This fall, you can stay up-to-date with the latest trends in your favorite automation topics like OT Cybersecurity, Smart Manufacturing, Asset Management, Artificial Intelligence and more on Automation.com. Or subscribe to our newsletters to get the insights delivered straight to your inbox.
Process Automation & Control
Industrial AI Is Ready for More Authority. Operators Will Decide How Much It Gets.: Honeywell’s Russ Ford considers important questions about industrial AI: Now that AI is capable of taking action, how much authority are operators prepared to give it? How should we assure and govern it? What guardrails and interventions should we implement?
How UX Design Improves Safety in Process Industries: By presenting information clearly and intuitively, a well-designed Distributed Control System User Experience (UX) reduces the likelihood of human error, helps prevent accidents and enhances situational awareness.
Industrial Cybersecurity & Safety
Cybersecurity in US Water Systems: Lessons from the Recent Incidents: The International Society of Automation’s Steve Mustard discusses the recent cyberattacks against municipal water systems in the U.S. and challenges readers to combine industry-led initiatives with the structured, consequence-based approach embodied in ISA/IEC 62443 to bolster cybersecurity measures.
Unraveling Cybersecurity Myths in Chemical Manufacturing: A Path to Safer, More Resilient Operations: “Our control networks are air-gapped – we’re safe.” Are you falling for cybersecurity myths like that one?
Factory Automation & Control
The Case for Functional Safety in Modern Factory Automation: As automation systems become more capable and more closely integrated with human activity, interest is growing in "functional safety" — concepts that allow controlled operation rather than complete shutdown. These work by defining how machines should behave under fault conditions or when people are present, rather than treating safety as an all-or-nothing state.
Improved Density and Flow Measurement Solutions for Silica Sand: Specialized flow meters are required to measure the density of silica sand slurry, ideally without process pipe penetrations or production interruptions during installation.
Industrial Data & Connectivity
Low-Code on the Plant Floor: Empowering Engineers or Creating the Next Technical Debt Bomb?: Low-code on the plant floor genuinely empowers engineers, and it genuinely manufactures technical debt—and which one dominates depends entirely on governance, not on the tool.
From AI Pilot to Production: Where Industrial Cloud Costs Become Invisible: The cloud bill still arrives after an industrial AI system goes into production. What disappears is the clean line between that bill and the work being done on the plant floor.
Operations & Management
The Cost of Delaying Energy Optimization in Industrial Facilities: Most manufacturers think they haven’t decided anything about energy optimization yet. They have. Every quarter a plant runs on the current schedule, with the current inefficiencies, is a quarter the company chose to keep paying for them.
Shared Spatial Understanding: The Next Evolution of Industrial Operations: The amount of information that teams use to inspect, diagnose and repair industrial machines is flat. Gains in uptime and efficiency will come not from collecting more data, but from giving field and office teams a shared spatial view of the same reality.
IIoT & Digital Transformation
CESMII Discusses Importance and Future of Interoperability, Introduces i3X: The interoperability movement is not about technology for its own sake but about strengthening U.S. competitiveness through smart manufacturing. Smart manufacturing needs to be democratized by lowering cost, reducing complexity and lowering the barriers for participation. That doesn’t mean using fewer standards; rather, it means using standards effectively to make it easy for plants to get started.
How Adaptive Intelligence Will Redefine Product Design and Manufacturing: As complexity increases and market cycles compress, organizations that succeed will not simply manage information more efficiently. They will build environments that interpret, anticipate and respond.
