Articles and News

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.