Articles and News

ISA's new Executive Director Mary Ramsey is a dynamic, experienced leader with a deep understanding of industrial automation, process control, and related industries.

The expanded factory doubles the size of its facility and is part of the company’s strategic growth plan to increase its inventory, manufacturing and production capabilities to meet increasing customer demand.

By Charles Rathmann, IFS Servitization is driven in part by limited opportunity for many product-centric companies to grow in terms of product revenue and profits—due to factors like downward price pressure, volatile demand and increasing prices for inputs and raw materials.

Documentation of the "as left" condition of the control system is a basic requirement for all maintenance, calibration, commissioning, and testing tasks.

Rockwell Automation will feature its smart solutions through a simulated digital control room where attendees will have a chance to see the latest release of the PlantPAx distributed control system and advanced production intelligence software that provides real-time visibility into operations.

By CAS Dataloggers With advances in technology and computing power, modern data loggers can reduce the amount of time and effort required to extract critical information. These "intelligent" data loggers incorporate several features that allow them to go well beyond the functionality of a traditional data logger to help zero in on what the user is looking for

The solution combines Continuous Threat Detection, Claroty’s visibility, and real-time monitoring technology for OT networks, with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Firepower

As part of the project and for the first time in a subsea water crossing, ABB has installed a fiber optic leak detection and subsea pipeline monitoring system detecting events such as anchor drag.

With advances in technology and computing power, modern data loggers can reduce the amount of time and effort required to extract critical information. These "intelligent" data loggers incorporate several features that allow them to go well beyond the functionality of a traditional data logger to help zero in on what the user is looking for.

Through the Honeywell Connected Plant initiative, Alfa Laval can help refiners and petrochemical producers improve operation and operating reliability of their Alfa Laval Packinox special welded heat exchangers

The division is being formed in response to customer and supplier demand, along with the Northwest region’s lack of service providers for robot-based automation.

By Benson Hougland, Opto 22 The next generation of HMI and SCADA technologies is now poised to deliver the rich interfaces users expect, with even easier connectivity to the thriving variety of Internet of Things devices.

The 32nd edition of the show drew a record registration of 129,415 people and featured 1,424,232 sq. ft. of exhibit space representing 2,123 booths and 2,563 exhibiting companies. IMTS 2018 ran from Sept. 10 – 15 at Chicago’s McCormick Place.

Volkswagen joins a host of other end user market leaders like LG CNS, Samsung and Miele, who adopted OPC UA in their operations as a step toward realizing the potential benefits Industrie4.0 and IIoT promise into tangible results.

Automation engineers investigate several commonly used control structures such as “Cascaded PI controller,” “DMC cascaded to PI” and “Direct DMC.”

In this position, the Chair manages the strategic and tactical directives of the Board of Directors and ensures the marketing, technical, and overall business activities of the OPC Foundation consistently align with its vision and objectives.

In this position, the Chair manages the strategic and tactical directives of the Board of Directors and ensures the marketing, technical, and overall business activities of the OPC Foundation consistently align with its vision and objectives.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com The industrial automation industry has a reputation and history of being behind the technology adoption curve. With an prganizational need for reliability and system availability, the key question is: When is a new technology reliable enough that the benefits outweigh the risk?

Recent electronic advancements and the flexibility of package designs make LVIT variable inductance sensors very cost effective for mainstream in-cylinder applications, especially those that tend to be near the peak of that bell curve.

Highlights from ABB’s showcase include solutions that can enable digitalization and enhance the grid, in line with this year’s conference theme, “Re-imagining utility of the future.”

By Michele Windsor, Ultralife Corporation For robots to be truly reliable and safe, engineers should ensure they have the correct power solutions. This article explains the impact poor design and integration of batteries can have on industrial robots.

To help ensure 24-hour energy autonomy throughout its global expedition, the Energy Observer uses a combination of intermittent renewable energy: solar panels, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries and a hydrogen production system.

Under this partnership, CIMdata and IpX will launch several industry initiatives. These joint programs will provide organizations with the tools and services to solve complex challenges facing global enterprises.

The theme of HANNOVER MESSE 2019 underlines the growing importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the production and energy industries, including such areas as energy efficiency and use and autonomous production processes as well as challenges in terms of interfaces, protocols and security.

The ICC is hosted by Inductive Automation for partners and customers of the Ignition SCADA system.

By Edward E. Herceg, Alliance Sensors Group The strengths and weaknesses of magnetostrictive, variable resistance, and variable inductance sensors are examined in this white paper, along with a chart for feature-by-feature comparisons.

For manufacturers, material requirements planning (MRP) software is one of the key elements to running a smooth manufacturing operation.

A consequence of the concept of multiple independent protection suggests minimization of risk occurs when safety instrumented systems are completely independent from process control systems.

The agreement calls for the creation of a global center for the development of scientific research in DTVC.

The facility will bring together academics from different disciplines to explore the full potential of additive manufacturing (AM) for medical devices. The University of Birmingham has several active projects to innovate new medical devices and technologies to assist recovery following disease or injury, covering various clinical remits.

Both companies are to develop an integrated RFID tracking and weighing solution for monitoring containers in Production on the basis of the HARTING MICA (Modular Industry Computing Architecture) Edge Computer.

The disruptive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and next-generation smart manufacturing, also known as Industry 4.0, is placing demands on designers to develop motion-enabled solutions that are powerful, small, precise and efficient.

By Walter Smith, Sensata Technologies The advent of rare-earth magnets and advanced brushless DC motor (BLDC) motor design has empowered a new range of motors small enough to fit into confined spaces, powerful enough to do real work, and efficient enough to be used in wireless or remote applications.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation Machine safety is of the utmost importance to manufacturers to reduce the risk of accidents and safeguard staff. However, the benefits of a comprehensive safety strategy can extend far beyond this. But how can manufacturers reap the rewards safety brings?

The agreement calls for the creation of a global center for the development of scientific research in DTVC.

This annual award is presented by FieldComm Group to recognize the people, companies and plant sites around the globe that are using the capabilities of FOUNDATION Fieldbus, HART and WirelessHART technology in real-time applications for improved operations, maintenance and asset productivity.

EOS expands its portfolio of systems for metal additive manufacturing with the EOS M 300 series. The solution is an automation-ready, future-proof platform that is configurable, scalable, and secure. For this, EOS also trusts in control and drive components from the Siemens Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) portfolio.

As part of a larger infrastructure investment, CP Automation recently installed a Riello 3/1 phase UPS system at 40 kVa at one bustling UK port to improve the duration of its power supply.

This annual award is presented by FieldComm Group to recognize the people, companies and plant sites around the globe that are using the capabilities of FOUNDATION Fieldbus, HART and WirelessHART technology in real-time applications for improved operations, maintenance and asset productivity.

For critical industrial measurements, place the thermocouple in a bath or dry block or cross check the reading against another thermocouple.

Purpose-built for Windows and LINUX edge devices using standard industrial protocols, such as MQTT, OPC-UA, OPC-DA and Modbus, Aspen Edge Connect software collects real-time data from multiple assets and pools it together for analysis with edge processing devices.

This work is intended to enable 3D printed, patient-specific implants with controlled time to dissolve eliminating the need for second surgeries and thus also reducing risks, costs and suffering for patients.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com Keeping a manufacturing business vital and competitive requires a flow of ideas and creativity of the need to be stimulated with information from outside your organization.

Van der Vaart has over 25 years’ experience in the defense and securities industry, and has served in both operations and business development roles throughout his career.

By Shan Zhan, ABB Control Technologies In summer 2017, 15 EU states, Switzerland and Hong Kong were affected by the Fipronil contamination scandal. This article looks at what the scandal can teach food manufacturers about the importance of traceability processes.

At a time when detecting large industrial pipeline leaks within the same day was challenging, new technology that could detect small leaks and any leak quickly was exciting.

From a controls perspective, the three-pod design meant a complex system was required. The challenge was developing a system to manage the production interfaces alongside all of the sequencing, interlocking, etc. that is required between each of the pods.

ECT was tasked with developing a turbomachinery control system for two trains, each with three parallel compressors. Because the operations will be expected to run continuously for years at a time, a redundant architecture was essential to ensure a backup system would take over and reduce the likelihood of downtime should a failure occur.

The methods taught in the course are based on the IEC 62443-4-1 and IEC 62443-4-2 standards, which represent the expertise of a large group of global experts to reduce cyber vulnerabilities by laying a solid foundation of cyber defense mechanisms for automation system networks.

For a capacitance probe installed in a metal tank, the measured level is proportional to the measured capacitance between the level probe (one capacitor plate) and the tank wall (second capacitor plat