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Industrial Automation and Control
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Digital Transformation
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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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Opinion
Manufacturing Competitiveness Necessitates Understanding Automation Possibilities, and Industry Events Offer Learning Opportunities
Successful manufacturing companies understand the importance of their people attending industry trade events and symposiums to facilitate learning about the latest manufacturing and industrial automation concepts, techniques and products available.By: Bill Lydon27 May, 2026 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Open, Proprietary or Managed Ecosystems Require Critical Business Management Decisions
Industrial control and automation systems investments require critical business management decisions for long term competitiveness, growth and profits over time.By: Bill Lydon26 May, 2026 | 5 minutes -
Feature
Process Industry Working Group Accelerates Process Control and Automation Convergence
The PLCopen Process Industry Working Group will explore the incorporation of the function blocks PLCopen has developed for the O-PAS standard into a new PLCopen standard.By: Bill Lydon17 December, 2025 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Open Systems Initiatives Require Critical Business Management Decisions
Understand the trade-offs and investments needed to create an integrated, real-time, industrial manufacturing business.By: Bill Lydon07 March, 2025 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Process Users Shift from DCS to PLC: PLC vs. DSC Experience Survey
The PLC vs. DSC Experience Survey interim report is an ongoing, crowdsourced, open survey for users to share experience and know-how with the automation community.By: Bill Lydon30 October, 2024 | 4 minutes -
Feature
AWS (Amazon Web Services) Digital Manufacturing Architecture: IMTS 2024
The AWS IMTS 2024 booth featured embedded hardware providers to integrate the manufacturing edge, sensors, actuators and other devices into the architecture.By: Bill Lydon29 October, 2024 | 3 minutes -
Feature
An Open-Source Control Programming Platform for Universalautomation.org Runtime Engine
The Eclipse Foundation 4diac project has spearheaded the open-source industrial software movement.By: Bill Lydon28 October, 2024 | 3 minutes -
Feature
AI Accelerating Industrial Transformation: Microsoft at IMTS 2024
Microsoft's theme at IMTS 2024 was: "Accelerate Industrial Transformation with AI."By: Bill Lydon03 October, 2024 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Siemens Digitalization of Art to Part: IMTS 2024
The Siemens software portfolio was demonstrated at IMTS 2024 illustrating the digitalization of “art to part” at its booth at IMTS 2024.By: Bill Lydon02 October, 2024 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Technology Trends That Empower Innovation
Advances in 18 technology areas are empowering and inspiring manufacturers.By: Bill Lydon25 September, 2024 | 35 minutes -
Feature
Real-time Digital Manufacturing: Realized
Applying digital transformation techniques and new system design approaches make integrated, sensor-to-enterprise systems possible.By: Bill Lydon23 September, 2024 | 5 minutes -
Feature
Automation Is Essential for Manufacturing Growth
Why consider macroeconomic or wide-ranging technological trends? Because industrial growth and resilience depend on it.By: Bill Lydon17 September, 2024 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Industrial Controller Software Standards Discussions at ARC Forum 2024
At the 28th annual ARC Industry Leadership Forum in Orlando, Control Software Standards proved to be an important piece of the discussion, particularly IEC 61131 and IEC 61499.By: Bill Lydon11 March, 2024 | 9 minutes -
Feature
Open Process Automation: Open Controllers and Decoupling Field I/O
Bill Lydon discusses the benefits of OPAF’s using existing standards rather than falling into the “we are different” trap and creating new standards.By: Bill Lydon29 February, 2024 | 6 minutes -
Feature
Open Process Automation: Status Update from ARC Forum 2024
Progress has been made on achieving the vision of an Open Process Automation system architecture.By: Bill Lydon20 February, 2024 | 5 minutes -
Feature
Rockwell Automation Expanding Scope Beyond Controls & Automation: Automation Fair 2023
Rockwell Automation (ROK) continues to evolve beyond the company's traditional industrial controls and automation business through acquisitions and growing service business.By: Bill Lydon12 December, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Fast and Actionable Machine Analytics: A Chemical Processor Case Study
At the 27th Annual ARC Industry Forum, the director of operations excellence at LSB Industries described how analytics delivered results in a short time.By: Bill Lydon28 July, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Fast and Actionable Machine Analytics: ARC Forum 2023
Brian Wolf, director, Operations Excellence at LSB Industries, described the rapid application of analytics getting results in a short time at the 27th Annual ARC Industry Forum.By: Bill Lydon11 July, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Procter & Gamble's Jeff Kent Discusses AI and Machine Learning
Jeff Kent, vice president, Smart Platforms Technology & Innovation at Procter & Gamble, discussed experience with the application of AI and machine learning at the ARC Forum 2023.By: Bill Lydon09 June, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
PureCycle Technologies' Born Digital Innovative Plastic Recycling Plant
PureCycle Technologies' mission is to transform plastic waste into an infinitely sustainable material ending the culture of single-use plastic and created to truly circular economy.By: Bill Lydon19 May, 2023 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Pfizer's 6-year Industrial Digital Transformation Journey and Results
Manufacturing management is increasingly recognizing the importance of manufacturing digitalization is a fundamental part of business strategy.By: Bill Lydon12 May, 2023 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Dow’s Private Cellular Network Empowers Manufacturing People
Clark Dressen, Dow Corporation global director, described extending the reach of systems with the application of private 5G networks at the 27th Annual ARC Industry Forum.By: Bill Lydon11 May, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
PassiveLogic Autonomous Buildings Vision Showcased at AHR 2023
PassiveLogic aims to create standards, system architecture and products that incorporate building design and modeling to directly configure and program the company's Hive autonomous building automation and control units.By: Bill Lydon21 April, 2023 | 5 minutes -
Feature
ODVA Supports Process Industry by Incorporating NE 107 & PA-DIM Data Format in EtherNet/IP Protocol
The ODVA announced another step towards supporting the process automation industry during the Hannover Messe/Fair April 17, 2023, adding NE 107 & PA-DIM Compatible Data Formats to the EtherNet/IP Specification.By: Bill Lydon21 April, 2023 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Remote Multivendor Digital Packaging Machine Services at the 27th Annual ARC Industry Forum
The New division SEA Smart Service Link has increased customer satisfaction enabling higher packaging equipment performance and functionality while creating new revenues for Sealed Air.By: Bill Lydon06 April, 2023 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Industrial Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) Update: Industrial Ethernet Week 2023
The Industrial Ethernet Week 2023 presentations provided an update on the technology and the importance of connectivity to achieve the goals of industrial digitalization/Industry 4.0.By: Bill Lydon29 March, 2023 | 4 minutes -
Feature
ODVA Ethernet-APL and PA-DIM Commitments Support Open Automation
Presentations at the ODVA SPS Press Conference indicated elements needed to meet the goals of open systems initiatives, including NAMUR Open Architecture, Open Process Automation Forum, Open Process Automation Standards and FDT Group.By: Bill Lydon24 March, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Increasing Manufacturing Information Efficiency
Industrial digitalization advances are providing new, cost-effective tools to significantly improve timely and accurate information flows and WIP (Work In Process) tracking, which improves manufacturing efficiency, quality and profits.By: Bill Lydon20 March, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Digitalizing Manufacturing: 27th Annual ARC 2023 Industry Forum in Orlando
Bill Lydon offers insights about digitalizing manufacturing that he gleaned from the 27th Annual ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida.By: Bill Lydon16 March, 2023 | 5 minutes -
Feature
Single Major Automation Vendor Architecture Myth
Manufacturers who plan to be competitive, increase profits and grow no longer believe the single major automation vendor architecture myth.By: Bill Lydon27 February, 2023 | 5 minutes -
Feature
IT Standards Accelerate Industrial Control and Automation Plug-and-Play Data Mapping
Microsoft’s Erich Barnstedt, in collaboration with Siemens, is taking the lead to simplify and automate the mapping of industrial field device data tags using discoverable data models.By: Bill Lydon23 February, 2023 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Conquering Electric Vehicle Myopia
Automation professionals are an important contributor to architecting, designing and deploying systems for effective reliability, availability and quality of electric vehicle initiatives throughout the world.By: Bill Lydon03 February, 2023 | 4 minutes -
Feature
World Economic Forum Lighthouse Project: Rockwell 2022 Automation Perspectives
The Lighthouse project is a response to the global manufacturing industry lagging the adoption of advanced technologies.By: Bill Lydon02 February, 2023 | 3 minutes -
News
PLC Industrial Controller Software Quality: Your Opinion Matters
Integrating existing metrics for code quality into software engineering workflows has benefits. Takes the survey to contribute your thoughts on the subject.By: Bill Lydon26 January, 2023 | 1 minute -
Opinion
Industry 4.0: Focus on Results, Not Industry Spin and Buzzwords
Industrial revolutions are changing our lives over decades, and they are not just covering technologies but also advances in new businesses and applications. This feature originally appeared in the December 2022 issue of InTech magazine.By: Bill Lydon12 January, 2023 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Mentoring: Paying It Forward Enriches You
Synergy is defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a superior result not independently obtainable. This feature originally appeared in the October 2022 issue of InTech magazine.By: Bill Lydon14 December, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
OPC Foundation Showcases Industrial Digitalization Integrated Architecture at SPS 2022
The OPC Foundation continues to prove it is the strongest and broadest open multivendor standards ecosystem for building integrated digital manufacturing businesses.By: Bill Lydon09 December, 2022 | 6 minutes -
Feature
Open Standards, Global Initiatives Help Modernize Operations
Organizations are driving forward to provide roadmaps, models, and standards for manufacturing digitalization. This feature originally appeared in Bill Lydon's 7th Annual Industrial Automation & Control Trends Report.By: Bill Lydon01 December, 2022 | 7 minutes -
Feature
Transformative Technologies Move Automation Forward
System-wide Internet protocol communications, 5G wireless, OPC standards, and more are transforming industrial systems. This feature originally appeared in Bill Lydon's 7th Annual Industrial Automation & Control Trends Report.By: Bill Lydon28 November, 2022 | 12 minutes -
Feature
Next-Generation Biotechnology Manufacturing: Genentech Small-Batch Biologics
Bill Lydon discusses the new Genentech Clinical Supply Center with Genentech’s Benedicte Lebreton, VP, head of Technical Development for Biologics US.By: Bill Lydon28 November, 2022 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Societal Megatrends Drive Opportunities and Requirements
From workforce changes and supply chain disruptions to evolution of semantic data models, socioeconomic trends push industry to respond. This feature originally appeared in Bill Lydon's 7th Annual Industrial Automation & Control Trends Report.By: Bill Lydon11 November, 2022 | 5 minutes -
Feature
Manufacturing Business Systems Become Integrated, Real Time and Data Driven
Significant advances in technology, communications, and software enable digital manufacturing synchronization across the entire business structure. This feature originally appeared in Bill Lydon's 7th Annual Industrial Automation & Control Trends Report.By: Bill Lydon10 November, 2022 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Evolving Industrial Edge Computing Architecture
The traditional strict hierarchy architecture is giving way to a more responsive and direct model, bringing manufacturing into a real-time manufacturing business model.By: Bill Lydon09 November, 2022 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Digital Manufacturing Facts and Myths
Digital Manufacturing is a powerful concept manufacturing companies need to embrace to be successful, but there seems to be some confusion about the most important facts, particularly technology implementations that have created some myths.By: Bill Lydon03 November, 2022 | 5 minutes -
Feature
No-Code Slays the Manufacturing Paper Tiger
How to increase manufacturing efficiency using no-code app development to digitize outdated paper forms.By: Bill Lydon07 October, 2022 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Open Standards & Global Initiatives Accelerate Industrial Digitalization
Open standards accelerate industrial digitalization by freeing users to create and allowing collaboration.By: Bill Lydon03 October, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Real-Time Is Where It’s at with Integrated Manufacturing Business Systems
Integrated manufacturing business systems are executing and processing real-time transactions, allowing companies to thrive in the Internet era and meet the needs of customers and the modern supply chain.By: Bill Lydon20 September, 2022 | 1 minutes -
Feature
Collaboration is Key to an Automation Professionals' Role in the Digital Revolution
Significant transformational change requires system analysis to integrate IT, OT, automation and controls to achieve efficient and responsive synchronized production. This feature originally appeared in InTech magazine's August issue, a special edition from ISA's Smart Manufacturing and IIoT Division.By: Bill Lydon22 August, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Optimize Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
Recent energy price escalation, supply chain issues, and world events are putting renewed emphasis on more efficient energy use. This feature originally appeared in the June 2022 issue of InTech magazine.By: Bill Lydon29 July, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Interview: ExxonMobil Striving to Achieve Open Automation Joins UniversalAutomation.Org
Bill Lydon talks with Ryan Smeltzer, OPA program manager for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, about the company’s commitment to open automation.By: Bill Lydon30 June, 2022 | 5 minutes -
Case Study
Case Study: L’Oréal Achieves Big Results Applying OPC UA
With the help of OPC UA, L’Oréal is implementing Industry 4.0 concepts, transforming from mass production to personalized production to meet customer preferences.By: Bill Lydon31 May, 2022 | 3 minutes -
Feature
OPC Days 2022: Manufacturing Information Integration from Field Devices to Enterprise and Cloud
The OPC Day International 2022, held as a virtual event from April 25-29, 2022, illustrated the broad and growing scope of OPC Foundation standards to achieve manufacturing information integration from field devices to enterprise and cloud.By: Bill Lydon31 May, 2022 | 4 minutes -
Opinion
Continuous Improvement Is Not Digital Transformation
To be competitive in your industry, it is important to understand the difference between continuous improvements that leverage new technology and manufacturing digital transformation. This feature originally appeared in the April issue of InTech magazine.By: Bill Lydon03 May, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Professionals4Ukraine: Global Automation Associations Unite to Support Ukrainian Industrial System Integrators
The 1H4U and Professionals4Ukraine initiatives, engineered by Luigi De Bernardini, support Ukrainian industrial system integrators by encouraging donations of time and money.By: Bill Lydon02 May, 2022 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Hannover Messe 2022: German Industrial Trade Fair Plans Focus on Industrial Transformation and Partner Country Portugal
Hannover Messe 2022 will feature around 2,500 companies demonstrating their technologies for factories and energy systems of the future and exhibiting how connected production facilities can operate more efficiently and conserve resources.By: Bill Lydon24 March, 2022 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Open Process Automation Forum Modernizing Manufacturing
Members of the Open Group Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) provided a progress update Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022 discussing progress and planned developments to achieve the goal of greater interoperability and portability in manufacturing control systems.By: Bill Lydon15 March, 2022 | 7 minutes -
Feature
Deutsche Messe Converts Hall 27 on Hannover Fair Grounds to House Ukrainian Refugees
Supporting Germany's policy to accept Ukrainian refugees, Deutsche Messe, producer of dozens of trade fairs including the Hannover Messe focused on industrial automation and technology, is dedicating one of its halls to accommodate more than 1,000.By: Bill Lydon09 March, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Transforming Life Science Lab Automation Standardization & Modularization
Life science laboratory standardization and modularization support automation and are increasing the efficiency and number of practical applications in life sciences, including drug discovery and small-batch, single-use pharmaceutical applications.By: Bill Lydon03 March, 2022 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Biomanufacturers' MES Manifesto Specifies Requirements
The goal of the MES of the Future workstream is to create and implement a manifesto for the MES of the future that clarifies industry objectives and leads to detailed industry/MES vendor collaboration on solutions to overcome current challenges and limitations.By: Bill Lydon02 March, 2022 | 6 minutes -
Feature
No-Code Industrial Control Programming Basics
A brief overview of PLCopen and the IEC 61131-3 industrial control software standard.By: Bill Lydon28 February, 2022 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Control Remains Fundamental
Automation professionals need to take the lead in guiding management to adopt new technology or the organization will become noncompetitive. This feature originally appeared in the February 2022 issue of InTech magazine.By: Bill Lydon17 February, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Mary Ramsey Has Advanced ISA, Creating a Better Organization
Mary Ramsey understood that organizations need to periodically recalibrate based on member and industry needs, and she has done a great job of collaborating with staff and member volunteers to craft clear definitions of ISA guiding principles. This article was originally published in the December 2021 issue of InTech magazine.By: Bill Lydon02 February, 2022 | 2 minutesSponsored By International Society of Automation (ISA) -
Feature
Automation Standards Still Need Work
Has the industrial automation industry matured enough to avoid a standards war like the 1990s “Fieldbus wars?"By: Bill Lydon27 January, 2022 | 3 minutes -
Feature
AWS IoT TwinMaker Simplifies Digital Twin Implementations
The AWS IoT TwinMaker provides a comprehensive set of tools and services to federate, model and make use of data from any source including sensors, controllers, video, drawings, 3-D models, ERP, logistics and energy to create digital twins leveraging existing and new data sources.By: Bill Lydon26 January, 2022 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Industrial Automation Standards Convergence or Divergence?
Can another standards war be avoided with exciting new industrial multivendor interoperability and plug and play standards?By: Bill Lydon19 January, 2022 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Experts Discuss Open Process Automation Issues
The Coalition for Open Process Automation (COPA) hosted a 90-minute virtual broadcast discussion and first public demonstration of the COPA QuickStart system illustrating the benefits and value of Open Process Automation based on the O-PAS standard.By: Bill Lydon10 January, 2022 | 8 minutes -
Feature
Enhancing Virtual Events
Informal interactions at events foster greater camaraderie in the automation community. You make long-term professional connections and friendships, and these become your personal ecosystem of automation resources. This article was originally published in the October 2021 issue of InTech magazine.By: Bill Lydon07 January, 2022 | 2 minutes -
Feature
UniversalAutomation.org Launched to Achieve Multivendor Industrial Control Program Portability
This shared-source, not open-source, code is based on the nxtControl IEC 61499 runtime engine code donated by Schneider Electric.By: Bill Lydon14 December, 2021 | 4 minutes -
Feature
Koch Ag & Energy High Value Digitalization Deployments Leverages AWS
Dave Kroening, IT leader, and Martin Miller, data analytics leader with Koch Ag & Energy, discussed two high value digitalization applications using AWS (Amazon Web Services) including Monitron and SeeQ software in a re:Invent session.By: Bill Lydon07 December, 2021 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Rockwell Automation Expands Industrial Digitalization Scope
At the 2021 Rockwell Automation Fair, the company discussed the expansion of its scope to provide a full set of products and services for manufacturing business digitalization. Rockwell Automation has put together resources, creating a new business model and positioning them as the primary resource for manufacturers industrial digitalization journey, including the conceptual stage, design, deployment and operations.By: Bill Lydon01 December, 2021 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Hannover Messe 2022 Plans Focus on Digitalization and Sustainability
After two years without a physical trade fair, the organizers of Germany’s Hannover Messe 2022 focused on transformation and their next event’s themes of digitalization and sustainability.By: Bill Lydon16 November, 2021 | 3 minutes -
Feature
Rockwell Automation's OEE Approach to Achieve Industry 4.0
In a conversation with Rockwell Automation’s Matthew Giordano (pictured above), IS Solutions, partner manager, he described the companies scalable OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) solutions to achieve Industry 4.0 to understand “what is happening on the shop floor."By: Bill Lydon03 November, 2021 | 2 minutes -
Feature
Automation Industry Expert Insights: CODESYS Tech Talk Fall 2021
Bill Lydon moderates an insightful roundtable discussion about industrial automation future trends and challenges during the Fall 2021 CODESYS Tech Talk and Users Conference with industry leaders and innovators.By: Bill Lydon14 October, 2021 | 10 minutes -
News
Event Review: Ignition Community Conference 2021
The 2021 Ignition Community Conference (ICC) was another high-energy and informative event, with the theme "Evolve to be Smarter, Faster and Stronger" supporting the Inductive Automation mission statement to create industrial software that empowers users to swiftly turn great ideas into reality by removing all technological and economic obstacles.By: Bill Lydon01 October, 2021 | 4 minutes -
News
SynSaber Launches Industrial Cybersecurity Edge-to-Enterprise Detection Software
With a focus on visibility, the company’s cyber detection software resides on embedded computer platforms named "Sabers" that function as “software sensors” monitoring cybersecurity activity.By: Bill Lydon29 September, 2021 | 2 minutes
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