Articles and News

Two industry organizations—the Northwest Industrial Resource Center (NWIRC) and Process and Data Automation (PDA)—will co-sponsor an ISA training event in Erie, PA from 31 October through 4 November 2016.

This on-demand webinar will show Dell has used a strong history in manufacturing and value in partnership to build their IoT solutions partner ecosystem. IBM joins the conversation to share real examples of successful projects and how they were deployed.

As COO, Dr. Scher is responsible for the company's operating activities, including its OCM demonstration plant in Texas and multiple pilot plants in California, and leading its research and development, scale-up, intellectual property, and technology teams.

The project is part of Clarksville, Arkansas' plan to save up to $2M over the next five years through improved control, monitoring, and security of its electric grid and water treatment facilities.

IMTS 2016, the 31st edition of the show, was the third largest in number of registrations (115,612) and in net square feet of exhibit space (1,370,256). This show hosted the highest number of exhibiting companies ever (2,407).

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation With tech life cycles becoming shorter, it is important for product designers to plan in advance for component obsolescence to maximise the life span of their products.

Next year, the world’s biggest industrial technology show will demonstrate how even companies with limited resources can pinpoint and harness the power of digitalization.

For HMI screen design, studies show people can remember only a select number of new things for about 20 seconds.

NEXCOM IoT Automation Solution offers manufacturers a feasible, holistic approach to control, communication, and cloud integration, fast-tracking the implementation of virtual war rooms, preventive maintenance and Industry 4.0 applications alike.

The Aon Hewitt Best Employers Study, Asia 2016, was conducted in twelve countries across the Asia-Pacific region, including Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

Gerdau has decided to rollout GE Digital’s Asset Performance Management (APM) solution to connect 600 assets in 11 plants across Brazil.

Engineered Composted Systems needed a strong corrosive resistant NEMA 4X enclosure that could survive this environment and protect their RF TeleProbe system. Stahlin Non-Metallic Enclosures was able to put together an enclosure package that met ECS needs.

The Prime Competence and Unmanned Life joint initiative will introduce a combination of drones and autonomous ground vehicles to be used indoors for postal sorting.

The SDWL1 is a wireless flammable gas detector built to extend the benefits of wireless detection into safety applications. The SDWL1’s non-dispersive infrared detection system ensures accuracy while the advanced reliability features of ISA100 Wireless ensure wireless communication signal truancy.

Efficient business processes could not be more important in the current climate of competitive global markets, subdued demand, and competitive pricing.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have made the most seemingly impossible things possible in recent years. After the successful integration of IoT systems in various enterprises, the entire digital world is striving for adding bots to various industries to have a more-than-human experience.

The increasing production output of automotive, chemical, food and beverages, agriculture, and aerospace industry worldwide is directly influencing the rise in demand for industrial dispensing system.

By Bob McIlvride, Skkynet Amidst all the conversation and occasional hype about the Industrial IoT, there has been cautious but steadily increasing implementation. Here are some questions to consider when evaluating an IIoT solution, to help cultivate an evolutionary approach

Ulrich Krauss will become the company’s new Chief Executive Officer as of 1 October 2016. Klaus Berka, who founded Analytik Jena with two partners in April 1990 and has led the company ever since, will become a member of the Supervisory Board as of 1 April 2017.

Manufacturers and producers across the globe can see the latest products, services and solutions that help enable a Connected Enterprise at this year’s event, being held at the Georgia World Congress Center on Nov. 9 and 10 in Atlanta.

The foundations of the automation industry are being reshaped right now from the torrent of ideas driven by Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Given today’s trends, are industrial automation controllers headed down a path to extinction?

By Randy Armstrong, Sparhawk Software The widespread deployment of cloud based solutions has many factory operators wondering how they can take advantage of it to streamline their operations. The needs of these users have been the driving force behind the OPC UA PubSub Specification.

NUMmill is designed specifically for CNC milling machine manufacturers and control retrofitters. It offers an extensive suite of canned cycles, ranging from simple center drilling, boring and threading to pocket cycles and complex profile milling cycles

Collaborative efforts by standards organizations, such as OMAC, OPC Foundation, and PLCopen, align with the Industrial Internet Consortium's goal to ultimately identify and define building blocks for interoperability that help make smart factories and IIoT possible.

As technology grows in sophistication and complexity, it is vital to define new and improved skills, knowledge, and experiences.

By Dan Seger, Rockwell Automation Today in the era of smart manufacturing, end users want to optimize their production and supply chain by bringing together islands of information – and they want OEMs to help. Delivering on the promise of smart manufacturing is paramount.

UL CAP is for control system manufacturers looking for support in assessing security risks while they continue to focus on product innovation to help build safer, more secure products, as well as for OEMs, machine tool builders, system integrators, and retrofitters.

A final control element is a device that directly controls the value of the manipulated variable of a control loop.

PTCA ASIA, CeMAT ASIA, ComVac ASIA, and Industrial Supply ASIA collectively unite roughly 1,700 exhibitors on a display area of 130,000 square meters. Approximately 80,000 visitors are expected in 2016.

Semiconductor devices are an essential part of our daily life. Without integrated circuits, we would not have computers and smartphones. And without newer and even more sophisticated device technology, recent breakthroughs in internet speeds as well as assisted driving would not be possible. Many of these devices are not only electronic, but are interacting with, or creating, light.

Vision inspection plays an instrumental role in factory automation. In the past, manufacturers struggled between relying either on a team of operators to manually inspect parts for defects or on an expensive early generation automated vision system.

A recent survey of manufacturing executives indicates many respondents (67 percent) are pressing ahead with plans to invest in data analytics even as they pare back spending in other areas to combat tough business conditions.

The system will combine Secomea’s SiteManager hardware and RRAMAC’s EdgeScout Remote Monitoring solution to create an advanced system for the industrial marketplace.

This is the latest move in Trihedral’s strategy that recently included a new office in Calgary, Alberta, and the addition of Alan Hudson as the VTScada US Sales Manager based in Trussville, Alabama.

ACP’s two core products, ThinManager and Relevance, provide manufacturing and industrial leaders with visual display and software solutions to manage information and streamline workflows for a more connected manufacturing environment.

HIMA Asia Pacific wurde vom Branchenmagazin Control Engineering Asia als Best Process Safety System Provider 2016 ausgezeichnet. Friedhelm Best und Jeyan Nadarajah nahmen die Auszeichnung am 25. August im Marriott Hotel Singapur entgegen.

According to the report, the global smart building market was valued at approximate USD 7.0 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach approximately USD 36.0 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of slightly over 30% between 2015 and 2020.

By Martyn Williams, COPA-DATA UK In the modern industrial realm, automation should provide a consistent way of executing tasks and processes – including those usually associated with information technology (IT). This article explains the changing responsibilities of IT and OT.

The ISA goal is to design more appealing, manageable, and flexible commitment options, including those with shared leadership and responsibility roles.

Through the convergence of information technology and operations technology, mining operators have the ability to streamline data management, gather better insights and predict recoveries.

With this cloud-based application (MindApp), machine tools at small or large production sites can be monitored, and their availability and productivity enhanced.

The Android application is designed to solve linear motion calculations, with a range of velocity profiles. This helps the user understand which product might work best for their particular application.

Universal Temperature is a technology that increases the high and low operating temperature of their proximity sensors. Products with Universal Temperature technology can operate between minus 60 degrees Celsius and 200 degrees Celsius.

Accessibility to power in remote areas is essential to many functions that are crucial to customer operations, and extending the grid is often not an option due to the remote location of sites. Atrex Energy’s portfolio of DC power generator systems are solution to service remote or off-grid applications.

UL will offer ZigBee testing at two of its labs: Fremont, California and Basingstoke, UK. The ZigBee Certified program verifies that every platform and product meets Alliance requirements and performs as expected.

A look at the late-Fall offerings from ISA in 2016.

By Alan Grau, Icon Labs As industrial facilities become more connected, hackers are getting more sophisticated, resulting in greater vulnerabilities and increased risk of cyber-attacks. Intrusion detection, the ability to detect when hackers begin probing, is a critical first step to building a secure IIoT.

By Shmulik Aran, NextNine A manufacturer and its connected production environment are exposed to a full range of cybersecurity threats. Mitigating the risk of cyberattacks is a rigorous process that requires the hardening of security controls around the IT, ICS and SCADA platforms.

Communication efficiency is lowered and real-time performance is not good enough in discrete control based on traditional WorldFIP field intelligent nodes.

Newton, MA – September 9, 2016 – Industrial Video & Control (IVC) announced today a line of low-profile, stainless steel, IP cameras designed for challenging environments. The cameras can withstand water and chemical wash down processes often necessary with equipment used in food and pharmaceutical processing environments. The cameras deliver high quality video and excellent performance in varying lighting conditions, at a low price point.

A Belgium-based producer of dairy products, Inex is achieving minimum energy savings of at least 18% from its refrigeration process as a result of switching to Dyneo permanent magnet motor technology from Control Techniques & Leroy-Somer. .

Roberta Nelson Shea spent the past 23 years as the Chair of ANSI/RIA R15.06 Robot Safety Committee that develops and defines technical standards for industrial robots. Universal Robots’ GTCO will start her employment September 19, in the Headquarters of Universal Robots in Odense, Denmark.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Automated Guided Vehicles (AVG) served as an enabling technology for a pharmaceutical manufacturer to achieve Stage By Component (SBC) – the delivery of every component required in the production process, "when I need it and where I need it."

Looking at a mechanical and electrical situation globally to spot obvious and safety threats first is always best.

Following a strategic review of the business and their long-term objectives, the safety specialist relaunched its Chinese operation on July 1, 2016, as the wholly foreign-owned enterprise HIMA (Shanghai) Industrial Automation Co., Ltd.

Automated Test Equipment Market is driven by demand for system on chip products in consumer electronics, Automated test equipment market is fueled by various design of electronic devices, investments and results from R and D are expected to gain a lead in automated test equipment market

AMT and SME have an extended history of successful collaboration in strengthening the U.S. advanced manufacturing technology industry and its workforce. A press conference will be held during IMTS on Tuesday, September 13 at 4:15 p.m. CDT.

Supergasbras needed a solution that offered comprehensive analysis tools, full process automation and the option of mobile use. The technology also needed to be accessible via the cloud.

GrafTech needed a secure, scalable solution that provided improved visibility into machine operations. The company partnered with Rockwell Automation to incorporate FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI software into GrafTech’s newest version of the ArchiTech system.

The new Certified Platinum status acknowledges System Integration companies that have experienced engineers on staff and have been trained on the latest technology available from Cognex.

Jouret has been Chief Technical Officer at Nokia Technologies since April 2015, and recently drove a major acquisition in the digital health sector. Jouret will work from ABB’s Silicon Valley and Zurich offices.

Honeywell’s OPC UA stack is initially deployed in the new CSI 6500 ATG protection system. Evaluation for further deployment within Emerson Process Management is ongoing.

Global Process Plant Equipment In Downstream Oil And Gas Industry To Grow At A CAGR Of 1.18% During 2016-2020

The third edition of Automation Network Selection can help you make better decisions about the selection of equipment and communications networks.

Designed, constructed and tested over the last four years, the image sensors aboard OCAMS will behave in a manner similar to human eyes, from spotting the target asteroid from more than a million miles away to monitoring the sampling process just 10 feet from the surface of the asteroid.

Established in 1978 as a mechanical engineering design company, Indisa specializes in delivering projects and services to the mining, oil & gas, food & beverage, chemical, and plastics industries.

HIMA and system partner AC Arabia will present industry-leading safety solutions at the largest technical exhibition in Saudi Arabia. STC-12 takes place November 6-9 at the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Cultural Centre in Jubail Industrial City.

By Thomas Cutler, Manufacturing Media Consortium The old warehouse is no more as the RF gun, constant verifications, small keypads, and hard to read screens are quickly becoming yesterday’s technology.

A converged IT & OT network architecture achieves seamless integration both horizontally, across multiple sites, & vertically, from shop floor to top floor.

The new location gives customers across Europe local sales and service for Alicat’s line of pressure controllers, mass flow controllers, meters, and accessories.

At IMTS, Rockwell Automation will feature a pre-engineered, automation solution for powertrain applications using FANUC CNCs and robots integrated with its cell controllers over an EtherNet/IP network.

AutoStore is a compact storage and picking system for small items stored in bins. The system is a goods-to-person picking process that consists of several compact storage robots that automatically stack bins on top of one another in a grid and deliver them to workstations for order picking.

JTAG and ECT have just completed a successful integration of their JT 5705/FXT multi-function JTAG tester into the small linear series of cassette-based re-configurable fixtures.

SBC Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 – 2024

The symbolism and identification methods provided in this standard are applicable to all classes of process measurement and control instrumentation.