Articles and News

By Khris Kammer and Keith McPherson, Rockwell Automation Tapping into contextualized data and sharing it across the enterprise allows manufacturers to address the age-old challenge of how to get more productivity out of existing assets.

By Ryan Lepp, Panduit Whereas it was once common for product vendors to set the network rules to support their specific products, the emergence of open-standard Ethernet has pushed that responsibility onto the systems integrators as they incorporate a wide range of networked products from multiple different vendors.

The IEC 61131-3 standard establishes guidelines for the use of ladder, function block, instruction list, structured text and sequential function chart programming for the PLC industry.

By Dr. Steffen Haack, Bosch Rexroth Anyone gaining only a superfluous familiarity with fluid technology will easily underestimate the performance and intelligence of modern hydraulics.

Using employee advocacy as an extension of your social media program represents a vast and mostly untapped marketing resource for any brand.

While most batch processes use automated procedures extensively, most continuous processes still use manual procedures. Manual operation has a high potential for problems due to the variability of how

By Bill Lydon, Editor Enterprise software cloud offerings and their integration with industrial automation systems is an exciting, evolving development. The new offerings allow manufacturing companies of all sizes to operate more efficiently and be more responsive to customers with a lower investment and lower lifecycle cost.

Network topology is the arrangement of the various elements (links, nodes, etc.) of a computer network. It is the topological structure of a network and may be depicted physically or logically.

The multi-channel measurement system for capacitive displacement sensors based on the modularity principle, capaNCDT 6200; has now been extended by the new controller DT6230. Compared to its “little brother”, the DT6230 does not only offer an Ethernet but also an EtherCAT interface as well as an integrated synchronisation. Thereby, the whole system offers more flexibility.

While alarm performance monitoring measures alarm performance, periodic audit ensures adequate management and work practices for an alarm management system.

By Daniel Atzori, PhD Implementing a cost-effective automation strategy is a top priority in the current oil price environment – and critical to eradicating production downtime.

By Rohit Bhargava, Microsoft With more than 10,000 OPC products available in the marketplace today, and deployments estimated to be in the tens of millions of instances, OPC UA enables companies to get started on business transformation today.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The latest technologies are expanding automation options at an incredibly fast rate. Significant changes within manufacturing companies will be driven by technology. Automation professionals need to take the lead in guiding management to adopt new technology or there will be turmoil.

Technical discussion on how to improve industrial automation operations by understanding integrating and runaway process dynamics

By C.Sailaja and A.Gugharaja, TATA Consulting Engineers Ltd, Chennai Valves commonly used in process Industry are either pneumatically operated or electrically operated depending on the availability of Instrument air / power at that location and its application. With the advancement in technology, valve operation on Digital communication system has been introduced.

HART Protocol permits two-way communications, so instrument parameters for smart devices can be interrogated and adjusted from anywhere on the 4-20 mA loop.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Pharmaceutical automation professionals participated in an Automation Engineering Survey that focused on career, training, development, work tasks, use of contractors and more. This article summarizes the results of that survey. While the results are particular to the pharmaceutical industry, they are indicative of challenges faced by all industry segments.

Industry needs to continue to demonstrate how optimal and government-grade cybersecurity can be achieved to the satisfaction of senior control industry security and operating managers

By Wilmer Zhou, IHS Developments within the linear and torque motors market are varied amongst different countries, industries and even different customers, meaning there are many opportunities for specialized companies diving into this market

View the the basic process of a control loop, highlighting the components and measurements within the loop