Articles and News

Asia-Pacific’s largest oil company, PetroChina Co., has selected Honeywell (NYSE: HON) to implement a planning system project at 11 of its refining and petrochemical facilities throughout northern China. Honeywell will install an Advanced Planning System (APS) to help PetroChina optimize crude oil selection, production distribution and plant production.

InterTech Development Company is arguably the world leader in the functional and leak testing technology that underpins the automotive industry’s ability to meet Clean Air Regulations requirements and achieve higher fuel efficiency standards. InterTech’s new Detroit office is expected to help many OEMs and their Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers cut time-to-market by up to 15%.

FORTUNE magazine yesterday released its annual rankings of the nation’s top 100 companies to work for, listing Austin-based National Instruments as number 77. This is the seventh consecutive year National Instruments has been listed on FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” annual survey that polls employees nationwide about the quality of their corporate cultures.

National Instruments today announced that more than 250 of its current NI Alliance Partners have achieved NI developer certification in LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, NI TestStand, or certification of products in applicable areas. These Certified Alliance Partners provide integration and consulting services or offer products, such as sensors, cameras or instrument drivers, that NI has certified as compatible with National Instruments software and hardware.

Unlike traditional oscilloscopes and PC-based digitizers that have a fixed resolution for all sample rates, the NI PXI-5922 is a flexible-resolution digitizer with which engineers can trade sample rate for resolution through software. For example, at 15 MS/s, the module delivers 16 bits of resolution; by reducing the sample rate to 500 kS/s or less through a software call, the same module (without any hardware changes) delivers 24 bits of resolution.

TURCK's Sensors and Connectivity CD (B0010) combines their two largest catalogs in one convenient CD. The CD has many advantages over the printed Sensors and Connectivity catalogs, making over 1200 pages accessible through one easy to use, navigate and transport CD.

The first implementation at Atlas’ Sikeston, Missouri facility was driven by a request from one of Atlas’ largest ice cream customers to service Wal-Mart’s Texas D.C.’s. Atlas is currently working with another customer on a second RFID implementation in the Midwest and has more planned for the future as demand develops.

Yonghung, which is owned by Korea South East Power Co. (KOSEP), serves the Seoul metropolitan area and surrounding cities and is the largest coal-fired plant in Korea, with a current generating capacity of 1,600 megawatts. The facility is classified as a “supercritical” plant, meaning that it uses new clean coal technology enabling operation at elevated steam temperature and pressure for increased efficiency and reduced fuel-related emissions.

KOC’s goals for the modernization project are to increase production capacity, improve safety and environmental practices, enhance water treatment and decrease gas-flaring. The overall project also includes gathering centers at several other oil fields.

The Board of Directors of Schneider Electric that met on 6 January 2006 decided, on the proposal of its Chairman and the recommendation of its Nominations, Remuneration and Corporate Governance Committee to propose to the Shareholders’ assembled for the General Meeting on 3 May 2006, to modify the governance structure of the company in order to set up a Supervisory Board and a Management Board. This proposal results from work undertaken by this committee since 2003.

Verano, Inc., the leading provider of security and SCADA solutions for mission-critical industries, and Counterpane Internet Security, a leading managed security company and authority on enterprise security systems, today announced a strategic alliance to deliver a cybersecurity monitoring service to protect against vulnerabilities in the control environment.

The event will have a national scope, addressing key issues in technology training and development for instrumentation personnel at all levels. 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.

Citect has today entered into a Takeover Agreement with Thoma Cressey Equity Partners (TCEP), a US based private equity firm, under which a subsidiary of TCEP will make an off-market takeover offer for all the shares in Citect for $1.70 per share in cash.

The company manufactures and distributes custom-designed routers for a slew of different cutting applications. One of DMS’ main product lines is a five-axis CNC router that is available in four main styles.

Under terms of the proposed agreement, NEC Solutions America and GiveMePower will jointly market and cross-sell special “turn-on-and-go” mobile and wireless hardware and software solutions, initially featuring GiveMePower’s new PowerCAD® SiteMaster™ 2 laser-based building surveying and information management software running on NEC’s sixth-generation Panel-i® 6 mobile and wireless computing terminal.

Igus donated a wide-array of products to be included in 1,150 consumable parts kits, which will aid students from around the world to build a robot to solve an engineering challenge. At for the January 7, 2006 k kick -off , commencing in Manchester, N.H., the birthplace of FIRST , the season’s game will be unveiled and students will receive their common kit of parts.

Invensys Process Systems has been selected by Tripoliven C.A. of Venezuela to implement upgraded replacement controls for all four plants in their manufacturing complex. Tripoliven manufactures phosphoric acid, sodium tripolyphosphate and related products at the Moron Industrial Area in Carabobo Estate, Venezuela.

This desktop reference guide offers details and specifications on Keithley's general-purpose and sensitive sourcing and measurement products, DC switching, RF switching and measurement, data acquisition solutions, semiconductor test systems, and optoelectronics test hardware. Tutorials simplify choosing solutions for specific applications.

To help manufacturers improve their operational efficiency, Rockwell Automation today announced the availability of a new white paper that highlights the primary areas of energy consumption in food production and outlines the steps manufacturers can take to move toward more energy-efficient operations.

The specifications are in compliance with International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61508 standard (functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems) requirements up to, and including, Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3).

The three-part series is ANSI/ISA-84.00.01-2004 Parts 1-3 (IEC 61511 Modified), "Functional Safety: Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector." The standards resulted from the adoption and modification of the three-part international standard IEC 61511 by ISA's SP84 standards development committee. Leaders of ISA-SP84 played key roles in the development of IEC 61511.

As part of the transaction, ATS retained the land and building associated with this business and entered into a lease agreement with Autocam. The purchase price is subject to certain post-closing adjustments and ATS indicated that the estimated gain or loss, if any, on this transaction will be reported with its third quarter results(three months ended December 31, 2005). The signing of the sale agreement was announced on December 13, 2005.

ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. selected BMO Nesbitt Burns as financial adviser to assist in assessing and pursuing financing opportunities and strategic alternatives for its growing Solar Group. Consistent with its future plans for the Solar Group and to further strengthen Solar Group's management, the Company also announced the appointment of James E. Kopperson, CA, CPA, as Solar Group's first Chief Financial Officer.

Reliability and maintenance professionals seeking to improve the consistency and cost-effectiveness of their maintenance programs now can learn more about intelligent predictive maintenance (PdM) strategies through a series of free Web events hosted by National Instruments. Beginning Jan. 26, at 1 p.m. (CST), and continuing every Thursday through the end of February, this series offers live demonstrations and discussions with leading industry experts on topics ranging from power and vibration monitoring techniques to ultrasonic sensing and automated thermography.

Berwanger will be part of the oil and gas business of the Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S), a global leader in process automation and systems integration. With this purchase, Siemens has made a commitment to strengthen its position in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries.