Headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, OMRON Corporation is a multi-billion-dollar, diversified company with four business units - industrial automation, device and module solutions, healthcare, and social system solutions. It brings innovation to manufacturing sites through automation with its “innovative-automation” concept comprising of "Integrated”, "Intelligent" and "Interactive" sub-concepts with one of the world’s most sophisticated and wide product range encompassing panel components, smart sensors, Vision technologies, PLCs, Servos, Drives, Robots & Cobots and Machine safety solutions (ILOR+S) technology. 

Sameer Gandhi, managing director, of OMRON Automation India spoke about the company and said, “We cater to varied industrial applications encompassing the wide requirements of packaging, automotive, material handling, food & beverages, digital and panel building applications. The company is focusing on the solution business, including Robotics and IoT, providing “One Stop” solutions to improve the overall efficiency on diverse production sites.”

Providing a harmonious human-machine collaboration

OMRON offers a wide and diverse end-to-end solutions-based portfolio premised on its strong capabilities of creating human-machine harmonies. Gandhi elaborated further, “We have a wide portfolio of solutions for both machine makers and end users comprising of advanced sensors, compact and powerful motion solutions with battery-free absolute encoder servo motors, machine controllers with AI-based temperature controls and cloud connectivity, machine safety and assessment, and smart vision solutions to cater to all kinds of inspection needs.”

The brand is also known for a wide range of standard to food-grade robots, predictive maintenance and energy efficiency solutions, and EtherCAT-based unified communication. Also provided are software technologies like anti-sloshing, vibration suppression, and perfect sealing – all controlled within a single software platform (Sysmac).

Post-pandemic impact on the packaging industry

Automation is enabling the packaging sector to live up to the complexities, challenges, new demands, and opportunities the post-Covid world has brought in. According to Gandhi, the post-pandemic world of packaging is demanding due to a rise in the demand for better quality, more hygienic, and ‘zero-touch’ packaged goods, the emergence of high-mix-low-volume requirements, and an upsurge in the concern towards eco-friendly packaging. All this is making machine manufacturers look up to global standards by going for high-end performance, end-to-end, and completely integrated and scalable solutions.

 “Equipped with solutions delivering scalability, connectivity, modularity, openness, and safety, OMRON, as a strong automation partner, is helping them move up the value chain. We are on our way to enhancing our reach amongst packaging solution machine makers catering to food and commodity, pharmaceutical, and FMCG markets,” he proudly added.

Solving customers’ unique challenges

Focusing on the themes of quality, safety, and the environment, OMRON supports manufacturing innovation with its unique sensing and control technologies. Gandhi explained, “OMRON caters to customers across the country via its strong network of offices, application, service and sales engineers supported by an automation technology center (for demos and PoCs), training centers as well as channel partners to address the ever-challenging requirements. A major factor in OMRON’s progress globally and locally has been the strong commitment to providing solutions towards its customers’ unique challenge.”

The transition toward sustainability

Keeping in view the transition towards sustainability, OMRON strongly believes that it can “Empower people through automation” and that is what it has strongly indicated in its next long-term vision- “Shaping the Future 2030” (SF 2030). Gandhi remarked, “Under this vision, the automation business, will undertake deployment of innovative-automation concept to bring in more technological innovation and enhance respect for the environment too. We feel that if we do this right, we will be able to contribute to a sustainable future based on harmony between people and machines.”

Bringing in topical global solutions for India

Gandhi informed that OMRON aims to provide global solutions to the Indian packaging industry to enable it to become more competitive – not just in terms of costs but also in terms of quality. Talking about their services’ impact, he said, “Our solutions are helping the industry produce more and faster (E.g. perfect sealing on high-speed machines) with better quality (E.g., vision inspection solutions to check for contaminants in the final packed product).” OMRON’s track and trace solutions help instill consumer confidence while at the same time providing a weapon to the producers to fight against counterfeits.

“We'll continue to work on these and also bring in more topical global solutions and build the industry knowledge base in India,” he signed off.