Articles and News

Joe Remisiewicz has joined WAGO as a Senior Field Sales Application Engineer. Working out of his home office, in the Detroit, Michigan area, Remisiewicz will be providing application support for the WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM for customers in Michigan, Northern Ohio, Upstate New York, and the Province of Ontario.

Green Hills Software has joined Texas Instruments Incorporated's (TI) TMS320™ Third Party Network as a software and embedded services provider.

Series 2400 SourceMeter® Instruments have received the Test of Time Award from Test & Measurement World Magazine. The Test of Time Award, which was created to recognize product lines that provide state-of-the-art performance for at least five years after their introduction, was announced at the magazine’s awards ceremony on February 9, 2006, during the APEX Show in Anaheim, California.

The readers of Test & Measurement World have voted the National Instruments PXI-5922 flexible-resolution digitizer the 2006 Test Product of the Year. This is the second Test & Measurement World honor for the digitizer, after it was named a Best in Test winner in December. Released in March 2005, the digitizer extends the industry-standard PXI platform with measurement capabilities that exceed the performance of high-end traditional instruments.

Roach is one of seven elected board members directing the technical, marketing and financial responsibilities for the OPC Foundation, a non-profit international standards organization dedicated to providing standards for interoperability in industrial automation.

EDN magazine editors selected NI LabVIEW 8 and the NI PXI-5922 flexible-resolution digitizer as finalists for the magazine’s annual Innovation of the Year award. It also recently honored the NI LabVIEW Embedded Development Module and the NI PXI-5922 digitizer as two of the magazine’s Hot 100 Products of 2005.

Kevin Roach is the Vice President of Rockwell Software where he is responsible globally for all automation and information software. Grant Wilson is Vice President of Technology for Emerson Process Management where he leads the DeltaV System Development team.

The PROFIBUS Trade Organization (PTO) and the PROFI Interface Center (PIC) announced two new courses as part of the PROFItech Certification Training Course program for 2006. The two new classes added to the program include a PROFIBUS Installer’s Class and a PROFINET Certified Network Engineering Class.

The international "Industrial Building Automation" specialist trade fair during HANNOVER MESSE (Hannover Fair) 2006 is the ideal place to find out about the latest innovative solutions in the international building automation market and the expected trends for the years ahead.

Many companies have been attracted by low wage and production costs to leave their traditional base in Germany and transfer production to low-wage economies. However, other companies decided to stay in Germany, focusing instead on the introduction of automation technology to improve productivity. "Factory Automation" and "Digital Factory" are among the leading international trade shows within HANNOVER MESSE 2006.

Microprocessor veterans Rich Belgard, Gary Hoffman, Dr Nick Tredennick and Jim Turley have all accepted the role as advisors to Imsys Technologies. Each of them has a long and outstanding experience in the semiconductor industry, all the way from processor designs to marketing and sales.

"Foundation Fieldbus" by Ian Verhappen and Augusto Pereira provides quick reference information on the FOUNDATION(tm) Fieldbus H1 protocol and installation tips. The resource also provides other useful information that design engineers, control system engineers, and instrumentation technicians need to know about FOUNDATION Fieldbus.

Suncor Energy Inc. and Emerson Process Management announced a 7-year agreement that names Emerson as Suncor’s supplier for automation products, solutions, and services for capital projects at new and existing North American facilities.

There is a growing challenge on the plant floor if you haven’t experienced it yet, I am sure you will soon. A study by ARC predicts that the number of factory floor devices with an IP address is going to TRIPLE in the next four years and those devices are pushing lower and lower into the controls architecture… from systems, to sub-systems down to sensors… so Ethernet equipment with an IP addresses are increasing rapidly.

The ISA EXPO 2006 technical conference program will address major themes in the automation industry and was developed by volunteer experts at a conference committee summit. The five themes chosen for the conference are: Safety and Security, Process Automation, Environmental Controls, Industrial Networking and Systems Integration.

Cognex announced a new series of free machine vision seminars exclusively for pharmaceutical industry professionals involved with packaging operations. This brand new series of seminars called, "Applying Machine Vision to Pharmaceutical Packaging," are half-day events that show how easy it is to integrate, validate, maintain and use the latest generation of machine vision systems to ensure label accuracy, package integrity and product traceability.

Emerson Process Management has received a contract to install its PlantWeb digital plant architecture with the Ovation® expert control system and Foundation™ fieldbus technology in Units 7 and 8 of the Zouxian Power Plant. The project, Zouxian Phase IV, was awarded by China Huadian Group Corp. It represents the first installation of Foundation fieldbus device technology for monitoring and controlling processes at a power generation facility in China.

Rockwell Automation has received the Frost & Sullivan 2005 Customer Service Leadership Award for its demonstrated excellence and outstanding contributions to the worldwide medium voltage drives market. The award recognizes the commitment Rockwell Automation has shown toward understanding customer requirements and providing high-quality products and services for its customers around the world.

The acquisitions made in 2005 (PMI, Elau, ABS EMEA, Juno Lighting and BEI Technologies) and the full-year impact of the acquisitions made in 2004 (Andover Controls and Kavlico) contributed a significant €433 million, or +4.2%. The currency effect became slightly positive, increasing sales by €74 million, or +0.7%.

Blackfin DSP helped Ann Arbor shatter the traditional price/performance barriers that have slowed the thermal infrared imaging camera market. Infrared imaging is critical in manufacturing applications, such as die-casting and plastic injection, for specifications that are not visible to the naked eye.