Articles and News

By Joshua Hernandez, Emerson Automation Solutions All processing facilities have goals to operate their facilities safely, in compliance with regulations, and profitably. Safety is paramount among these objectives; thus, it is important to measure, alert when abnormal, and understand the hazards that could negatively impact the facility or personnel.

A modern batch system enables visibility and accessibility to all stages of production, supporting better decision making.

By Jonathan Grech, JMartans Automation While safety should always be a priority, newer technologies like these are making it easier for manufacturers to find and integrate the right device for their facility. This reduces risk to the final product, employees and equipment.

For a turbine flowmeter, the rotor is supported by the hubs and bearings inside of a flowmeter body, and as the rotor spins, the number of revolutions is determined with a magnetic pickup.

By Dean Ferrando, Tripwire From large industrial control systems to one-man organizations, everyone is talking about security these days. And while the industry jargon they use may differ, all share four areas of security concern.

Researchers develop an inferential control scheme based on adaptive linear neural network soft sensor for the control of the fermentation process.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com An open system can impact all phases of a project from inception, through its entire lifecycle including: project design, configuration, operations, and lifecycle maintenance in order to create tremendous savings and value.

Understanding the challenges of batch process control can lead to solutions that offer much higher levels of efficiency and capacity.

By Martin Grune & Patrick Kraus, infoteam Software AG How can production be optimized, where can improvement opportunities be found, which processes may even indirectly slow down operative business from the background? Overall Equipment Effectiveness (GAE) or Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) has established itself as the key performance indicator for this.

A thermocouple contains two different conductors that produce a voltage proportional to a temperature difference between the ends of a pair of conductors.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation This article explains how autonomous maintenance, one of the pillars of total productive maintenance (TPM) requires the whole manufacturing team to take responsibility for maintenance.

By Nick Boughton, Digital Lead, Boulting Technology It has only been in the past five years where augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have made their way into industrial environments. This article explains how AR and VR are re-defining plant maintenance.

To control an industrial process you have must see it, and usually measure it, so that enough resolution to enable the underling picture to be seen.

By Patricia Mattsson, Emerson Automation Solutions The widespread departure from manual measurements to automated solutions has helped improve worker efficiency while providing more accurate measurements. New level measurement technologies can do even more.

By Mike Devine, Zebra Technologies E-commerce is booming globally. The increasingly higher expectations of smartphone-savvy, always-connected consumers have urged retailers, manufacturers and logistics companies to collaborate hand in hand to meet the growing shoppers’ needs in the on-demand economy.

Despite IIoT, Industrial Ethernet and Industry 4.0 initiatives, digital networks are still not used everywhere. Organizations stuck in an analog world should look carefully at what they are missing.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation Technology has rapidly caught up with the human ability to read faces, progressing to a stage where facial recognition could improve industrial security.

The constant between pipes of differing diameters is the flow rate (and other fluid properties) is the same in both pipe lengths.

By Chuck Cimalore, Arena Solutions With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and centralized data management platforms like Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) technology, companies can create a closed-loop, data-driven DfR program to improve predictability and reliability and achieve better-performing products.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation Remote monitoring is not a new phenomenon. The technology has already established itself as standard part of control in manufacturing. This article explains how manufacturers can optimize their supply chain with remote monitoring.