Articles and News

A well-designed, integrated building automation system seamlessly integrates lighting, elevators, boilers, chillers, fire protection, generators, access control, and HVAC control systems, which may al

As a defense contractor, Northrop Grumman will continue to make investments in Australia to support local platform sustainment, supply chain opportunities, workforce development and more.

As the new president, Barker will oversee all sales, engineering, marketing and administrative operations from the headquarters of Beckhoff Automation LLC in Savage, Minn. (Minneapolis area).

By James Davey, Boulting Technology Despite their resilience and rugged design, PLC-based control systems can still break down and their failure can lead to costly downtime. This article discusses the top causes of PLC control system failure.

The acquisition of the elecworks assets will streamline and boost Dassault Systèmes’ development of an integrated mechatronics solution on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to help its SOLIDWORKS customers address electrical design challenges in the development of smart products.

CyberX is an industrial cybersecurity company to have been awarded a patent for its ICS-aware threat detection analytics and machine learning technology, and the only industrial cybersecurity company founded by blue-team cyber experts.

The two companies span many common verticals to include oil & gas, utilities, and agriculture markets that require the collection of sensor data for process optimization, preventative maintenance, and compliance reporting.

The intent is to share the information across the network of MDISS member organizations, which includes medical device manufacturers, healthcare software companies, hospital networks, and insurance companies.

By Zane Blomgren, Tripwire There is little doubt that the need for OT operators to adapt to stronger cyber security postures is getting increasingly urgent. Yet, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions that could very well hinder many operators from taking the appropriate actions

As Chairman of Claroty’s Board of Advisors, Rogers will lead a distinguished cadre of business and security leaders to provide guidance and counsel to the company and its customers on emerging cybersecurity trends and requirements.

Leaks occur in an inherently stochastic environment and context so there is no reason to presume there is anything deterministic about them.

By Mike Santori, National Instruments The IoT and IIoT are making test more complex. IoT technologies can help address automated test challenges. Engineers need to understand and focus on the use cases with the most business value.

Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, Envisioning the Next-Generation Cybersecurity Practices, presents an overview of cybersecurity in enterprises and analyzes the drivers and challenges to the adoption of best practices in cybersecurity.

With over 8 years of experience working in the North American CDMO industry, Kieran Chouhan joins the business management team at Recipharm to lead sales activity in North America.

Based in Houston, Whittaker will report to company president, Kevin Hunt, and be responsible for global quality standards, programs and systems. In this role, he will lead the development and continuous improvement of our quality programs and processes to support the growth and globalization of the company.

By Jonathan Wilkins In industry, both 3D printing and CNC machining allow manufacturers to produce complex parts but sometimes it can be difficult to know which technology will better suit an application. This article discusses the applications for CNC machining and additive manufacturing.

Learn the contribution of each PID mode, why reset time is orders of magnitude too small for most composition and temperature loops, and other PID controller issues.

At the core of the agreement is ABB Ability smart substation control and protection for electrical systems, SSC600, powered by Intel® Xeon® processors.

Place a resistor across the input terminals of the controller to convert a transmitter's current output signal.

With input from experts in academia, private industry, government, and the military, this guide offers guidance to help SMBs identify the most cost-effective cybersecurity best practices for their business.

By Dr Peter Harrop, IDTechEx The smart materials and robotics approach to smart cities is far more powerful than the initial IT and sensor centric approach and it is cracking the problem.

PPC, headquartered in Buffalo Grove, IL, is a specialist in flexographic printing and converting of flexible films, bags, and pouches The firm operates five manufacturing facilities in Buffalo Grove, IL, Mission, KS, Rome, GA, Payson, UT, and Colombia, South America. Its facilities are SQF and ISO-9001 certified.

By Jürgen Resch, COPA-DATA As the EU sets the pace in the global race against climate change, this article forecasts the key trends for energy in 2019, which will reaffirm Europe's position in the global renewable energy market.

Cyber Integrity provides the most comprehensive inventory of the ICS, beyond what is visible using network monitoring solutions. It enables companies to identify vulnerabilities, detect unauthorized change, and address compliance requirements to reduce ICS cybersecurity risks and improve process safety.

The guide aims to support design engineers as well as resistor end users across all industries to understand the requirements of their power resistor enclosure.

The purpose of this study is to understand the concerns that organizations have for functional safety, cybersecurity and data privacy when there is a convergence of IT, operational technology (OT) and industrial internet of things (IIoT).

Bridges is responsible for the development, design and innovation of new products as well as continuous improvement of current designs to assist in growing and strengthening the line of product offerings.

Announced at the 2018 ARC Forum, FieldComm Group and the OPC Foundation presented their joint vision for creating a protocol independent, process automation device information model (PA-DIM) specification to implement the requirements of the NAMUR Open Architecture (NOA).

The collaboration between OSIsoft and INL is intended to enable government and industry partners to advance the adoption of microgrid and renewable technologies

By Henry Boger, Independent Consultant Wireless power transfer eliminates the need for batteries and the replacement of batteries by a skilled technician who is required to go part way up a 100-foot distillation tower on the midnight shift.

Professionals in any industry that work with or produce chemicals will learn how to identify, evaluate, and control chemical hazards to improve safety.

Predictive analytics, a relatively new dimension to analytics tools, can give valuable insights about what will happen in the future based on historical data.

The key aspects are secure remote maintenance of plants and machines, encrypted communications over the Internet, and monitoring of industry protocols at critical network interfaces.

By Nigel Smith, TM Robotics Robots as a Service (RaaS) is a business model for deploying robotic automation on lease. This article examines the potential of RaaS, when compared to traditional robot purchasing.

As CTO, Pekka Sillanpää will focus on driving R&D work and software development, generating growth and sharing his expertise to position Tosibox as a thought leader in its industry. Sillanpää will also become a member of the Tosibox executive management team.

As an Oracle JD Edwards Partner, Corning will leverage its industry experience in manufacturing, aerospace and defense, construction, high tech, and food & beverage to maximize business value for IFS customers.

The building strengthens the Swiss corporation's presence on the Chinese market, enabling it to offer products and services from one single source to local customers in the future.

Under the agreement, Wood automation & control, will deliver Bedrock Open Secure Automation (OSA) to its clients in energy and industrial markets.

Advanced process simulation empowers engineers with greater insight into key processes and enables faster problem solving for distillation column analysis.

ARM projects work to strengthen U.S. manufacturing by addressing critical gaps in industrial and collaborative robot deployment and skills development to support plant automation.

Whitbread will lead the global technology, service and operations teams from Epsilon’s London office. He will be responsible for driving the transformation of the company’s technology innovation and delivering new levels of customer experience for the global business.

The integration between its Indegy Industrial Cybersecurity Suite and IBM’s QRadar Security Intelligence Platform i designed to bridge the visibility gap between enterprise information technology (IT) environments and industrial, operational technology (OT) environments.

By Nick Boughton, Boulting Technology As entire systems have become electronic and software-based, safety and security must also be delivered digitally. This article explains how cybersecurity vulnerabilities can diminish physical safety

Turbine meters almost universally use a magnetic pickup to determine the number of rotations of the spinning turbine element.

MFC worked with system integrator Wachter Inc. to design an automated facility, based on the PlantPAx distributed control system (DCS) from Rockwell Automation.

The Windoor Realfly vertical indoor wind tunnel in Empuriabrava uses variable speed drives (VSDs) to control the fans that generate winds of 150-300 km/hour.

The global energy transformation brings challenges and opportunities for the power sector. These include ensuring power availability and managing complex grids with a growing number of diverse, distributed energy resources and a high penetration of renewables.

The application enables Temblor to monitor and operate well heads remotely, providing secure real-time production data while minimizing the requirements for onsite operators.

The announcement brings OpenFog members into the IIC at a time when their complementary areas of technology are emerging in the mainstream. The first formal meeting of the unified organization will be held in Raleigh, N.C., from February 11-14.

By Tracy Lustyan, alliantgroup Those looking to offset the costs of development and implementation of automation tools should look at the R&D tax credit.

Learn how ISA is advancing the technical competence of everyone in the industry (both members and non-members) through publications, training, certifications, standards, and conferences.

The PTC partnership will extend Novotek’s Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology offering and will help businesses in the UK’s manufacturing, food and beverage, utilities and energy sector improve their system effectiveness, efficiency and connectivity.

The report analyzes expected cost savings, and ROI timelines in addition to highlighting the most prevalent IIoT use cases across the Automotive, Tire, Industrial Products, Metal, FMCG and Chemical industries.

By Rick Peters, Fortinet The ability to implement security solutions that deliver visibility, control and real-time situational awareness are the differentiators enabling safe and more efficient operations.

Automated multivariable control needs to be a core competency in the process industries. An updated picture of the multivariable control landscape will help to regain forward progress.

His appointment serves to integrate the engineering value stream between the sales order and operations

The pace of technological change in the automation industry seems to be accelerating as we head into 2019, driven by innovations developed for Internet of Things and general computing.

Emulate3D’s software enables customers to virtually test machine and system designs before incurring manufacturing and automation costs and committing to a final design.

The factory comprises a robotized and digitized production line with eight robotic stations with a capacity of up to 300 megawatt hours (MWh) per year.

Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan has predicted a compound annual growth rate in the healthcare AI market of 40 per cent through 2021, largely because AI has the potential to improve healthcare outcomes by 30 to 40 per cent while halving treatment costs.

As SCADA, MES, and historian capabilities increased, so did the need for processing power. Process virtualization was the perfect answer.

The collaboration aims to develop tools and offerings that can accelerate the digital transformation of manufacturers in Singapore and internationally.

Inductees into the BACnet Hall of Fame are individuals with at least a decade of meaningful contributions to the BACnet community, who have played a role in the ongoing development of the BACnet standard or the community, championed open dialog and a collaborative approach to resolving issues, and demonstrated a global perspective with respect for regional and cultural differences.

iQ2 is LEC’s end-to-end IIoT platform solution that’s designed from an industrial automation engineering perspective to address individual needs and enable next-generation, cutting-edge IIoT platform technology

Digi-Key Electronics has been committed to offering a selection of in-stock electronic components and is pleased to include ASG’s line of LVIT sensors to their product offering.

Gröninger Cleaning Systems equipped its machinery in remote locations with TOSIBOX Locks, enabling remote control and maintenance. Behind each TOSIBOX Lock there are about 30 to 40 devices such as drives, PLCs, HMIs and control cabinets that are connected and directly accessible via a TOSIBOX Key.

Tag numbers, wire numbers and terminal numbers, and indication of the interrelation to other instrumentation loops, are the essential elements of a loop diagram.

The selection process for components can be time-consuming and error-prone, but the igus configurator enables designers to find the right system based on the triflex R energy chain from igus.

LF Edge is initially comprised of five projects that will support emerging edge applications in the area of non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, faster processing and mobility.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation To tackle the medical, engineering and environmental challenges of the future, innovation is essential. Scientists and engineers must contend with enhancing virtual reality, securing cyberspace, advancing health informatics and engineering better medicines. Sometimes, this happens by accident, but often it’s the result of a positive company culture.

Michael brings close to twenty years of experience from his service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), where he served in senior positions in an elite cybersecurity technology unit

The decision by Amazon to join the Zigbee Alliance at the Board level is a message that the industry is focused on simplifying and adding convenience to the growing range of IoT devices available to customers.

Running under the lead theme of "Industrial Intelligence", HANNOVER MESSE 2019 will zero in on this trend, with a simultaneous focus on the role of human beings – the decisive idea generators for the factory of the future.

The partnership will provide PRN and its partners access to the A3 network of more than 1,200 automation-focused companies in the robotics, vision and motion control sectors across North America as well as leading system integrators, distributors, and users of these technologies.

The standard is intended to meet demands in the region for open, standardized device integration on an enterprise-wide basis.