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Effective Energy Monitoring
Control Engineering Asia, October 2008
By Dennis Stewart
As increasing costs and environmental concerns make manufacturers re-evaluate their use of energy, a well-designed monitoring system can provide a valuable picture of where it’s all going.
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Automation Insights Network
By Rick Zabel, Publisher
Automation Insights Network is a select group of controls and automation professionals who agree to help us cover news, emerging trends and technologies on various automation topics. Every two months, we will ask people in the Network to share their observations, knowledge and expertise with us. We take that information, distill it, and pass it on to our reporters and editors for use in future stories.
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Integrated Facility Management Systems Yield Sustainable Results
By Jeff Seewald – Building Intelligence Group
An integrated facility management and maintenance program provides a more empowered and productive staff, increased operational efficiency, and support for operations and maintenance. Addressing management issues in a timely manner can improve the longevity of equipment and systems.
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Integrating Asset Management and Maintenance
Control Engineering Europe, September 2008
By Bill Broussard, Emerson Process Management
A goal of 80 per cent planned maintenance is attainable when a plant asset management (PAM) platform is integrated with maintenance strategy during engineering design. When PAM is a consideration from the beginning of a capital project, the long-term benefits will include greater equipment availability, fewer emergencies, and lower maintenance costs over the life of the plant.
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ISA - Change the name to represent the industry
By Rick Zabel, Automation.com
The proposed name change of ISA (to "International Society of Automation") is up for a vote again during ISA Expo in Houston, October 14-16, 2008. Last year, the change was voted down, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument against the change. And there are many reasons for the change. If ISA is truly the global society of automation professionals, then its name should reflect its cause. It's time for a change!
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Why use an Industrial Ethernet Switch?
By Joe Stasiek, Contemporary Controls
When interconnecting Ethernet equipment within a control panel, the temptation is to select an office-grade Ethernet switch from one of the mass merchandisers. This can lead to large problems in a Building Automation System. Here’s why.
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Open Control Systems and Data Networking Convergence
By Ron Bernstein, LonMark
Data convergence is the overall connecting of building control devices by allowing formerly non-interactive agents to share and use common information. Convergence can be best achieved through open control networks, as integration is the key to information exchange.
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Get Physical with Security
By Bill Lydon, Contributing Editor
While there is a great deal of legitimate concern about cyber security, many industrial facilities may be at high risk due to poor physical security. There is a need for a comprehensive security strategy for these facilities and other critical infrastructure. Honeywell Process Solutions' industrial security initiatives go beyond cyber security to address physical plant security.
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Integrating Environmental Processes
Control Engineering, August 2008
By Rob McGreevy, Wonderware
Environmental controls are a critical part of manufacturing and can be fully integrated into larger plant-wide control systems to leverage reporting and historian capabilities.
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State of Manufacturing & Automation in the U.S. Looks Good
Could it be that high fuel prices, the weak dollar and crises in the U.S. manufacturing industry are creating opportunities? Andy Chatha of ARC Advisory Group thinks so. He says the U.S. industry has suddenly become competitive on the world market, and companies are no longer moving operations overseas. Instead, many are expanding their facilities, and he predicts a boom in automation right here in the U.S.
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Passive Infrared-Motion Sensors
Machine Design, July 2008
Passive infrared (PIR) sensors detect infrared energy radiating from objects within their field of vision. The most common object a PIR sensor detects is the human body, so these sensors find use in automatic light switches, alarm systems, and door openers.
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Introduction to OPC for Building Automation
By Darek Kominek, Matrikon
HMIs, historians, and analysis and reporting packages that originate in the process control industry may not have drivers that support such protocols as BACnet or other building automation protocols. OPC can solve the problem.
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Honeywell 2008 Users Group - Heroes Gather in Phoenix
By Bill Lydon, Contributing Editor
The 33rd annual Honeywell Users Group Conference was held June 15 - 19, 2008 at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, AZ with over 700 customers in attendance. According to Honeywell Vice President/General Manager, "The conferences super hero theme, Power to Perform, highlights the heroic efforts of process industry professionals to perform well despite rising costs and resource constraints."
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Tridium Niagara Summit Attendance Increases 52%!
By Bill Lydon - Contributing Editor
The Tridium 2008 Tridium Niagara Summit titled, "Carry the Vision Forward", was held at the Saddlebrook Resort, Wesley Chapel, Florida May 4-6, 2008 with a record number of attendees and sponsors with 667 in attendance and 50 sponsors participating in the event.
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Open for Business
By Ron Bernstein, LonMark International
Open systems allow access to the total facility, providing the resources building owners need to evaluate energy use and resource consumption. The result is better educated decisions about how to improve utilization as well as reduce costs. Here’s an in-depth look into the meaning of having open building controls and a guide to purchasing a genuinely open solution.
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Don't judge a supplier by its name
By Frank Hurtte, Contributing Author.
For those of us who live and breathe the rarified vapors of technology based automation, it's pretty hard to fathom how life existed without electronic automation. Yet, it has been a short 30 years since the venerable PLC became anything more than a novelty outside of the Big 3 in Detroit. Sometime in the late 1970s, microprocessors changed our lives forever. Since those early days, the power of these tiny chips forever changed the way we think about manufacturing.
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Custom Controls Survey - Complimentary assessment, tips and tricks
We are conducting a brief survey on custom controls — that is, board-level controllers used in place of standard PLCs or process controls. If you use custom controls in your automation applications, please take a minute to tell us why you use them and what challenges you face. You may be eligible to receive a complimentary controls assessment, plus tips and tricks on how to lower your control costs.
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Regional Manufacturing Expos Prove Most Valuable
By Thomas R. Cutler
Deciding which conferences, webinars, and expos are worthwhile for manufacturing engineers and buyers to attend often feels like a dangerous yellow brick road, never knowing quite what to expect.
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Wireless Sensor Networks for Building Automation
Industrial Embedded Systems, May 2008
By Rainer Wischinski, Spinwave Systems
The new wave of wireless sensor networks will change the building automation industry by reducing costs and increasing flexibility, making the use of sensors to establish and maintain highly energy-efficient building operation affordable in an increasing number of existing and new applications. (Registration required to read text).
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Wireless Technology Migration: Mitigating Risk and Increasing Supply Chain Efficiency
IEN, May 2008
By Peak Technologies
Many supply chain management solutions rely on wireless technology for Automatic Identification/Data Capture (AIDC) to ensure supply chain efficiency. With the rapid evolution of wireless networks, along with compliance issues and ever-changing logistics, migration to advanced wireless systems is inevitable.
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Ingredients for Success
Control Engineering Asia, April 2008
By Jim Ricigliano
In all areas of manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies particularly, adopting new information technologies has become serious business. Collaboration, real-time, agility and visibility are words used to describe the desired end results and how production and business processes should work..
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Use people skills and your CMMS to build management excellence
Plant Services, April 2008
By David Berger
Frontline supervisors are absolutely critical in ensuring the success of any major change initiative, such as implementing a new CMMS or getting more out of an existing one.
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Counterfeits can kill
Plant Services, April 2008
By Jim Montague and Paul Studebaker
There’s more evidence than ever before that fake products and parts are detrimental to those who purchase them. Don’t risk lives, reliability and profits just to save a buck. Counterfeiters are producing fake industrial equipment and components complete with bogus marks, packaging, documentation and certifications.
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Risks of refurbishing
Plant Services, April 2008
Though not defined as counterfeiting or copying, misuse of identification when devices are repaired or refurbished is at least as unethical, and can cause many of the same problems and possible hazards. Several engineers report they haven’t seen fake process devices, but routinely see misrepresented or missing plates on those devices.
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IT: The eighth hidden waste
Plant Engineering, April 2008
By Kevin Prouty, Motorola
When lean principles are embraced by IT, the IT department can become a multiplier of efficiencies throughout the enterprise by moving information closer to the point of activity throughout the company. The implementation of continuous improvement initiatives in IT further amplifies the “Lean factor” in manufacturing processes.
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Application of RFID technology in the manufacturing process
Plant Engineering, April 2008
By Mark Waggoner, Kim Automation
The use of RFID technology in the manufacturing process can bring many benefits and potential cost savings. RFID technology has been more rapidly accepted in the manufacturing process because the RFID technology can be a reusable product when the RFID tags are embedded into fixtures used in the manufacturing process.
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6 Steps for Evaluating Water-Damaged Electrical Equipment
Buildings, April 2008
Know what actions to take and questions to ask when evaluating water-damaged electrical equipment
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Communicating Building Information Across the Enterprise with OPC and BACnet
By Eric Murphy, MatrikonOPC
Building automation systems have information to relay about energy management, optimized operating conditions, and asset utilization. Unfortunately, they are all speaking different languages and running into application barriers. These systems can be connected and the obstacles overcome using standard, open protocols: OPC and BACnet.
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Communicating To the Enterprise Isn’t Science Fiction
By Eric Murphy, MatrikonOPC
Organizations are using OPC to integrate realtime and historic building information into existing business applications to improve the balance between people, infrastructure, facilities and their overall impact on the enterprise bottom line.
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Object modeling for BACnet devices – Part 1
Industrial Ethernet Book, April 2008
By George Thomas
The latest Ethernet protocols are all based upon Object Modeling which can be quite confusing to those unfamiliar with this abstract concept. This two part series explains how BACnet devices are constructed and certified, with emphasis on the latest BACnet/IP standard.
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Manufacturing 2.0
Advanced Manufacturing, March 2008
By Scott Bury
If there was a software tool that could help you find the information you didn't know you had, could leverage the knowledge of your customer base while you’re developing new products, and could speed the time to market for those new products, would you use it? Manufacturers are definitely interested in “Web 2.0,” and the possible use of blogs, podcasts and wikis in their businesses. But there seems to be some hesitation about implementing them internally.
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Automating Energy Consumption
Automation World, March 2008
By Rob Spiegel
With rising energy costs and the growing interest in reducing carbon emissions, plants are becoming more interested in making their facilities more energy efficient. One of the critical requirements to reduce energy consumption is the ability to track and monitor energy consumption.
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Coping with Higher-Priced Energy
Automation World, March 2008
By Harry Forbes, ARC
The first step in coping with energy price increases is to refine the existing energy measurements within a manufacturing operation. New and less-expensive technologies for electric-power measurement using wireless mesh networks should be on the market in the near future.
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Building Manufacturing Efficiency
Control Engineering Europe
March 2008
Today, many pharmaceutical plants typically operate at somewhere around 30% efficiency, with a few world-class operations reaching the 70% range. The Pfizer facility in Puerto Rico formed a cross-functional team to focus on creating more competitive costs through implementing an OEE data gathering and reporting system.
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Control Technology for Future Generations
By: Ron Bernstein, Executive Director, LonMark International
The concept of a control networking architecture, which provides fair competitive bidding on all levels of a system and over the life of the system, is something the user market has been demanding for years. LON and other network protocols, such as BacNet, ModBus, and Zigbee, have been developed to deliver on this need
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Put Lightning in the Ground
Design News, January 2008
By Jon Titus, Contributing Editor
Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a direct strike to turn expensive instruments or sensors into junk. Lightning within a few kilometers of equipment can induce destructive voltages and currents on conductors. You can do a quick cost-benefit analysis to determine what to protect and how to protect it.
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Implementation Issues of Open Networks
AutomatedBuildings.com, May 2007
Jim Sinopoli, Sinopoli and Associates
The idea of open architectures, interoperability, improved functionality, infrastructure consolidation, and capital and operating costs savings is music to the ears of building owners and facility managers.
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Commissioning and the Engineer
Consulting & Specifying Engineer, April 2007
By Carl C. Schultz, URS Corp.
The commissioning process can be an important element in the success of a building program, especially one that involves complicated mechanical and electrical systems.
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CMMS: Managing Facilities as a business
The APWA Reporter
By Harry Kohal, Eagle Technology, Inc.
Building automation systems aid in controlling and managing the environment in modern intelligent buildings, and can control everything form the HVAC system to the elevators, security cameras, window blinds, lighting, fire alarm systems, chillers, and power distribution.
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What does it Really Take to be an Intelligent Building?
AutomatedBuildings.com, April 2007
By Thomas Hartman, P E, The Hartman Company
To get our industry to meet its commitment to owners, occupants and the energy and environmental performance expectations of our society, we need the connectivity we incorporate into intelligent buildings to add valuable function.
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Wireless Technology: Overcoming Obstacles
Building Operating Management, April 2007
By BOM Editorial Staff
An emerging wireless standard being adopted by building device manufacturers could improve reliability and reduce costs of wireless networks
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Achieving Energy Savings with Building Automation Systems
AutomatedBuildings.com, April 2007
By Kristin Kamm, Sr. Associate Research, E SOURCE
Building automation systems (BASs) can be a powerful tool for commercial-building energy managers, but some managers are unsure about the prospective energy-savings benefits and first costs.
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UPS Module Selection for Large Scale Data Centers
Consulting & Specifying Engineer, March 2007
By Keith Lane, Engineering SASCO
In specifying uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems for the large-scale mission-critical facility, the first step is to determine the amount of load the UPS system will serve. Once load is determined, it is essential to determine the amount of redundancy that is required.
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Plugging into Power Line Communications
Buildings, March 2007
By Frank T. Matarazzo
In-building Broadband over Power Line (BPL) or Power Line Communications delivers high-speed Internet access using a building’s internal electrical wiring.
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If 10-Gigabit is in Your Future, Choose the Right Cable Pathway
By Kenneth Freeman
Building system designers employ a variety of wire and cable management pathways to provide optimal cabling flexibility. However, today’s familiar pathways may not be adequate for new technologies such as “augmented” Category 6 (Category 6a) cable.
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Product Costs: The Conflict between Engineering and Finance
by Thomas R. Cutler and Frank V. Azzolino
Manufacturing in North America today is under siege as companies struggle against increasing challenges to deliver quality products, on time, and at the required price. All these functions must be performed while managing the profitability and growth requirements of a very demanding public marketplace.
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Industrial CRM: General Practitioners Need Not Apply
by Thomas R. Cutler
With up to ten years of continued process improvements on the plant floor, back office, and distribution operations, manufacturers have finally arrived at the front door of customer relationship management (CRM). Still engineering and operations focused, many senior manufacturing executives are strongly resistant and visibly uncomfortable in approaching lean CRM.
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Answer: An Enterprise Business and Facilities Planning System
by Thomas R. Cutler
A machine at a manufacturing plant has just gone down. The estimate of the engineers is between two weeks and a month of down time on the machine. How does a manufacturer minimize the impact of the outage on the ability of the organization to service its customers, while maintaining at the least possible cost?
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Buildings 2.0
By Anto Budiardjo, President of Clasma Events Inc.
Buildings 2.0 is a vision that intricately intertwines buildings with Internet technologies. It says the future of buildings is one which is controlled, managed and connected to the Internet in a way that goes far beyond simply placing a web server to the control system or in the use of IP. This article describes the concept of Buildings 2.0.
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