Articles and News

By Tom McKinney, HMS Industrial Networks WiFi, Bluetooth or Zigbee? Here’s a review of the available short range wireless standards for industrial applications.

Method is offered for converting milliamps to English units

By Dr. Rüdiger Frank, Pilz GmbH & Co Today's robots are being used in production areas in which they have previously not been used. In each case, safety aspects must always be considered on an individual basis and the appropriate safety solution implemented for each application. Safe sensor technology has a key role to play: a modular approach to sensors is required in order to satisfy all applications with regard to safety.

By Chuck Cimalore, Omnify Software While PLM “in the cloud” is available today, its adoption can be slow. Customers are having a difficult time deciphering when, how and even whether to use PLM in a cloud.

By Bill Lydon, Editor A major theme of the recent Siemens Oil & Gas Innovations Summit was the need to apply automation to lower operations and production cost. More automation will enable producers to deal more easily with the cost pressures of the oil and gas industry.

Hydrostatic head, weight, radioactive properties, density, and sonic detectors are all used in what methods of level measurement?

Today's industry operations generate plenty of data. The challenge is in gaining greater visibility to plant intelligence.

Taking measures to manage industrial technology upgrades and ensure control systems are safe is key to protecting the operational integrity of plant infrastructure

By Ken Ball Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) were more of a technology evolution than a radical development. A noteworthy aspect about the origin was that quite similar concepts were pursued by three separate companies—nearly concurrently but unknown to each other. Part 1 in a series of four articles about the history of the PLC.

By Tom Bonine, National Metal Fabricators Robotic welding is highly cost-effective, especially for longer production runs where programming time can be amortized over a large number of pieces.

The single biggest obstacle to social media marketing success is time. Social marketing automation tools can help you achieve high levels of efficiency.

The difference between the indication of the instrument and the actual value of the measured variable

How to eliminate oscillations associated with the discontinuity and changes in phase between heating and cooling and make the response of the secondary temperature loop faster.

By Edward Nugent, PcVue Inc., et al The different way in which mobile device users interact with their devices compared to operator’s interactions with control room monitors requires a new SCADA architecture for mobility workers who rely on SCADA or BMS systems in order to perform their job function.

By Dean Wiech, Tools4Ever Workflow and automation procedures for identity and password management can reduce time spent, increase security and reduce the workload on the help desk considerably.

Technical training opportunities from ISA in August 2015.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Many users, systems integrators, and manufacturing managers expect one year to eighteen month Return on Investment (ROI) when replacing or adding new automation systems. I believe this is short sighted thinking. Short term ROI justification requirements almost guarantee mediocre results rather than striving for excellence.

How to Calculate Specific Gravity

By Georg Stieler, Stieler Technologie The Chinese market for Industrial Automation is growing much faster than other sectors of the Chinese economy and will almost double within the next five years, according to our estimations.

By Andreas Huhmann, HARTING Industry 4.0’s use of Cyber-Physical Systems has radically altered the face of industrial production. Still, Industry 4.0 will only become a reality when the cyber world and physical world are connected. It entails new demands on network technology and by extension on connection technology.