A study on industrial automation requirements and facilitation in Malta

Abstract

The Maltese manufacturing sector has experienced a number of difficulties in the past decade, for various reasons, namely historical events such as the fall of communism and war in Eastern Europe. In order to react to this situation, an Industrial Strategy for the manufacturing sector was issued. Inspired by this strategy, a project by the name of AUTOMATE was started. This project had a number of targets, however in this dissertation the targets and results which the author had as a direct contribution will be presented. This dissertation will look into an extensive literature review related to clusters and shared resources initiatives taken up around the globe, in an attempt to expand on the guidelines in the industrial strategy mentioned earlier. Then this dissertation continues to look into information gathering on the current scenario of the manufacturing industry vis-a-vis both the market situation as well as the implementation of automation equipment. The results of the survey were analysed and interpreted, as a sample and even from the point of view of the individual sectors or size groupings. The analysis of the results together with the background literature gave rise to a set of guidelines for the companies in an attempt to attract high value added products as well as to implement automation. Another set of guidelines are addressed to the State in an attempt to aid companies reduce the time spent in non-value adding activities. This dissertation also presents a test-case, which had the target of automation of a very labour intensive process. In order to do so, some of the guidelines were applied, thus justifying their validity. Finally the dissertation comes to an end by giving a summary of what has been achieved and what future work can consist of.