Articles and News

New Standards and Technologies Streamline Safety Systems

By Chris Hansford, Hansford Sensors Discusses the importance of preserving high levels of performance in automation equipment and how this can be achieved using reliable vibration measurement equipment.

Conceptual knowledge should be sought to see the commonality in seemingly different industrial application requirements.

By Patty Solberg, Powerit Solutions Utilities are increasingly adopting advanced demand response (DR) programs—and that represents a growing opportunity for energy-intensive businesses to reduce their overall electricity costs while contributing to corporate sustainability efforts. To participate successfully in these programs, energy-intensive businesses must have DR-ready automation.

Industrial control systems are increasingly under attack and basic wireless security is inadequate. Government-validated technologies can be used to achieve greater cybersecurity

By Shaun Luper The stunning and sometimes revolutionary strides made in the consumer and corporate computing industries over the last decade (and more) have Automation clients, customers, and insiders wondering why the evolution of tech in Automation has not paralleled these gains to a greater degree.

ISA Training and Education in September: Learn, Advance, Succeed

Add comments through the software during programming. People will be very glad that you did.

By Mike Roberts, LNS Research With mobile-enabled quality management at our doorstep, it’s important to know what’s coming and what’s already available at some levels. There are three key functionalities you can expect to see in the not too distant future.

Model predictive control (MPC) offers several advantages for control of chemical processes. However, the standard MPC may do a poor job in suppressing the effects of certain disturbances.

By Jon Irvine, Valin The rule of thumb in a heating application like heat trace is to place the sensor in the most extreme location-- the lowest expected location for minimum temperature control and the highest expected location for maximum temperature control. The temperature sensor can only process the information supplied to it and placement is everything.

Advantages of using Foundation Fieldbus on floating production storage & offloading project, analyzing results as if implemented using Foundation Fieldbus.

Readback control of valve position compensates for a host of unknowns in connection with valve response but a positioner, like a controller, must be tuned.

What kind of MES do you need?

By Bill Lydon, Editor Doug McCuistion described the challenge that the Mars Exploration Program presented and how they took a “project-by-project” approach to achieve one of the most monumental space exploration feats of the century. This article highlights some engineering lessons that I extracted from his discussion about overcoming their obstacles.

By Bill Lydon, Editor GE Intelligent Platforms recently announced their Proficy Monitoring & Analysis Software Suite and believes the Suite is the first to address industrial big data by combining industrial Historian technology with Hadoop (High-availability distributed object-oriented platform) technology for asset health with process optimization.

Getting real about pressure transmitter accuracy

If a person is extremely intelligent, it will be obvious to everyone after a casual conversation.

Coupled with component MES, enterprise batch records provide manufacturers with a cost efficient, non-disruptive (to their existing installed base of technology) manufacturing IT solution that is scal

By John Browett, CC-Link Just as Asian vehicle manufacturers, such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda, build cars in Europe for the local market, European manufacturers should consider doing the same in Asia. Industry 4.0 can help do this.