Articles and News

The presentations will speak of the benefits Seeq customers are realizing in the oil & gas, pharmaceutical, chemical, energy, mining, food and beverage, and other process industries.

RobMoSys (Composable Models and Software for Robotics) is an €8 million Innovation Action involving 9 partners from 5 countries and will be carried out over four years.

MicroHAWK, in combination with the browser-based WebLink user interface, allows users to adjust reader settings remotely and to monitor results in real time from any web-enabled device without installing any software.

By Maria Ferrante, PMMI PMMI had a chance to speak about new technologies and trends in automation with Don Wickstrum, president and owner of Quest Industrial, a robotics integrator based in Monroe, Wisconsin. Wickstrum will present an Innovation Stage seminar at the inaugural ProFood Tech (April 4-6; McCormick Place, Chicago) on how robotics can fill the labor shortage in the food industry.

This new collaboration is designed to attract and introduce more high school students to career opportunities in the industry and prepare them to become the next generation workforce for jobs that are in high demand.

Hänel offered two Rotomats to the Material Handling Institute (MHI), and Western Guilford was one of several schools to apply for the donation. The Rotomat vertical carousel will be used to store school materials and provide live demonstrations for the school’s Logistics Education Department.

By Alan Grau, Icon Labs Recent WikiLeak documents allege that the CIA developed, or sought to develop, or even “borrowed”, cyberattack technology that could target a wide range of IoT devices, including smart TVs, connected cars, and mobile phones. What can we learn from this?

Learn and share knowledge via discussion groups, articles, user group meetings, ISA meetings, Web meetings, and trade events.

The idea for the competition is for engineers, makers and students to come up with innovative applications and solutions based on the open IoT gateway.

In Hanover, HIMA will demonstrate the modular automation concept via a safety control system that features considerable processing power, multiple encoder interfaces and granular architecture.

The 2nd “Startup Pitch @ Young Tech Enterprises” from 24 to 28 April 2017, will see forty young companies compete not only for prize money, but also for potential investors, customers, partners and media coverage.

By Matt Smith, Cortet Engineering This article will aim to help your decision-making process by explaining the existing technologies and attempting to demystify the ocean of IoT protocols.

At the March 22-23 event, Festo and Siemens will demonstrate the Multi-Carrier System, a mass customization transport solution. Festo will provide strategies for smart manufacturing during presentations on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon.

Matrikon's downloadable OPC whitepaper discusses how vendors can enable their new and existing products with OPC technology to compete on the IIoT/Industrie 4.0 landscape

GE's Industrial Internet Control System IICS is a central control system for industrial asset and plant control on the basis of analyzed machine data.

An array of examples from practice will allow visitors to experience applications and innovations demonstrating the competitive benefits to be gained by merging the real and the virtual worlds.

The M2M & OPCF user group has been founded in order to document and spread best practices for building secure communication solutions and smart services based on device and machine data.

Barto comes to Seegrid with more than 30 years of experience and has held CFO and executive positions at both privately held and public technology companies

This is the first acquisition for Electro-Matic Ventures, which has three other subsidiaries: Electro-Matic Products, Electro-Matic Integrated, and Electro-Matic Visual.

The availability of many new technologies has provided the building blocks for dramatic changes in the manufacturing industry. Is your business model set to keep up?

ISA has technology needed to solve infrastructure security challenges, such as the world's only industrial cybersecurity standard, ISA99/IEC62443.

SensAction will operate as a division of the Endress+Hauser center of competence for flow measurement technology headquartered in Reinach, Switzerland.

The effort, developed by Catalyst, recognizes CEOs and top industry leaders who support and drive diversity and inclusion within their organizations.

The integration, which is targeted for completion by the end of calendar year 2017, is intended to enhance Dematic's system integration capability in Europe. Egemin Automation had been acquired by the KION Group in 2015.

By Rajiv Sivaraman, Siemens Digitalization may find its way into the dictionary as a homonym, for all its multiple meanings, but it has already found its way into boardroom agenda. Are you on board with digitalization?

Alongside OPC UA and other control protocols, the echocollect gateway (version 7.10) includes publisher functionality of the MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) protocol.

The forum will be held April 4 at the Automate 2017 Show and Conference at Chicago’s McCormick Place. The forum will bring together A3’s Robotic Industries Association (RIA), and its counterpart, the China Robot Industry Alliance (CRIA)

The study looked at the rise of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) deployment in organizations, and to what extent it is expected to cause security problems in 2017.

Cost sheets show the best periods of operation, and data historians explain the conditions and relationships.

Automation Job Seekers Join us at ISPE Vendor Night March 28 in San Francisco

By Ulf Johannesson, Emerson Many terminals and tank farms struggle with tank gauging because they use outdated equipment. However, modern tank gauging systems can solve these issues

From 18 to 23 September 2017, international manufacturers of production technology will be spotlighting “Connecting systems for intelligent production” at the EMO Hannover 2017.

Total machine vision sales, which grew by one half of one percent, include sales of machine vision components and systems. The machine vision components category saw growth of one percent to $320 million in 2016.

The tool is at users' fingertips on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, and it allows the user to choose from a variety of engineering units (like pressure, temperature, level, or flow) and process signals (like 4–20 mA or 1–5 VDC) for the calculations.

ABB Ability helps customers in utilities, industry, transport and infrastructure develop new processes and advance existing ones by providing insights and optimizing planning and controls for real-time operations.

The partnership is intended to benefit customers with Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) wireless connectivity leveraging OleumTech’s self-contained, battery-powered wireless transmitter technology.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation With new strains of ransomware and other vulnerabilities created every week, what should manufacturers look out for in new year?

ISA President Steven Pflantz says change requires a mindset shift. The organization needs to view change as an ongoing reality, not a temporary phenomenon.

The Award, sponsored by Printed Circuit Design and Fab magazine, was presented at a ceremony during IPC APEX 2017, held in San Diego, CA, on February 14, 2017.

By Dean Wiech, Tools4ever One of the primary issues that employees in manufacturing facilities encounter, regardless of if they are front office or plant floor, is the number of user names and passwords they need to remember.

This is the first acquisition case of Ubiqconn since its establishment 5 years ago. The management team remains after the acquisition, and resources from the parent company FICG will be provided to expand product lines and branding development for RuggON.

Fint provides fieldbus network products and services to vendors and users in the process control and offshore industry. Fint specializes in products based on the Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus, HART, WirelessHART and now ISA100 Wireless technology.

The modernised, `non-operations’ network provides reliability and bandwidth helping the company to better monitor and control the supply of electricity to 2.4 million properties in the UK.

Assa Abloy AG, the Swiss global leader in locking systems and security technology, has put the Magic xpi Integration Platform at the heart of the company’s new fully automated manufacturing system for its KESO keys.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com There is an common adage that has survived the ages: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Automation system users are expressing frustrations with existing systems and the lack of modern and open technology.

Remedy for effects of modeling uncertainty, measurement noise & input disturbance on performance of the standard state-dependent Riccati equation filter,

MPPIglobal receives project work with Agincourt Resources Brisbane, QLD, March 13, 2017– MPPIglobal has been awarded the complete installation package of Optimum, MPPIglobal’s Asset Optimization Solution with Agincourt Resources at the Martabe Gold Mine.

The training session is tailored for systems integrators, in-house integration specialists, machine builders and OEMs who wish to develop vision or inspection systems for deployment on Matrox smart cameras or any PC with GigE Vision or USB3 Vision cameras, including Matrox 4Sight GPm industrial computers.

Advanticsys wireless solution supporting M-Bus and Modbus RTU / TCP was chosen by the School and Cardiff Council due to the non-intrusive nature of the installation, with little preparatory work needed resulting in a cost reduction compared to other wired alternatives.

Smart water solutions are gaining traction with municipal water utilities. Over $20 billion is slated for metering, data management, and analytics from 2016 to 2025, globally, according to Bluefield Research.

By Cory Fogg, Automation.com The February 6-9 event provided an atmosphere buzzing over the potential that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and connected technology are bringing to today’s industry.

A linear flow characteristic is when flow capacity or (Cv) increases linearly with valve travel. Flow is directly proportional to valve travel.

Local services available through the operations center include customer service, order management and banking transactions, as well as technical product support through DDC local Field Applications Engineers..

The award will be presented at the 2017 Engineering Awards Manufacturing dinner on Monday, April 3, 2017, at the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel.

Jacob Sng, Regional Sales Manager Southeast Asia, and Vivek Shrivas, Application Engineer Asia Pacific, moved their operations into this new space, and two training courses have already been successfully conducted.

The team from the Academy of Notre Dame de Namur in Villanova previously had visited the engineering suite at Great Valley. Their coach, Deb Gleeson, said the young women asked repeatedly if they could connect with the Penn State engineering students again.

The webinar, which will be held on 3/30 from 12 -1:30 PM, Eastern Daylight Time, will feature three automation experts: Ian Verhappen, Senior Project Manager at CIMA+; Ned Espy, Technical Director at Beamex; and Roy Tomalino, Calibration Engineer at Beamex.

The partnership between IBM and Opto 22 enables developers to design, prototype, and deploy applications to connect existing industrial assets to the IBM Watson IoT platform and share their data, capabilities, and resources with other connected systems and assets, to build the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

By InfinityQS By moving out of “firefighting” mode and into a proactive, data-driven mindset, quality professionals can solve problems more quickly—or even prevent them in the first place.

The combined calibration solution enhances the ability of organizations to obtain precise calibrations for reduced risk and compliance with industry standards.

From 6–9 November 2017, Deutsche Messe will stage Industrial Automation North America and MDA– Motion, Drive & Automation North America parallel to FABTECH at McCormick Place in Chicago.

By Thomas R. Cutler The Hispanic share of the labor force is expected to increase more than that of any other demographic group, because of both overall population growth (from higher births and increased immigration) and higher labor force participation rates.

Understanding fundamental principles & limitations of process equipment is key to developing a proper control system for separation of multiple batch components by vacuum stripping.

The 15-16 March 2017 event, centered on the theme of "Diversity and Inclusion Fuels Innovation in STEM,” is designed to increase awareness within the US Congress of the need for and the importance of increased diversity and inclusion in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce.

By Anthony Borges, PINpoint Information Systems Patterns, trends and associations that might go undetected in text based information can be understood easier with manufacturing execution software that puts data visualization forefront.

The CMS will convene this year at the Snowbird Meeting and Convention Center in Snowbird, Utah, starting July 17 – July 21, 2017.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com You know that feeling when you walk past a machine, and something just doesn’t quite sound right? This article discusses the use of audio analysis sensors and deep learning technology to predict equipment problems and generate alerts for preventative maintenance actions.

Electromagnetic flowmeters, aka magmeters, have become one of the most common flow metering technologies over the past 50 years.

A proof test on a system may reveal faults that would otherwise not be mentioned by internal diagnostic measures and is therefore correct.

By Leroy Spence, EU Automation Predictive analytics is not quite magic, but it could make a world of difference for companies who want to improve efficiency. This article discusses how manufacturers can use predictive analytics to manage assets and minimise downtime.

Citelum’s project was designed to achieve four main targets: energy efficiency, city beautification, remote control and management of lighting points, data transmission systems.

RAM has been collaborating with global engineering technologies company Renishaw and, as a result, is using several AM250 metal additive manufacturing systems in its Tauranga facility.

The book explores the complex requirements for effective leak detection of petroleum pipelines and improved pipeline safety.

The IFR strongly supports the idea of greater cooperation in robotics between the public and private sectors. They must adapt education and training systems for example, so that current and future workers can reap the benefits of robotics. Yet, it is important to avoid bureaucracy which does not deliver value.

Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning have significantly accelerated the application of predictive maintenance on the plant floor.