Articles and News

The problem of state feedback controller design for a class of nonlinear systems, which are described by continuous-time affine fuzzy systems.

By Jonathan Wilkins, European Automation The static days of the monolithic monitor are beginning to make way for smaller, portable interfaces that provide the user with much more freedom—and problems.

By Brian Phillippi By making machines smarter through local processing and communication, the IIoT could solve problems in ways that were previously inconceivable. As innovation grows so does the complexity, which makes the IIoT a very large challenge that no company alone can meet.

As part of the training process, it is important to set personal goals for employees aligned with business goals.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Kepware Technologies recently introduced a new Local Historian Plug-In for the KEPServerEX communications platform and a Splunk plug-in to support big data systems. The products were born from customers’ requests for an easy to install and use historian for various plant applications, including labs, test situations, and at remote sites.

The manufacturing industry has production lines and machines with old technology and custom controls that could benefit from an upgrade to newer technology.

In framework of traditional PID controllers, there are only three parameters available to tune, as a result, performance of the resulting system is always limited.

By Dana Smith, Compressor World Here is what you should do if you deal in air compressors or run a plant that uses a number of different kinds of air compressors.

By Dan McGrath, Industrial IP Advantage The industrial network switches found in many plants tend to fall into two categories: unmanaged and poorly managed. But the success of the deployment is not about the manager – it’s about the plan.

By Darren Halford, European Automation Which country do you think is the most energy-efficient in the world?

Many government-focused cyberattacks originate from entities in developing countries interested in growing their critical infrastructure.

By Jean Carl, Macro Sensors With improved stroke to length ratio (now up to 80%), the LVDT Linear Position Sensor becomes a viable position measurement device for hydraulic cylinder positioning.

Best practices to get the most out of the inherent capability of a temperature sensor.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The FieldComm Group was formed and became operational on January 1, 2015, by combining all assets of the former Fieldbus Foundation and the HART Communication Foundation. The new group will further intelligent device technologies and their adoption. Ted Masters, President and CEO provided insights into the value of the new organization.

Pressure instrumentation maintenance is a critical and daily task, yet proper procedures for managing and calibrating these instruments are often overlooked or not understood.

You may have to follow the path of a cross-platform, multigenerational upgrade or migration to upgrade your automation system.

By Jonathan Wilkins Putting aside the traditional and universal signs of something going wrong, such as programme bugs and wiring errors, here are the top five things that can go wrong with a PLC.

Why you should consider templated manufacturing systems when investing in a new factory solution.

An ISA technical paper investigates a new fault detection and diagnosis problem via the output probability density functions for non-gausian stochastic distribution systems is investigated.

By Bill Lydon, Editor I believe the growth and application of new technology is a stimulus for the development of new automation system solutions and architectures. These new technologies include, but are not limited to, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and cloud analytics.