Articles and News

RefreshEng converts any of Cincinnati's 2-OM family of centerless grinder machines to the same precision machining available on new grinders - but for an outlay that is some 60% lower than a new machine.

SmartFactoryKL demonstration plant, from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, uses CodeMeter as the security component for protecting the transport algorithms.

The Houston office will focus principally on ETAP Real-Time power management system solutions for the energy sector.

Rhino produces metallurgical and steam coal in a variety of basins throughout the United States, leases coal through its Elk Horn subsidiary, and owns oil and gas acreage in the Utica and Cana Woodford areas.

Efficient technology design is now the name of the game, and centrifugal pump suppliers now face a flood of new competition says IMS.

The Instrumentation Testing Association (ITA) and the International Society of Automation (ISA) are teaming up to co-promote the 2013 ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls (WWAC) Symposium.

Metso will supply a DNA control system and a pulp cooking process optimization solution for the Cellulose du Pin mill in Biganos, France.

SmartGlance provides connectors for accessing data from different manufacturing sources, including both Invensys and non-Invensys systems.

ISA technical symposia successes and spreading the word about ISA Automation Week 2013

Optima Group Consumer, a German manufacturer of coffee capsule filling stations, is using an IDS camera to check the quality of coffee packets.

By Mark Davidson, LNS Research Largely due to the misalignment of goals and objectives, a considerable number of organizations struggle to realize the full business value that manufacturing can generate. There are several steps all organizations that utilize manufacturing can take to properly and optimally align goals.

By Kevin L. Finnan The trend toward intelligent devices in remote SCADA installations would seem to put remote terminal units (RTUs) on the path to obsolescence. Instead, it illustrates the evolving value of RTUs in contemporary systems.

For the past several decades, most industries within the US market have been dominated by the use of PVC jacketed metallic conduits. In Europe, they use polyamide conduits and fittings. What's the difference?

AIT's GOIT (Graphical Operator Interface Terminal) series now runs Movicon 11 SCADA/HMI software.

Exele Alarm Management & Notification Software has been integrated with the Canary Labs Enterprise Historian product.

Application of management, operational & technical controls will reduce risks to industrial automation & control systems and will mitigate vulnerabilities.

In the test at NIST, MTConnect enabled a robot conversant in ROS-Industrial to load and unload parts into an MTConnect-conversant lathe for cutting, precisely when the machine tool was ready to perform the task.

Frost & Sullivan says the Global Machine Tools and Cutting Tools Market earned revenues of $15.72 billion in 2012 and estimates this to reach $21.18 billion in 2017.

After two years of double-digit growth, the world market for electro-mechanical and solid-state relays contracted by $125 million, or 3.6 percent, to approximately $3.35 billion in 2012.

By Pat Garrehy, Rootstock There is a general consensus that, by 2023, most of the installed MFG ERP systems will be Cloud-based. But, will they be multi-tenant or hosted? There are arguments for both.

The market for process I/O modules is mainly driven by two forces: an increasing need for intrinsically safe I/O modules and the increasing demand from the Middle East and the BRIC countries.

Beef producer in Kansas uses KEPServerEX software to help confirm that its meat automatically moves from the warehouse to the retail location without human intervention.

Emerson will supply control valves and valve actuators to help ensure the efficient and safe flow of natural gas at the Gorgon Project, one of the world’s largest natural gas projects.

Metso will supply 30 continuously-operating water-quality measuring stations to Vapo, a power complany in Finland.

DB SQL was embedded in Cow Master, a robotics system that feeds cows and manages animal healthcare, including automatic matching of cow feeding patterns and continuous management of feed concentration to stimulate the appetite of cows.

$372.50 million in orders were down 26.6% from March and down 12.6% when compared with the total of $426.44 million reported for April 2012.

By Thomas R. Cutler Curtiss Wright Controls in Shelby, NC used vimana to improve equipment utilization on a production cell with 4 high-end CNC-based Horizontal Milling machine tools by over 20% in just ten weeks.

The 16-page document covers 1200+ data acquisition and control, signal conditioning, and data communication products.

Construction company Urbanas will use the ERP to integrate all of its financial and project information, customer relationship management (CRM) tools and business analytics.

Dynamotive designs, commissions and upgrades systems of drives, controls and motors for industrial and marine applications and automotive test rigs.

IVC Video Systems are used in mining applications ranging from small quarries to one of the largest copper mines in the world.

1,000+ page resource guide covers proximity, photoelectric, and ultrasonic sensors, rotary encoders, positioning systems, inclination and acceleration sensors, AS-Interface products, identification system RFIDs, and logic control units.

IVC video systems are being used by Dupont Chemicals at their nylon plant in Bridge City, Texas to monitor a hazardous material incineration facility.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Over the last two years, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) UK Petrochemicals has empowered users to create custom dashboards based on Excel spreadsheet data and calculations using software from Sabisu. The software enables people to organize their data around "Communities" related to areas of interest.

IVC video systems are used by several large natural gas producers to monitor a variety of facilities in their pipeline operations including pump stations, compressor stations, delivery terminals, and receiving terminals for an array of pre-refined crude and refined hydrocarbon products.

A water agency in Northern California purchased a number of IVC 25x pan-tilt-zoom cameras for primarily monitoring activity on or near the perimeter fence of a water treatment facility that was being constructed.

IVC’s software and cameras are helping a Nissan Motors Plant monitor and troubleshoot problems that develop in the assembly of their cars.

A three-way consortium comprising ABB Venezuela, ABB Canada and ABB Switzerland was awarded a contract to design, supply and install the unit control, protection and instrumentation systems for the largest dam in South America. ABB chose Industrial Video & Control for the CCTV component for the project.

In the competitive worldwide car market, manufacturers are always looking for ways to improve product quality and gain an edge on the competition. Even the robots in today’s highly automated assembly lines can make a mistake. That is why a major manufacturer decided to put some “eyes” on one of its body assembly lines. Using IVC IP video systems, this was done at a fraction of the cost of traditional machine vision systems.

A major US forest-products company recently built a new sawmill in Western Oregon. The flexibility and economy of IP video systems enabled the creation of a large, complex operation that can be operated with a small staff.

Considerations for Selecting A Controller- or Server-Based Batch Sequencer

By Bill Lydon, Editor The inaugural Haystack Connect event introduced a movement that has the potential to be the next big wave in building automation by fostering an entirely new open system in the industry that goes beyond open protocols to encompass system software.

GasSecure, Redline Communications and Purelink joined the PKS Advantage program for the OneWireless Network.

The increased cost of using individual fuses will be quickly recovered by the reduced time to troubleshoot and resolve field wiring problems. One or two instances of bringing production back on line w

Honda of America has committed $75,000 to support the SME Education Foundation’s PRIME program over the next three years.

More than 200 plant and refinery professionals responsible for maintaining leak detection and repair (LDAR) programs attended ISA’s 13th annual Fugitive Emissions-LDAR Symposium held 21-23 May 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

During the two-day event, many new sercos products from competing vendors were intensively tested with each other to insure users of interoperability of sercos products.

MCS is a Brazilian-based manufacturer and system integrator of standard and customized high performance motion controllers and complementary motion control components.

Eight-page full-color leaflet describes CoriolisMaster FCB330/350 mass flowmeters for the upstream and midstream oil and gas industry.

The first course covers Fundamentals of Instrumentation and Process Control.

The Council is comprised of leading global technology companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and others working in partnership with advising experts from the world of research, academia and advocacy.

Industrial Ethernet nodes in process industries are projected to rise to 8.7 million units in 2016, up a whopping 96 percent from 4.4 million in 2011, as Ethernet increasingly challenges fieldbus for leadership in the industrial networking market.

PosiShop lists electrical D-sub fittings, density energy fittings, square fittings and circular fittings.

Implementing cybersecurity programs for industrial automation & control systems requires identification of areas to be protected & assessment of threats.

Rootstock will be installing a cloud-based ERP system at IPC's Austin, Texas, facility to replace legacy supply chain software.

Metso will supply a Metso DNA distributed control system, an integrated safety system and an information activity server to the 68MW plant in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, UK.

PAS University offers training solution courses in alarm management, control loop optimization, high performance HMI, cyber security and change management.

Metso will rebuild the gas turbine control system at the Martinlaakso power plant in Vantaa, Finland, and control it with a DNA automation system.

ABB will supply switchgear, DC power supply, uninterrupted power supply, transformers, 400 V motor control centers, variable-speed drives, variable-speed drives and a power management system based on the System 800xA

The Control System Integrators Association (CSIA) recently held their annual conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. This article provides a brief recap of the conference and outlines why, as a systems integrator, you can’t afford to miss next year’s conference. And while you're reading, I provide five reasons why you should think about joining CSIA.

CSIA announced companies that have recently joined the association, become certified, or become recertified.

By Reid Schook Rockwell Automation is controlling the HVAC system at an unnamed oil company in the Athabasca Oil Sands region in Canada.

E-direct web site simplifies ordering of instrumentation products for measurement and control.

Preactor International in Chippenham, UK, provides production planning and scheduling software used by a wide range of businesses.

ISA Training and Education in June: Learn, Advance, Succeed

The HART Communication Foundation will host a free one-day event for end users on June 27 (8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.) at the Marriott Westchase hotel in Houston, Texas.

Even though machine tool demand has had a weak start in the first quarter of 2013, experts look to the second half of the year to provide growth in orders.

BDI will distribute Siemens products in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky.

Highlighted by a workshop on passive wireless sensor technologies, the symposium provided an opportunity to explore—and provide sought-after perspective on—new trends, equipment, software and protocols involved with transmitting, reporting and processing real-time data.

By using math and Trio Motion’s MC series servo motion and machine controls, LMS ServoTechnics was able to significantly simplify the size, complexity and costs of the mechanical design in two of its recent applications.

ProcessVue ensures that data from safety-critical plant is always logged, enabling engineers to identify the cause of a plant upset, including the sequence of events (SOEs) leading up to this.

Around 1,000 attendees – representing major oil and gas, refining, chemical, pulp and paper, and metals and mining companies, among others – will participate in the 2013 Honeywell Users Group (HUG) Americas symposium June 16-22 in Phoenix. .

The Model FS10A Analyzer Flow Switch/Monitor meets the requirements for Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 2 compliant service.

Information needed to take advantage of the best industrial technology and address all of the considerations of an application is often difficult to find.

The CHIMP humanoid robot uses Kollmorgen frameless motor technology in each of its drive joints, providing multi-limb manipulation and human-like grasping capabilities not found in today’s industrial robots.

By MTConnect Institute White paper demonstrates the tangible benefits of monitoring a manufacturing plant using MTConnect, the open and royalty-free standard, as the way to collect data and information from the shop floor.

From 2011 to 2017, Asia-Pacific is also forecast to be the fastest-expanding region for flowmeter sales with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.5 percent.

Suburban Manufacturing installed two Okuma MB-4000H horizontal machining centers and a larger PALLETACE flexible manufacturing system in its Northeast Ohio machine shop.

Prosoft lets each PLC on SkySurfer communicate with the Allen-Bradley MicroLogix 1100 master PLC on the flight deck. The master PLC has an HMI connected to it so an operator can start a cart and monitor data.

The 112-page catalog details information about markets and applications that use and benefit from dispensing systems, the fluids dispensed and dispensing applications for each industry, and customer comments.

By Lion Precision The basic problem stems from the fact that there are myriad methods and tools to measure vibration, and each of these may have different measurement units and confounding factors so the results may differ greatly.

The 2013 CSIA Annual Executive Conference in St. Petersburg, Fla., saw a record number of CSIA members gathered to examine how to improve their industry of automation and control system integration.

The high standard of living in Europe has popularised packaged goods, including packaged food, beverages, toiletries and cosmetics, thereby spurring demand for packaging machinery in the region.

32-page Solenoid Valve Catalog details five separate series of 2- and 3-way direct acting solenoid valves ranging from the miniature .65 watt Wattmizer to the 17 watt 2-Series solenoid valves.

App allows users to access over 230,000 components in the portal and transfer the data that has been collected into their EPLAN project.

Total machine vision sales in North America grew ten percent year-over-year for the first quarter of 2013, according to statistics from AIA, the industry’s trade group.

GlobaLogix will provide a SCADA Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that is based on ABB’s SCADAvantage product.

Need Automation Workers? Who You Gonna Call?

The interactive platform has 30 online courses covering metrology fundamentals, basic and intermediate software- and hardware-specific concepts for portable arms, CMMs, vision systems, laser trackers, and more.

The two companies will provide lighting and control solutions for both existing and new build applications and for the replacement of conventional lighting by high quality LED lighting solutions.

Aegis is now being used for new product introduction (NPI) and to manage a paperless shop floor environment throughout the PCB and electro-mechanical assembly operation.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Three legendary industry veterans including Eddie Habibi - PAS Founder & CEO, Larry Evans - AspenTech Founder & former CEO, and Pat Kennedy - OSIsoft Founder & CEO, shared their industry insights on improving human reliability at the recent conference.

Sales in the Americas were strong for the third year in a row, but China sales fell.

To address the increasing interest in securing private industry and public infrastructure, ISA has developed a comprehensive resource guide to its cybersecurity resources.

CalsonicKansei manufactures climate control, electronics, engine cooling, exhaust, interior and automotive integration systems and has over 50 manufacturing sites across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.

The KUKA Systems manufacturing operation in Toledo, Ohio, produced its one millionth body-in-white Jeep Wrangler JK this month with the help of 246 robots.

Invensys and Callisto will operate as a seamless services organization optimized for project design and delivery.

Hartfiel Automation will be an exclusive distributor for territories spanning ten states across the United States.

If the information is detailed & useful, an operator will be able to run a control system much more independently & resolve problems without outside help.

Project Gemstone is intended to make the digital fieldbus automation experience easier than conventional analog control systems in every conceivable way, from device setup to device replacement and daily maintenance practices.