Articles and News

The bill is designed to strengthen and protect the nation’s economic and national security through public-private partnerships to improve cybersecurity and a greater reliance on cybersecurity standards.

Sogerma Composites Aquitaine uses Robotmaster software to program a rail-mounted 6-axis robot. Applications include tooling thermal protection parts made of glass fiber for the Airbus A330 airliner and honeycomb for the Airbus Super-Puma MK II helicopter.

Turbo Power Systems will be replacing its existing manufacturing resource planning (MRP), finance and other discrete systems, to improve efficiency and simplify decision making.

Wagner-Meinert specializes in the design and construction of ammonia refrigeration systems, HVAC, as well as steam and compressed air systems.

By Chris Favre, Automation Integrated The danger of this rush to smart devices is that some “manufacturers” are taking hobby grade equipment and developing it as a viable commercial solution.

Global shipments for motion control products grew by nine percent to $2.3 billion in the first nine months of 2014, according to new statistics released by the Motion Control Association.

After declining for two straight years, revenues from the sales of motion-control products are forecast to grow over 6 percent in 2014 to $12.2 billion according to IHS.

Inadequate training and a culture of complacency among many owners and operators of critical infrastructure are significantly raising the risks of highly damaging cyberattack throughout the world.

Mas Ingenieros selected Status Enterprise as a facility management solution for a 5-star luxury hotel in Algeria.

OSI has been awarded seven contracts by a Joint Utility Procurement (JUP) project to deliver seven SCADA/EMS systems.

ETT operates approximately 69,000 miles of pipelines. It installed a new control system based on the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture platform, CompactLogix controllers and medium voltage Allen-Bradley SMC Flex soft starters, running on a ControlNet network.

Advances in digital integrated circuits are now paving the way for the proliferation of vision into diverse mainstream automated manufacturing platforms. Cost-effective vision processors with depth-di

The deadline for submitting abstracts for the 2014 ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls (WWAC) Symposium has been extended to 31 January 2015.

Jim Yastic was hired to run U.S. operations.

ABB and Hitachi will form a joint venture for high voltage direct current (HVDC) system solutions in Japan.

ML210G-10-TR is certified as ThinManager-Ready by thin client management software provider ACP.

The mobile application features the same look, feel and navigation as the standard catalog of of liquid level, flow and pressure sensors, indicators, transmitters, receivers, etc.

By Bill Lydon, Editor I see the technology progress in other industries, and I am coming to the realization that the industrial automation industry is way behind. The automation market lacks the essential elements, thought leadership, and desire to take advantage of IoT (Internet of Things) architectures and technology.

ISA President Peggie Koon recognizes the people who make ISA's accomplishments possible: the staff.

MCAA’s chairman Todd Lucey of Endress + Hauser told OSHA that it should adopt a plan to use private sector accreditors to perform application reviews and on-site assessments.

Bob Carrell was elected Chairman and Joe Incontri will serve as Vice-Chairman. Peter G. Martin and Stan Ronna were elected to Director-at-Large positions on the MCAA Board.

The guide lists 130 providers of nearly 300 Sercos-enabled products and serves as a guide for all mechanical engineers, systems integrators and control unit manufacturers who use the high-performance Sercos automation bus.

ThreadX RTOS has been recognized by UL for compliance with UL 60730-1 Annex H, CSA E60730-1 Annex H, IEC 60730-1 Annex H, UL 60335-1 Annex R, IEC 60335-1 Annex R, and UL 1998 safety standards for software in programmable components.

A.T. Kearney says reshoring is down 20%. Outsourcing is outpacing reshoring. Un-outstanding news!

With fee-based High Value Support, Eplan offers full support worldwide.

New HMI solutions offer multitouch functionality so users can scroll, zoom, expand & rotate items via familiar smartphone gestures, such as swipe and pinch.

By Norman and Amelia Lobsenz A look back at robot predictions in 1950.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The dramatic cost reductions and increased computing power of mobile devices are creating opportunities to operate plants more efficiently and increase the productivity of personnel. Mobile devices can include smart phones, tablets, netbooks and notebook computers.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The goal of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to massively instrument the world with intelligent sensors and actuators (analog/digital) that communicate over both wired and wireless networks and leverage the Internet Protocol (IP). .

By Kepware Technologies Repete implemented Kepware’s KEPServerEX communications platform to address the diverse protocol environments of its growing international customer base.

By Rockwell Automation King's Hawaiian had reached capacity at its California factory and bakery. Bachelor Controls created an architecture that got new equipment up and running in 10 months, while laying the groundwork for information gathering and sharing throughout the enterprise.

India’s role as the Partner Country at HANNOVER MESSE underscores the new Indian Prime Minister’s ambitious economic course.

Qualification makes HIMA eligible to compete for PDVSA projects

The problem of global output feedback control for a class of nonlinear time-delay systems

Halonen previously was CEO of Oulu ICT Oy and CEO of Kuusakoski Oy.

By Peter Bilello, CIMdata PLM is approaching and in some cases already achieving the status of a business platform. Now PLM-as-a-platform, or the “platformization” of PLM, is morphing into new ways of going about the business of innovation.

October U.S. cutting tool consumption totaled $193.6 million, up 9.7% from September’s total and up 3.3% from October 2013.

Cressall’s test facility provides it with the means to carry out impulse tests of up to 400,000 Volts in order to prove designs and test resistor prototypes.

The ability to provide higher energy efficiency and precise motion control are fuelling the uptake of electric drives in European discrete industries.

Enhancements include GMDbeat for online troubleshooting and GMDfit, which provides online condition monitoring, predictive analytics and periodic health checks on gearless mill drives.

This is the best nine month start by the North American machine vision market since AIA began tracking quarterly statistics in 2009.

Using an automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) and Savanna.NET warehousing software, the facility stores 24,750 pallets and is equipped for pallet storage up to 10 pallets deep.

Bosch Rexroth uses Anybus modules mainly to connect welding and tightening controllers to the various control systems used in automation technology.

By Stephen Las Marias. PULS president Bernhard Erdl talks to CE Asia about the company’s latest product launches; the PIANO series and CPS10 DIN-Rail mount power supplies.

The asset visualisation and information management software will be used for Total’s Martin Linge fixed-platform asset on the Norwegian continental shelf.

David Westley will manage the North American branch of Cincoze, a supplier of industrial computers.

Winners are recognized for their editorial contributions to a wide range of ISA publications, including ISA books, InTech, and ISA Transactions.

Tripwire is a global provider of advanced threat, security and compliance solutions.

MCRI is adding a 4000 square foot addition to make room for new employees and continue developing and servicing robotic systems for customers.

Aurelio Banda will oversee all operations at the headquarters of Beckhoff Automation in Savage, Minn. The current president, Graham Harris, will assume a regional management role.

Understanding the different needs of ICS and IT system security leads to cooperation and collaboration between historically disconnected camps

The facility for Transelec unifies all of the company’s regional control centers throughout the country, allowing 24 hour surveillance of operations, efficiently and safely.

The configuration software reduces the risk of errors when designing and ordering system modules.

The office is located in Leuven near Brussels.

Ripon Cogeneration replacied its obsolete distributed control system (DCS) with the PlantPAx process automation system from Rockwell Automation.

Acromag’s FPGA programmed boards will be used in support of AN/SPS-73(V) surface-search shipboard radar.

ABB will deliver electrical propulsion, power, safety and automation systems for a 5000T heavy-lift pipelay construction vessel being built by Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry.

With a year-to-date total of $4,150.41 million, 2014 is up 3.8% compared with 2013.

eXtremeDB In-Memory Database System (IMDS) is now compatible with AdaCore’s GNAT Pro Ada development environment.

KXTX in Wuhan, China, will become the first Chinese company in the industry with an automated in-floor chain conveyor system.

This is the company’s sixth office in Canada and its ninth branch office in North America.

By PULS Pte Ltd

By Bill Lydon, Editor According to a recent survey, automation users want and deserve more from an automation controller. Albert Rooyakkers, CTO of Bedrock Automation, explains why they went back to the drawing board to design and develop this new, innovative automation controller.

To control the concentration of key components, relatively inexpensive inline measurements can be used under the right conditions to provide concentration measurements

By Greg Goodwin, LNS Research A trend that is causing waves and innovative ways of doing things today with Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) software is mobile technology. So what are the current attitudes on mobile capabilities? Here are four ways mobile capabilities are helping manufacturers transform their operations and IT landscapes today.

The Fountain Inn, SC, plant is home to the company’s largest hydraulics manufacturing facility in the Americas.

Molex plant floors consist of hundreds of different machines from a variety of vendors, with each speaking its own language or “protocol.” An OPC server connected them all.

This paper deals with the problem of forbidden states in discrete event systems based on Petri net models. So, a method is presented to prevent the system from entering these states by constructing a

Komatsulite is a manufacturer of precision-molded components for the electronics industry and mini-breaker devices that are used as safety devices.

Created by PMMI, the Industrial Maintenance Training Center of North America and the Employment and Training Administration of the DOL, the guidelines will be listed under the occupation of “mechatronics technician.”

By Heinz-Günther Spreen, Harting White paper describes the Han HMC connector for devices, machines and systems that require connections for more than 10,000 mating cycles.

Industrial Internet Consortium is a group of more than 100 companies, organizations and universities working to accelerate growth of the Industrial Internet.

By Bill Lewins, Rockwell Automation Designing and implementing a network that addresses all process control concerns can be a difficult for any application, but brownfield projects are especially challenging. Fortunately, there are ways to ease this transition.

By Rainer Schmidt, Harting PROFINET is an independent, proprietary system, which is primarily used for communication between PROFINET components. If PROFINET wants to seamlessly communicate right into the SAP level, it runs into the structured cabling which the IT infrastructure of the company uses.

Version 1.1 of the Network Configuration Management software can now be used as a simple monitoring and diagnostics tool for industrial routers, switches and Ethernet line extenders..