Articles and News

Joe Rozgonyi, who founded EMX in 1987, has made the decision to sell his stock and transition the company so he can retire. He will remain a consultant to the executive management team. Joe Williams, who also invested alongside Watervale in the transaction, will lead the company as CEO.

In the “Student Inspired Contest,” students can share stories about who inspires them to pursue careers in trades for a chance to win Fluke products. Entries must be received by Nov. 9, 2018.

Available as a free download on the Parker website, the software has been highlighted by Parker design centers, professional users, and DIYers for its interface, BOM generation, and quote capabilities.

EtherCAT itself has been a Chinese recommended standard since 2014. With FSoE now also reaching this official status, end users, system integrators and device manufacturers alike have the reassurance that the entire EtherCAT technology ecosystem is fully accepted in China

By Nick Boughton, Boulting Technology While AR is becoming increasingly popular in popular culture, how does the world of manufacturing keep up with the opportunities available to them? This article examines how AR can be used across the manufacturing industry.

GE will utilize Nozomi Networks’ advanced solutions for industrial control system (ICS) cyber resiliency and real-time operational visibility.

SENER (Mexico’s Secretary of Energy) this week announced that Robert Gordon University (RGU) and the University of Aberdeen will join Imperial College London and the IFP School in France as the selected universities.

Proper grounding provides safety, over-current protection, electrical noise reduction, lightning protection, and static electricity reduction.

He will be responsible for developing and executing new business strategies to accelerate Jenoptik’s growth as well as head up the Applications Center in Fremont, California, which serves our West Coast customers’ unique engineering, and product development needs.

zenon’s application as an HMI gives SWR operators flexibility to set welding parameters. This is a requirement for the environment in which SWR is designed, as almost every job requires some level of customization.

By Rachel Bugaris, Panduit The significance of PtD in manufacturing-oriented environments today can’t be understated, and furthermore the case for PtD in implementing solutions that design electrical safety into the process can easily be made.

Watlow’s Visual Designer uses pictures for product option menus and provides a constantly updated drawing of the product being configured. Users click on the features needed and watch them appear in the drawing.

HTE Engineering Services is headquartered in Dunboyne, County Meath, Ireland. Terms of the acquisition, which closed on October 1, were not disclosed.

Wilfried Eberhardt, Chief Marketing Officer and Member of the Advisory Board of KUKA AG in Augsburg, Germany, has been elected Chairman of the VDMA Robotics + Automation Association for a three- year term. Wilfried Eberhardt succeeds Dr. Norbert Stein, Managing Director of VITRONIC GmbH, whose three-year term of office ended.

Reshamwala will succeed founder and current CEO Martin Adams, who will transition to a strategic business development role, where he will focus on building key account relationships.

FDT technology integrates any device, system, or network in an automation architecture. It leverages IIoT and Industry 4.0 to help realize the true potential of decentralization, interoperability, and

The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of fiscal 2019, subject to regulatory approvals, GE’s consultation with employee representatives where required and other customary closing conditions.

The goal is to help companies use technology to reach Top Quartile performance, measured by optimized production, improved reliability, enhanced safety and minimized energy usage.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation Traditionally, the way to succeed in an engineering career has been to work your way up the corporate ladder, but is the influx of new start-ups changing this? This article looks at how engineering businesses can retain staff in the era of the start-up.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com The THINC Academy is working to address the skills gap problem by engaging students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to be productive. THINC Academy already has a success record adding skilled, motivated, and well-rounded workers to help close the skills gap with their educational approach.

Winners are recognized for their editorial contributions to a wide range of ISA publications, including ISA books; InTech, ISA’s bi-monthly magazine for automation and control professionals; and ISA Transactions

Based in France, Vallourec is a supplier of drill pipe for energy companies around the globe. The manufacturer has a presence in 20 countries, including Vallourec Drilling Products USA in Houston.

Tripwire Industrial Visibility is the first integrated solution between Tripwire and Claroty that will provide visibility, monitoring and threat mitigation across the complete OT landscape.

Patrik Nilsson’s role will be to handle Kamstrup’s strategic activities and continue to create customer-oriented solutions for the Swedish market.

Learn about the importance of process optimization and how to achieve it through better PID control from members of the ISA Mentor Program.

PcVue supervisory and control software from ARC Informatique has been configured as the BMS controlling all the assets like lights, HVAC, ventilation, chiller, temperature, air supply, power, filter pressure, and voltage supplied to special heaters for the hospital.

Eliasen is an automation industry professional with more than 25 years of experience in corporate operations and engineering management. At OSI, he has overseen all project delivery operations to date.

ABB will provide E-houses for the 47 pumping stations along the pipeline, spread across 47 kilometers, connecting a station being built in São Bernardo do Campo to the Capuava Refinery (RECAP) in Mauá in São Paulo.

By Robert Bova, AccuSpeechMobile One of the greatest impacts of automating with new mobile voice technology is the ability to decrease the ramp-up time required for temporary and seasonal staff.

Pressure recovery factor is the increase in fluid static pressure that occurs as fluid moves through a valve from the vena contracta to the valve's outlet and downstream piping.

Manufacturing Day, 5 October 2018 is designed to amplify the voice of individual companies and coordinate a collective movement toward greater understanding and solutions to key manufacturing challenges

Manufacturing Day, 5 October 2018 is designed to amplify the voice of individual companies and coordinate a collective movement toward greater understanding and solutions to key manufacturing challenges

Fabco-Air’s NPT pneumatic cylinders are applied by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) on new machinery and systems as well as replacement components in the Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) market.

By Sean Robinson, Novotek Sales people will tout an endless stream of benefits of an IoT-enabled device but the IoT isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme where one purchase can promise a life of high ROI. This article explains why the data from your new IoT device might not be meeting expectations.

This latest round follows a $15 million round in January 2018. Funding will be used to fortify Nozomi Networks’ market by broadening its global presence and continuing expansion of research and development.

ABB has been selected to deliver its WindSTAR transformers specifically designed for floating wind turbines, to MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, a joint venture between Vestas Wind Systems A/S and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI).

The cooperation will enable Honeywell to deliver solar modules with data analytics to commercial and industrial customers to help them achieve sustainability goals.

As part of this program, SCSK Corporation and KOLON BENIT have begun selling Falkonry LRS in Japan and South Korea respectively, and Falkonry is engaged with other OEMs, system integrators, distributors, resellers and referral partners around the globe who are expected to follow.

By Lisa Silverman, RunSafe Security As more and more controllers, servers, remote terminals, monitoring equipment, and sensors are tied to the internet, the cyberattack surface has increased exponentially, making our critical infrastructure and manufacturing plants vulnerable to unprecedented threats.

Model predictive control software identifies the dynamics and automatically incorporates them into the industrial evaporator controller.

HANNOVER MESSE USA 2018 covered more than 114,200 square feet of exhibit space and featured 510 exhibitors who showcased their innovations to a record breaking 129,415 registered visitors attending both shows.

By combining AVEVA’s industrial automation and information management capabilities with Canon’s imaging technology, the two companies can develop new solutions to facilitate Smart Manufacturing operations.

ISA/IEC 62443-4-2-2018, Security for Industrial Automation and Control Systems: Technical Security Requirements for IACS Components, provides the cybersecurity technical requirements for components that make up an IACS, specifically the embedded devices, network components, host components and software applications.

The scope of supply includes an ABB Ability Network Manager SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)/Energy Management System (EMS), more than 120 Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) and a fiber-optic communications network to monitor and control the grid.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com Today we take another dive into the world of new technologies in today's automation ecosystem. For this article, I had opportunity to examine Opto 22's groov EPIC product at the 22nd annual ARC Industry Forum in February.

HANNOVER MESSE USA 2018 covered more than 114,200 square feet of exhibit space and featured 510 exhibitors who showcased their innovations to a record breaking 129,415 registered visitors attending both shows.

Research focus on the use of OPC technology for the study of distributed control systems as a cost effective and flexible research tool for the development and testing of advanced process control techn

By Ben C. Garber, Ultra Electronics, 3eTI Cyber attacks can bring these thriving smart cities to a standstill and create utter chaos. Ensuring cyber-physical security against local and foreign adversaries is the new challenge for today’s city planners.

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.