Articles and News

The presentations will focus on how technology suppliers are working to help food and beverage manufacturers meet FSMA requirements. The in-booth presentation will be delivered at the SICK booth by Erik Phillips, US Director of Sales and Business Development at AutoCoding Systems.

Okuma is the first CNC machine tool builder to earn the latest ISO certification. This standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement

Honeywell recognized the achievements eight partners for customer service, innovation and excellence in supplying and integrating Honeywell products and solutions in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)

Jack Lee succeeds Mike Granby, who served as President of Red Lion for seventeen years, and is leaving the company to pursue other entrepreneurial projects.

The company was acquired from the St. Louis based private equity firm of Thompson Street Capital Partners. The sale was completed on Friday, September 23, 2016.

A DCS is that class of instrumentation that executes stated control functions and enables transmission of control, measurement and operating information.

Phillips-Medisize will operate as an indirect subsidiary of Molex, LLC. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Phillips-Medisize focuses on medical solutions that include drug delivery, mobile and portable medical devices, and pharmaceutical packaging

The goal of the pilot was to collect information on the line’s bulk-powder process – including event-based data on when production stopped, started, faulted or went into a different state – to ensure operators focused on the correct machine problems during downtime events.

Operational Certainty is a technology and engineering-based program designed to help industrial companies achieve top performance and recover more than $1 trillion in operational losses globally.

The goal of this collaboration is creation of an infrastructure that gives customers secure methods to capture and aggregate data, so that it can be leveraged by using analytics and applying a range of domain knowledge from equipment vendors and process licensors.

By John Morse, IHS Markit The latest IHS market report on Industrial Ethernet estimated that the world revenue growth 2014 to 2015 was a healthy 10.1 percent but forecasts this will fall to 4.5 percent, 2015 to 2016. However, the horizon looks brighter for 2017 and beyond

Industrial robots are used for a wide variety of functions, including milling, cutting and processing, materials handling, assembling and disassembling, soldering and welding, and painting and dispensing.

When drilling operations are completed, Statoil’s Valemon platform, located on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, will become a periodically-manned installation and Statoil’s first platform that will be operated from shore

One of the biggest drivers that prompted a search for a new ERP system was the need to interact with other systems across the company, in addition to providing dashboards and complete functionality between front office and the shop floor.

For coupling CodeMeter smartcard-chip-based protection, licensing, and security features with NAND flash mass storage, Wibu-Systems takes advantage of Hyperstone’s Application Programming Interface (API), which allows the addition of proprietary firmware extensions to existing Hyperstone firmware.

Mustafa Nevzat Pharmaceuticals has successfully taken Werum’s PAS-X Weighing & Dispensing into operation at their main manufacturing site in Istanbul, Turkey.

The relationship will combine RSA's RSA Archer GRC Suite of business risk management solutions with and TÜV Rheinland’s and OpenSky's expertise in information and technology risk management, and cybersecurity consulting, to deliver enterprise risk management solutions

Mr. von Hollen was most recently the Executive President of the Engineering Solutions Division, which includes the Automation and Controls business of Bilfinger SE

By Lee Sullivan, COPA-DATA UK This article explores three data integrity pitfalls to which pharmaceutical manufacturers are most vulnerable, and shares how to avoid these costly obstacles.

Cloud computing simplifies industrial systems administration and support and the analytics can be levered for improving process operations.

Simantec Automation has expanded their branch offices in Santos, São Paulo, Brazil, as an official distributor partner of Antaira, in order to provide local industrial device networking support and services to industrial markets

Mitr Phol Sugar Corp is the largest sugar producer in Thailand today, the biggest in Asia and the world’s fourth largest, producing 2 million tons of sugar a year from its various plants.

Under the motto “No Limits. Go Beyond Safety,” HIMA Paul Hildebrandt is presenting comprehensive solutions comprising hardware, software and services at this year’s edition of SPS IPC Drives. On November 22-24 at Stand 440 in Hall 9, trade fair visitors can learn about the benefits provided by comprehensive solutions for TMC, BCS and PMC.

Turning Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) concepts into reality for manufacturing enterprises will be a key topic at Honeywell Process Solutions’ (HPS) 28th annual Honeywell Users Group (HUG) for Europe, Middle East, Africa and India regions.

Canadian and international wind and renewable energy experts will gather at this year’s event, co-hosted by Hannover Fairs, on November 1-3, 2016 at the BMO Center in Calgary, Alberta.

ISA's Excellence in Leadership Award recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the industry and/or profession to advance automation.

The Ignition Firebrand Awards recognize system integrators and industrial organizations that use the Ignition software platform to create innovative new projects.

The Viseu Sul WWTP in Portugal’s Viseu County is the first in the country to adopt advanced membrane filtration (MBR) wastewater treatment technology.

Working together with customers from both the discrete manufacturing and process industry, Siemens is developing new solutions for plant and production processes. In the specially created “MindSphere Lounge”, visitors will also have the chance to experience the IoT ecosystem live in a unique atmosphere.

The acquisition adds to Schneider Electric’s process automation portfolio that already includes Foxboro plant instrumentation, Foxboro and PlantStruxure PES process automation systems, Modicon PAC systems and Triconex safety systems.

By Bert Baeck, TrendMiner This article discusses multiple ways to both stay afloat and take advantage of the ocean of data that is flooding the IIoT automation world.

Internet of Things’ (IoT) Promise of Operational Efficiency to Stir up Sizeable Demand from Industrial Sector

Technical discussion of a shunt active power filter for power quality improvement in harmonics and reactive power compensation in a distribution network.

With the hot topics of Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), intelligent automation and so forth emerging into the market, factory machines and equipment will become connected to upload field data to back-end servers or cloud networks.

Dr. Jef Beerten from KU Leuven, Belgium, receives a US $ 300,000 grant over the next three years for ongoing research at the forefront of energy technology.

HIROTEC selected Kepware’s KEPServerEX connectivity software and the ThingWorx IoT Platform to enable company-wide device-to-cloud connectivity through one overarching toolset.

The webinar, which will be held November 17 from 12-1:30 PM EST, will feature three automation experts: Nicole Meidl, Product Management Engineer, Emerson; Ned Espy, Technical Director at Beamex; and Roy Tomalino, Calibration Engineer at Beamex.

A US-based specialist in the supply of complete electrical packages for oil rig cranes is using Control Techniques AC and DC drives as part of a $500,000+ order involving the upgrade of 10 LeTourneau cranes.

As part of the exhibition floor at The Assembly Show, with over 260 exhibitors, Nordson EFD (Booth 821) will feature live demonstrations of several repeatable fluid dispensing solutions for manufacturing assembly.

By Kevin Terwilliger, Dell This article discusses ways to utilize advanced IoT technology to enable successful predictive maintenance models for their facility.

The Jubail-ISA Training Center brings ISA’s globally recognized automation and control instruction—as well as its certification review and certificate program courses—to Jubail Industrial City, home to one of the world’s most advanced industrial and engineering complexes.

AbraxSys' new line of 19" tough LCD displays, address a growing need for higher durability than typically accomplished by other industry display providers. This new industrial LCD line features 450 nits, SXGA 1280 x 1024 resolution, genuine industrial grade TFT boards, broadened operational temperature ranges, a large array of inputs including VGA, DVI, S-Video. DisplayPort, HDMI, and Composite, and a large array of mechanical configuration choices and add-ons.

NV Series Replaces obsolete belt-driven valve actuators with gear-style design actuator at less than 10% of the cost of OEM’s replacement option

The two teams of experts came together to investigate effective protection mechanisms for different types of threats and implement a set of system safeguards for the DFKI prototype production line at SmartFactoryKL.

From 16 - 18 September, KUKA was represented by the LBR iiwa at the Robodonien robot art festival.

The university in Stuttgart combines bionic investigations with innovative robotic manufacturing methods

At Hannover Messe 2016, KUKA Roboter GmbH signed a memorandum of understanding with ITW Welding, a leading North American manufacturer of welding Equipment.

Molex, Inc. provides two CC-Link certified PCI-Express interface products that are designed to work as a complete solution including full and half height boards for Industrial CC-Link Network interface

By Harold Schaevitz, Alliance Sensors Group The second article, of a three part series, examines the strengths and weaknesses of industrial position-sensing technologies, and presents a comparison chart of their specification parameters together with a brief explanation of what those specifications mean

The International Society of Automation (ISA) serves as an alliance partner of the event, which takes place 24-27 October at the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center.

Porter, 51, joins Apex Tool Group after holding senior executive roles at both Newell Brands and Chamberlain Industries, including general management, finance, corporate development and investor relations

Based in Houston, Benard will have senior management responsibility for ValvTechnologies’ Manufacturing groups, leading the achievement of production, safety, as well as spearheading manufacturing process continuous improvements.

This combination of technology and 24-hour technical support will ensure that the automated control systems that Edrington uses to operate the new plant function properly, so that production remains on track

By Shmulik Aran, NextNine The third in a series of four articles on OT security management for manufacturing enterprises, this article further discusses the merger of information technology networks and operational technology infrastructure.

The companies intend to deliver “LFM Netview” laser scan visualisation and “AVEVA NET” information management solutions on the AEGEX10 Intrinsically Safe Tablet.

Managing infrequent operational procedures is critical to the safe and efficient operation of continuous process manufacturing.

By Chuck Karwoski, CimQuest INGEAR LineView needed a software solution to connect its system to the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) found on the factory floor. To make this connection, they chose CimQuest INGEAR PLC drivers.

Tibbo, one of the World’s leading IoT solutions providers, has become an Official Sponsor of International IoT Exhibition and Conference once again.

The original version 1.0 was published 2 years ago. With a better user interface and better usability, users can specify function blocks that deal with a “List” feature, and work easier with sets of data like variables or nodes.

ISA is creating a continuous improvement culture that sets a framework for sustainable growth and relevance.

By Rick Zabel, Automation.com The results of this year’s salary survey are in, and while salaries did increase a little, the increase wasn’t the step change we had hoped. Yet, the signs are showing change is on the way

Looking to increase production of critical aviation industry products, Spirit AeroSystems will implement Efficiency Analyzer on Predix, GE’s operating system for the Industrial Internet.

Visitors to the Beckhoff booth will have the opportunity to use their own smartphones to interact with PC-based control demos. Beckhoff will also show an augmented reality and HMI proof of concept in the form of Microsoft HoloLens connected to Beckhoff IoT demos.

Expanding on the inaugural IoT Innovation Day held earlier this year on the west coast, the companies will share strategies and key insights and lead open discussions targeted at helping businesses embrace the benefits of IIoT computing on the edge, on October 19

The increasing availability of the tools that facilitate higher levels of manufacturing productivity and quality creates an opportunity for manufacturers to embrace a fresh mindset and leverage prevention and traceability regulations to improve safety, increase revenue, and elevate brand reputation.

By Jennifer Dyment, AspenTech We all want the inside story. Greater visibility into asset performance can help chemical and energy companies gain a competitive edge. This article discusses how process engineers can quickly get to the root cause of operational issues and make informed decisions that impact the entire operation

The Fluke Connect Assets app integrates into the company’s SaaS platform that permits Fluke tool users to receive, store, visualize, and report electronic measurement data from more than 40 Fluke Connect wireless test tools.

A&T ROBOTIC WORLD (3-4-5 May 2017), will take place in Turin - Italy in a large modern exhibition hall of 20,000 square meters. Two main focuses: Robotics, dedicated to the production technologies and automation and controls, dedicated to the technologies and measurement services, testing and control.

The core of NUM’s cylindrical grinding CNC solutions is a software package known as ProCAM. ProCAM software is designed primarily to address the requirements of OD, ID or OD/ID with either a horizontal or vertical machine layout.

West Liberty Foods, based in West Liberty, Iowa, saved $2 million in maintenance costs with Leading2Lean through greater visibility to where money is being spent on materials and employee time.

The combination of Mentor Embedded technologies and the RTI Connext DDS (Data Distribution Service) middleware now provides security for secure distributed embedded systems communications, suitable for industrial, medical and mil-aero applications.

Read this complete roundup of ISA education and training programs for November and December 2016.

An actuator is a hydraulic, electric, or pneumatic device that moves an object or device.

Does building electrical control panels drain time and resources from your core business? The decision to outsource can be challenging for companies that have never chosen a panel shop before, or were burned by bad partnerships in the past. Knowing what to look for in a panel building partner can make outsourcing painless.

Fuyao Glass America, an OEM glass supplier to the world's top automotive brands, deployed 130 IceStation Titan computer enclosures.