Articles and News

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

By Bill Lydon, Editor For a new project or existing systems replacement/migration, life cycles should be part of the analysis when making a decision to purchase a control & automation systems. Your company’s manufacturing competitiveness and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) are directly impacted by the supplier’s lifecycles of the automation products that you purchase.

By Bill Lydon, Editor At the recent opening ceremony for Eaton’s new building in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, I gained a better understanding of Eaton as a company and their commitment to developing products that meet world needs. The company has a very rational approach to applied research and development.

As a project manager, continuously monitor everything for signs of problems and immediately inquire if something seems amiss.

Improperly designed UPS in harsh working environments decreases operation continuity and increases the risk of expensive control system shutdowns.

There are many opportunities and some challenges for new engineers entering careers in industrial automation and manufacturing. A Q&A offers many insights.

Do not go with cheaper instrumentation unless you are certain the impact on maintenance and process performance is (and will continue to be) negligible.

By Mark Howard, Zettlex Nowhere is the trend towards non-contact sensing more evident than in position measurement. With such a bewildering array of options, it can be difficult to select the most appropriate instrument for a specific application.

Research details use of a pseudo-partial derivative (PPD) to dynamically linearize a nonlinear system, and aggregation is applied to the predicted PPD, resulting in a model-free adaptive predictive co

By Peter Seeberg and Jürgen Lange, Softing Industrial Automation The eighth and last part of this series provides a summary and gives an outlook on the future of OPC technology.

The decline in experienced controls engineers and technicians is occurring while engineering schools are not replacing these people fast enough.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Manufacturing automation has been doing the heavy lifting to improve productivity in the United States while the country’s educational systems continue to have disturbingly low productivity. After talking with management of many manufacturing companies, reviewing surveys and statistics, it is obvious to me that this situation is dramatically out of control.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Spring is a time of new beginnings and new life. So why can’t we breathe new life into our automation systems? It’s a good time for automation engineers to consider new innovative automation applications to improve production.

By Reid Paquin, Aberdeen Group In December 2012, Aberdeen conducted research into the state of the engineering and technical workforce and found out that a majority of the 562 companies polled (over 60%) feel that they are understaffed in their engineering positions. Aberdeen looked into the challenges behind hiring and retaining engineering talent and uncovered what the industry leaders do to combat this problem.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Siemens hosted a thought leadership event on February 22, 2013 in Houston, TX. More than 300 oil and gas industry executives, technology leaders, and industry experts attended featured presentations, a trade fair and a networking event at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

When searching for a job, seek out plants that have at least one seasoned engineer under whom you can work.

Initiative by ISA Kolkatta Section in India Spurs Membership and Professional Growth

By Lantech To solve interoperability issues, ITU (International Telecommunication Unit) drafted a protocol, G.8032 Ethernet Ring Protection Switching (ERPS), to be compatible with the Ethernet standard and make the recovery scheme less than 50ms.

By Mark Howard, Zettlex Angle sensors are generally rated and, just as importantly, priced according to their measurement performance. But performance is stated in a variety of ways and some manufacturers confuse matters by using crafty ‘spec-manship.’

By Bill Lydon, Editor Part 3 - A survey conducted by pharmaceutical companies identified that more than half of the companies felt automation was meeting operational goals. The panel then outlined the areas for improvement in automation over the next 5-10 years.