Small ETO Manufacturers Double Output with Same Staff By Thomas R. Cutler, Contributing Author
Success in a competitive market is forcing every manufacturer to make their business more responsive to client demands. The pressure is constant for better, faster, and cheaper solutions. This is particularly difficult for engineer-to-order businesses.
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!
Improved Labor Productivity Through Traceability By Thomas R. Cutler
Traceability provides production and plant managers a new toolset for realizing value and boosting profits as well as addressing labor issues - cost, productivity, and labor-related quality.
PROFIBUS hits new highs, PROFINET to follow? By Bill Lydon, Contributing Editor
This year's PTO General Assembly Meeting again was attended by an enthusiastic group of users, suppliers, and distributors that apply PROFIBUS and PROFINET technology. Michael Bryant, Executive Director, was master of ceremonies and forecasted PROFINET will be the leading Ethernet Technology for automation applications.
Statoil pumps up production through information sharing and smart practices By IBM Corporation
With oil and gas production the backbone of the Norwegian economy, Statoil–the nation’s largest producer–needed a way to offset the natural trend toward declining production levels. Statoil sought to incorporate new technologies into production processes in order to transform, streamline and improve them.
OPC Drives Overall Equipment Efficiency from 65% to 75% By Thomas R. Cutler
"Supporting OPC creates great new opportunities for collecting data from production equipment in real time, performing statistical analysis on the data and then feeding information back to operators, engineers or to the equipment itself," says Byron Shetler, Chief Technology Officer for Hertzler.
Code reading with In-Sight saves Sony money By Cognex
Sony in Malaysia is using the In-Sight 5110 for code reading on PCBs for their MP3 players. Each PCB passes along a conveyer on 9 production lines and is marked with a Datamatrix code containing product information in 10 characters measuring only 1 mm x 1 mm in size.
Vision System Aids Weyerhaeuser Printing Operations By Jim McMahon
Weyerhaeuser uses the Vision Plate Mounter/Proofer from Leader Engineering-Fabrication to increase pre-press production, cut downtime between runs, reduce pre-press waste and improve safety.
Submit your Articles, White Papers or Application Stories If you would like to submit an article, white paper or application story for publication consideration, please send to content@automation.com.
_thumb.png)
.jpg)
_thumb.png){kind=logo}
_thumbOpto22_EtherNetlP_70pxB)
_thumb.png)
_thumb.jpg)
.jpg)
