleaning industry means, among other things, encouraging the integration of plants employing water and detergent with waste water treatment and recirculation systems – a technology that is well established in the coating sector but still little understood by the cleaning one. It means implementing new solvents that are more effective and have a higher yield and a much smaller environmental footprint than the old ones. It means choosing dry cleaning options wherever possible.
The concepts of smart manufacturing and responsible consumption are of course intertwined: thanks to the digitalisation of processes and the improvement in production efficiency guaranteed by the Industry 4.0 technologies, responsible consumption is no longer a dream but a conscious choice that businesses are increasingly inclined to make.
These and many other technical topics are covered in this issue, which, as always, includes a number of exclusive articles written on the field by our international editors and contributors.
An added value that some technical magazine can still offer to their readers.
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