Articles and News

Downloadable document explains how the company's managed Ethernet switches can help monitor the state of networks as well as diagnose network problems.

Smart Wireless solutions combine self-organizing wireless network technology and gateways with wireless-enabled Rosemount measurement transmitters and wireless AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager predictive maintenance software. All are integrated with DeltaV and Ovation automation systems, or legacy hosts.

The U.S. government Defense Supply Center Richmond (DSCR) has rated Invensys among its best suppliers. The DSCR is a primary source for repair parts and operating supply items within the Department of Defense supply chain. Invensys received a gold medal for achieving a perfect score in meeting stringent quality and delivery requirements for Foxboro specialty instrumentation.

The PocketPAD LAN Buffer enables data transmitted from a serial device to be stored and then retrieved by establishing a TCP connection to the Buffer over the Ethernet network. The PocketPAD Buffer connects to the serial port of the PABX and into the company LAN, storing up to 50,000 call records. In Offline mode, data from the PABX is saved to flash for later download to a management station.

The latest revision to a technical specification introduced earlier this year defines an open mathematics semantics standard for numerical algorithm development. This update includes newly ratified functions from classes that include polynomials and vector analysis.

This catalog features 2,000 of the most commonly ordered items out of more than 3,500 off-the-shelf products and problem-solving components. Included are: shaft collars for round, square, hexagonal, and threaded shafts; set-screw, one-piece, two-piece, and triple-link hinge collars; and a full line of rigid clamp-type couplings in various sizes and materials.

ABB received a contract from Myllykoski Paper Oy to assume responsibility for maintenance operations at the company's mill in Anjalankoski, Finland. The ABB Full Service agreement is valued at more than $150 million. The arrangement covers automation, electrical and mechanical maintenance and planning as well as material management at the mill, which produces some 500,000 tons of coated and uncoated papers annually.

Honeywell will supply an Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS), a Da Vinci quality control system and a Devronizer steambox to Powerflute's paper machine in Kuopio, Finland. Powerflute makes the world's strongest semi-chem fluting medium and has a single mill at Kuopio in Eastern Finland. Honeywell also won a multi-year Life Cycle Management agreement to help the mill update control systems, maximize asset effectiveness and improve production.

STI shareholders will receive $10.67 per share in cash as a result of the merger, and STI will cease to be a publicly-traded company. Omron acquired STI's Safety Products Group (SPG) business will operate under the name of Omron Scientific Technologies. STI sold its Automation Products Group (APG) business to Automation Products Group, Inc., a new company formed by members of the Lazzara family.

Presented today by Homega Research at the 9th annual Net-atHome event in Cannes, France, the award recognizes contributions to the worldwide connected home markets made by particular companies or people. Mark Ossel, vice president of Echelon, accepted the award on Echelon’s behalf.

PostNet and OneCode Barcode Font Packages support USPS OneCode (also known as the 4-State Customer Barcode, 4CB, 4-CB, OneCode Solution Barcode and USPS4CB). USPS OneCode is a height-modulated barcode designed for use in high speed, automated, mail sorting machines.

RF Monolithics will offer its recently acquired asset management software through and under the name of its subsidiary, Aleier, Inc., and discontinue use of the Caver-Morehead Systems brand. Aleier will be a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) application provider and will provide a broader asset management solution, particularly condition-based maintenance.

The opening of a Texas sales office follows the launch of its Florida office in Tampa a year ago. Bill Walton, president and CEO of GiveMePower attributes the company's growth in part to its suite of desktop and mobile applications such as the PowerCAD SiteMaster automated building surveying and information management solution.

Omron has established OOO OMRON ELECTRONICS ('OEE-RUS'), a wholly owned subsidiary of OMRON's Industrial Automation Business ('IAB') in Moscow, Russia. The new company, which will handle the sales and servicing of IAB's control equipment, is scheduled to start operations in October 2006. Until now, IAB has serviced its Russian customers by stationing OMRON Finland staff in Moscow.

Barry-Wehmiller Design Group plans to expand its Electrical Manufacturing Division to provide advanced control panel solutions. The division, known as ControlTech Automation, operates independently, but it also serves the Design Group and other engineering consulting firms across the U.S.

The OPC Foundation Unified Architecture defines secure reliable interoperability for exchanging data and information from the factory floor to the enterprise. The OPC Unified Architecture DevCon 2006 will be held at the Technische Universitaet in Munich, Germany, on October 10- 12, 2006.

Honeywell won a $7 million contract to supply process and safety controls for Tasnee Petrochemicals’ new ethylene plant in Saudi Arabia. Samsung Engineering, one of the main contractors for the project, selected Honeywell to provide an Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS) to manage the ethylene production. Honeywell will also install its Safety Manager platform to reduce the risk of incidents at the plant.

Intermec's 2006 Webinar Series webcasts contain information designed to improve efficiency and establish best practices with the latest technologies. The five 60-minute live webcasts cover a range of topics, including retail, forklift technology, RFID in the automotive industry, mobile enterprise, and warehouse productivity.

The company is using a KUKA KR 500 robot, fitted with a specialized end of arm order-picking/depalletizing head and mixed pallet building software, to demonstrate its new order picking by layer concept atits booth (#S-830) at PackExpo 2006 October 29- November 2nd in Chicago, Illinois.

BRIC Engineered Systems Limited has been awarded a contract with Concurrent Technologies Corporation and the U.S. Air Force for the continued development of a Robotic Laser Coating Removal Platform to remove paint and other coatings from aircraft structures.

Frost & Sullivan has selected Emerson Process Management as the recipient of the 2006 South East Asian Customer Service Leadership Award for Process Automation Suppliers. Emerson was recognized for responding to customer needs, and demonstrating a continual focus on long and short-term customer profitability goals

PAKO is an organization with 10 years solutions expertise in industrial automation computers, embedded solutions, rugged flat panel solutions, industrial & mil grade SSD storage, and CNC/PLC HMI. Based in Pune, Pako Communications is fast earning acclaim as a frontrunner in the areas of supply and maintenance of computers and peripherals, and has distinguished itself as a specialist in LAN installation on Novell, NT and Unix platforms.

The Schneider Electric North American Operating Division manufacturing plant in Peru, Ind., was recognized by IndustryWeek as a winner of its annual Best Plants Competition.

The price reduction presents an average savings of 18% on variable frequency drives. The Marathon lines of MicroMAX, Black Max, Blue Max, and Blue Chip inverter duty motors have been reduced 10%.

Edison fuse line now includes the J, RK1, and RK5 fuse classes. These current limiting fast-acting and time-delay fuses are available with 250 or 600 VAC ratings, depending on type, are UL and CSA approved.

Emerson recently completed the installation of automation and controls for a gantry type loading facility at the Shell Pernis refinery and chemical complex in the Netherlands. The total care maintenance contract with Vopak, the gantry owner and operator, carries penalties if availability falls below 99.7 percent. This means no more than three four-hour downtime events per year.

PowerCAD CE for Pocket PC has been selected as a finalist in the "Best Industry Application" category in the 2006 Handango Champion Awards. The Handango Champion Awards highlight exceptional mobile applications created by the industry’s best software developers.

RuggedCom's increase in revenue of 20,545% from 2001 to 2005 resulted in a fourth ranking overall in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50, the annual program which recognizes excellence, innovation and the fastest growing tech companies in Canada.

Schneider Electric North America and its companies are bringing together local and international experts to present a series of diverse seminars on topics to help attendees with their daily business. In addition, there will be 70,000 square feet of trade exhibits and product demostrations, as well as Schneider Electric's expert staff on hand to discuss application problems and solutions.

This position paper explains appropriate applications for ABB's single and multiple drives. In general terms, the ABB multidrives can be used whenever several drives/motors form part of a single or integrated mechanical process. The common supply of the multidrive enables the implementation of overall safety and control functions, and permits the close coordination of individual drive motors.

Agilent's MXA Signal Analyzer and the MXG Signal Generator will have options available for LXI Class B compliance by fall 2007. LXI Class B provides synchronization and IEEE 1588 precision time capabilities.

SK Corporation recently implemented PAS’ Configuration Management Software solution at its Ulsan, South Korea complex, the largest integrated refining and petrochemical complex in the world with a capacity of 850,000 barrel/day crude distillation. SK chose Integrity to manage and optimize the entire range of 120 automation assets.

One of the world's largest chipset producing companies based in the USA has selected Control-See's U.C.ME-OPC alarm notification solution for one of its plants in the middle east.

Yokogawa Electric has been selected by Air Liquide Engineering (Champigny, France) as a strategic preferred system supplier of Process Control Systems for air separation units and syngas (HYCO) systems. Yokogawa products and services covered by this new agreement include the CENTUM CS3000 integrated production control system, the ProSafe-RS safety system, software solutions, and system integration engineering and maintenance services.

Rapid growth has prompted the need for the company to move to a larger facility. The new building is approximately 15,000 square feet. The company purchased the building in August 2006, and will have fully transferred operations to the new location by the middle of October.

The SP100.11 and SP100.14 Working Groups of ISA's SP100 Committee for wireless industrial standards held a meeting this week at ISA headquarters in Research Triangle Park, NC. Participants reviewed a wide range of technology approaches that could help solve real world wireless issues. The issues that the committee will focus on have been identified by user input and through use cases collected by ISA.

Keynote speakers for the 2006 European conference at the Elewijt Center in Mechelen, Belgium on 13-15 November include Martin Zeller, who will deliver a detailed evaluation of batch data analysis on Tuesday, 14 November; and Lou Pillai and Dennis Brandl, who will address information model framework for manufacturing science on Wednesday, 15 November.

S&S Power, a world-leading manufacturer of amusement-park rides, uses igus products in its quest to provide thrill seekers with the ultimate adrenaline rush. To ensure that all its amusement rides are dependable and require minimal maintenance, S&S uses Energy Chain Systems on the company's rollercoasters and iglide bearings almost anywhere pivoting, rotating or oscillating motion is needed such as lap bars and swing restraints.

Barco's PLANTMASTER system will provide Dairymaster with real-time visibility of machine performance and quality reporting for their dairy farm equipment manufacturing. Operating from their head office in Causeway (Co Kerry, Ireland), Dairymaster has been at the forefront of innovative milk parlour systems for over 40 years.

Colloid Mills can be tailored to match specific customer processing requirements ranging from low- to high-viscosity to abrasive slurries. The Colloid Mills have a milling head which features a standard rotor and stator with working surfaces that can be tailored by the manufacturer to meet specific customer requirements for emulsifying, dispersion, and particle size reduction.

Registration is open for the 2006 NI Technical Symposium Professional Development Series for Engineers, the company's annual series of virtual instrumentation conferences that reaches 26 U.S. cities. From October through December 2006, engineers and scientists from across the country will attend the conferences for new product presentations; hands-on, technology-focused sessions; and exhibits on the latest solutions in design, control and test.

BusinessWeek magazine has ranked Austin-based National Instruments No. 14 among its top 50 employers for new college graduates. The inaugural “Best Places to Launch a Career” ranking incorporates input from leading university career services directors and more than 37,000 undergraduate students, with information on companies’ pay and benefits, corporate culture and training opportunities.

The 328-page Essentials catalog of Telemecanique automation and control products is available to view online. Online visitors have a choice to download all or a portion of the catalog. Visitors also can register on the Web site and order a printed copy of the catalog or the CD-ROM version.

Innovation Alley at ISA Expo 2006 (17-19 October at the Reliant Center in Houston, Texas) will provide an opportunity for attendees to see the future, along with the commercial innovations of today's automation hardware, software, and service suppliers that are presented in the traditional exhibits.

The exhibit, demonstrating interoperability of SERCOS II and SERCOS III motion controllers and servodrive products from multiple vendors, will be in the OMAC Packaging Workgroup booth, number C-64, located in the concourse entrance to upper level McCormick Place North.

News sales offices include Ulrich Lüer of UL.Consult GmbH in Germany and Alexander Hermes in Austria.

New tools in the FactoryTalk integrated production and performance software suite include FactoryTalk Integrator, which allows manufacturers to more easily connect their plant-floor applications with higher-level business systems; and FactoryTalk Portal, which allows manufacturers to consolidate Web-based interfaces into one manageable and configurable launch point.

The Customer Training Course Catalog contains a comprehensive view of current courses in the areas of Power Distribution, Automation and Control, and Power Management. The new catalog contains curriculum maps and matrices that make it easier for customers to determine the course selection best suited to their particular job, position and skill set.

Avalon Vision Solutions is a leading supplier of machine vision systems designed to protect plastic injection molds. Avalon uses Advantech's computers with their camera and camera software. Customers will be able to order equipment from either Advantech or Avalon.

Emerson Process Management has completed a project to upgrade and unify combustion, turbine control and burner management systems at Pagbilao power station Units 1 and 2 with its Ovation expert control system. The 750-MW plant, operated by Mirant Pagbilao Corp., is located in Quezon, Philippines.