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ISA provides technical resources and standards to help industrial automation professionals advance their careers and the field. We enable automation professionals worldwide to solve problems and enhance their skills by bringing people together to create new technologies and share best practices with future automation professionals.
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Bill Lydon
Bill Lydon, an experienced industrial automation technical and business professional, is currently a consultant providing insights, facilitating thinking and coaching for digital manufacturing transformation. Lydon has 35 years of experience, including industrial, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), process control/DCS, electrical power/utility and building automation with technology and business experience ranging from design, application engineering, corporate experience, co-founder & president of a start-up company. He started his career as a designer of computer-based machine tool controls; in other positions, he applied programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and process control technology. He's trained and experienced as a group Creative Problem Solving & Value Engineering facilitator.
Working at a large company, Lydon served a two-year stint as part of a five-person task group, that designed a new generation automation system including controllers, networking and supervisory and control software. He also designed software for chiller and boiler plant optimization. Bill was the product manager for a multimillion-dollar controls and automation product line and later cofounder and president of an industrial control software company with solutions for factory and process control and automation.
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Feature
Is the Internet of Things Creating Unfocused Urgency to Monitor Everything?
The hyper-focus on IoT is creating an unfocused urgency monitor everything, which could lead to over instrumenting automation systems & creating data noise.By: Bill Lydon11 January, 2017 | 2 minutes -
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How Cloud Computing Delivers a New Industrial Automation Tool for Improving Operations
Cloud computing simplifies industrial systems administration and support and the analytics can be levered for improving process operations.By: Bill Lydon26 October, 2016 | 8 minutes -
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The Big Maintenance Dilemma: In-House vs. Outsourcing
Determining whether to use in-house staff to perform maintenance or to outsource to a contractor is a source of continual headaches for many a company. The decision-making process will come down to three approaches to maintenance managementBy: Bill Lydon10 October, 2016 | 3 minutes -
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Automation Controllers & Word Processors Embrace the Technological Shift or Die
The foundations of the automation industry are being reshaped right now from the torrent of ideas driven by Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Given today’s trends, are industrial automation controllers headed down a path to extinction?By: Bill Lydon19 September, 2016 | 3 minutes -
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Cybersecurity: Where Does the Reasoning Begin?
Usually during cybersecurity presentations, the speakers talk about serious consequences of cyber security and then overwhelm people, who are not familiar with the topic, with deep levels of details and intricacies. This one answers a simple question: Where does the reasoning begin?By: Bill Lydon22 July, 2016 | 3 minutes -
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ISA Members Develop Key Standards That Advance the Industrial Automation Industry
ISA members develop standards in everything from cybersecurity to process safety to interfaces between industrial process control computers and subsystemsBy: Bill Lydon22 June, 2016 | 2 minutes -
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Cybersecurity Strategy at Ford: IT & Automation Cooperation
Mike Bastian, Global Controls Manager at Ford, shared the motivations behind their cybersecurity strategy, as well as defined 7 systems which are essential for reliable operations and keeping production running smoothly.By: Bill Lydon20 May, 2016 | 5 minutes -
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Technical Deep Dive: Multi-core Industrial Controllers
Beckhoff Automation has been offering multi-core industrial controllers since 2006 with users benefiting from the advantages that this increased performance delivers. We discuss multi-core technology with Beckhoff Automation’s Daymon Thompson, Automation Specialist.By: Bill Lydon11 April, 2016 | 10 minutes -
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Response to Automation Industry Problem: React or Positively Act?
It is not important how you react to automation industry problems, issues, and challenges, but how you positively act.By: Bill Lydon04 April, 2016 | 2 minutes -
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Process Plant Historians Deliver Insights and Improve Operations
Before the term “big data” was being used as part of the Internet of Things, plant historians were handling large volumes of time-synchronized data.By: Bill Lydon08 February, 2016 | 9 minutes
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