Articles and News

From 24 to 28 April 2006 a grand total of 5,175 exhibitors from 66 countries will be presenting the latest products and services for industry at the Hannover Exhibition Center. This year's HANNOVER MESSE line-up brings together ten international flagship trade fairs with a total 154,796 m² of stand bookings.

This agreement allows Innovation Matrix to sell and support Precise’s products in Asian markets through their branch offices and alliance partners in Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan. These products include PrecisePlace robots, Guidance motion controllers and PreciseVision software.

This contract covers 15 refineries in Europe and Asia and 10 Chemical plants worldwide. The work supports a global Shell program aimed at improving their asset management and ensuring safe production.

FKI Logistex, a premier provider of automated, self-service sorting and conveying systems, and 3M, a trusted supplier of library solutions, will leverage their strengths to offer efficiency improvements to libraries. This alliance makes it possible for libraries to design a complete collection management system that fully meets their individual needs.

The company decided to invest over US$17 million in Greenwood, Indiana within the next two years. With this, a substantial amount of new jobs will be created. Groundbreaking for the new facility will take place in the first half of April 2006. The Endress+Hauser Flowtec company based in Reinach, Switzerland is responsible for flow measurement technology within the Endress+Hauser Group. The new expansion of its U.S. division will consist of 74,000 square feet for manufacturing, including a new state of the art calibration laboratory, and 16,000 square feet offices and training facilities.

The online shop is extremely user friendly and allows customers to quickly and conveniently order analog ICs from austriamicrosystems 24 hours, 365 days of the year. A broad range of Standard Linear and analog standard products for a wide variety of applications are now available around the clock. This new sales channel is particularly suited for small, urgent quantities, as orders are processed within 24 hours and dispatched by parcel service. Additionally, an easy-to-use order tracking feature allows customers to quickly track the position of their ordered parts.

With initial pulp production capacity of one million tons per year (TPY) starting up in the second half of 2007, the Mucuri project will be one of the largest single-line pulp plants in the world. The multi-million dollar Invensys contract will cover automation for all of the major processes in the new plant – cooking and washing, fiber line, pulp drying, recovery boiler, causticizing, lime kiln, and evaporators. The Invensys systems will also interface with the plant’s turbo generator systems.

Wavetrend is a platinum sponsor of the 4th Annual RFID Journal Live Conference and Exhibition at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, May 1-3rd, and will be exhibiting at booth 207.

EDDL is a text-based language for describing the digital communication characteristics of intelligent devices and equipment parameters in an Operating System (OS) and Human Machine Interface (HMI)-neutral environment. EDDL enables a host system manufacturer to create a single engineering environment that eliminates the need for custom software drivers for each device type.

Invensys will implement four Tricon TMR high-availability systems for burner management systems (BMS) applications at the power plant’s steam generators (boilers). These will protect new burners being installed as part of the modernization. The new systems will increase control reliability and availability, increase boiler safety, and help bring the refinery into compliance with the Safety Integrity Level and Safety Instrumented Systems provisions of international standards, such as represented by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

Continued innovation and technologically advanced systems have made it possible for B&R to double revenue over the last five years. B&R is currently second place in Europe when it comes to integrated automated solutions for manufacturing series machines. We are certainly pleased to announce that this positive trend is continuing. An increase in revenue of about 15% is also expected for each of the next few years.

Free training courses are now available in Chinese and Spanish language. Both language versions offer a user-friendly interface and access to 46 courses and five white papers on the most current automation technology and business topics.

The plant expansion site, formerly known as Robicon, was acquired by SE&A in July 2005. Siemens plans to create 145 new full-time positions upon completion of the expansion for a total of 480 positions in New Kensington. The 30,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed in March 2007.

The company also announced that it will be exhibiting their new MultiComponent™ Analyzers based on their EP-IR technology at the ACHEMA conference in Frankfurt am Main, May 15-19th, 2006. Their booth will be in the process analyzer section, Hall 10.1, Booth number A33. On display will be the company’s two MIR units in the 2.5 – 5.0 and 2.85 – 5.75 um spectral ranges.

Fred Cohn will be Modbus-IDA's second president and plans to lead the organization to capitalize on its growing popularity. Fred Cohn commented, "I am delighted to be able to take over the leadership of Modbus-IDA at this time in the organization's life. I want to thank Ken for his tireless work in forming this organization and leading it through its formative years.

The significance of this transaction is that it provides the basis for study, curriculum development, and training of top-quality students at a superior university in the field of robotics and unmanned aircraft using Innova proprietary software. This is the first step in putting the Innova product in the hands of future users who will become accustomed to the ease and adaptability of Innova robotics software and PC controls technologies.

The new standard provides a detailed definition for batch production records, establishing a reference model for developing applications for the storage and/or exchange of batch production records. Implementations based upon the standard will allow retrieval, analysis, and reporting of selected batch production record data.

This award recognizes NI LabVIEW 8 as premier software for engineers and scientists and makes National Instruments the first four-time recipient of this prestigious award.

Siemens Energy and Automation, Inc. today presented Abbie Taylor, a pre-engineering teacher and FIRST Robotics coach at Northview High School, with the 2005-2006 Siemens Teacher Scholarship of $1,000 for her time and dedication to the FIRST Robotics program.

Matrikon's alarm management solution provides the methodology and technology to systematically integrate and administer an effective alarm management strategy. The results include reducing the number of alarms to a manageable level, increasing productivity and ensuring safe and reliable operation of industrial facilities. These outcomes complement Braskem's aim of positioning among the best and most competitive petrochemical companies in the world through its Braskem+ program.

As a software provider for the cosmetics, ink, paint, and coatings manufacturing industries, the Deacom session will introduce the inventory control, regulatory reporting, accounting, and formula management functionality of the integrated DEACOM accounting & ERP software system. A comprehensive demonstration of the DEACOM ERP system will be provided immediately following the presentation at the Deacom booth.

Automation Change Manager is an electronic database-management and documentation system that allows industrial plant personnel to document and track changes across various Honeywell and third-party automation systems. This information is essential for resolving problems effectively and managing automation platforms.

Following the adoption and successful use of Smartplant 3D, CEAB is moving to standardize on Intergraph’s entire SmartPlant portfolio under a three year global agreement. Once fully deployed CEAB will be able to further cut schedules, boost productivity and increase engineering quality across its world wide engineering enterprise.

Proposal submissions for the event, which will address key issues in technology training and development for the instrumentation industry, are now due by May 31. The first annual meeting of its kind, the IETDC will discuss the impact of training across the entire plant automation field‹from new digital technologies such as fieldbus, to conventional instrumentation and process control systems.

The Fort Worth-based catalog distributor began construction on a new 365,000-square-foot facility that will replace the company’s existing rented space. The new facility will help accommodate the company’s growth, as it expects to create an additional 300 jobs over the next several years.

PLCopen is a non-profit industry organization dedicated to improving the programming efficiency control and automation engineers by providing information, training, and fostering communications between users, vendors, educators and others.

Vanderlande Industries has recently signed a contract with Datalogic for the supply of a large number of fixed position laser scanners. Vanderlande Industries is one of the largest worldwide suppliers of automated material handling systems for the handling of baggage at airports and goods in distribution centres, express parcel sorting facilities and the manufacturing industry.

Second quarter revenue grew by 7% to $17.89 million from $16.72 million in the comparable period of fiscal 2005. Income from operations was $2.64 million in the second quarter of 2006, compared to $2.42 million in the second quarter of 2005. Net income in the second quarter was $1.23 million, or $0.04 per share, compared to $2.35 million, or $0.08 per share, in the second quarter of 2005.