Articles and News

Automation.com, November 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Analytic computing methods are increasingly being applied in business and technology with software emerging in the automation industry giving users actionable insights and understanding of performance based on data and statistical methods.

Automation.com, November 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Invensys Foxboro describes their Modernization Program as taking a holistic approach based on business requirements with four major goals - Reduce risk of failures, operational improvements, new & existing systems integration, and securing automation systems from cyber-attack.

Automation.com, November 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Improving operator interaction is a good topic but this perspective may be holding back automation industry progress. It seems to me the industry should be putting more effort into developing more advanced automation with the goal of eliminating operators.

Automation.com, October 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor My discussions with users at the IANA and IMTS shows make it clear that industrial automation is imperative to increase productivity, quality, and competitiveness in world markets. The event provides users and machine builders with an opportunity to see and compare offerings from multiple vendors in one trip.

Operator buy-in and approval are critical to automation project success. Get the operators involved in the design process early and listen to what they say.

Automation.com, October 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Executives from supplier and end-user companies, along with a leading industrial business analyst provided their insights into the future of automation and industry issues, including human performance and challenging new engineers.

Automation.com, October 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor OPC UA technology provides an efficient and secure infrastructure for communications and has the potential to be the standard of choice to complete the vision of IP to the edge, commonly referred to as the "Internet of Things."

Automation.com, October 2012 By Nuris Ismail and Reid Paquin This research explores how industry leaders are taking advantage of industrial networking to enable real-time visibility into data to optimize production, maintenance, and safety - in particular, the adoption rate of industrial Ethernet protocols versus Fieldbus.

How do you spend the first hour of your day?

Estimate benefits from a decrease in variability & an increase production rate. Implement solutions where an increase in plant profitability is justified

Technical paper presents a new method for designing predictive controllers for linear single-input/single-output systems.

Automation.com, October 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Clemens Blum and Mary Ramsey discussed how Schneider Electric is taking a more holistic view on operations and helping customers meet energy efficiency and sustainably goals by making investments in open architecture platforms and web services.

Buying high-quality instrumentation does not mean that the buyer has to pay list price.

By Mark Howard, Zettlex Potentiometers are still, by far, the most commonly used position sensor. They are widely seen as the low cost solution for many position sensing applications. But is their reputation for low cost justified?

ISA Fall and Spring Leader meetings are always something to be experienced.

Automation.com, October 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor The goal of Intuition Executive is to integrate and manage information that companies typically house in applications and spreadsheets, allowing them to manage complex production operations, monitor processes and make operating decisions.

Automation.com, October 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Nathalie Marcotte suggested that attendees expand their view on modernization by not just thinking about the DCS, but the need to modernize the entire plant and operations.

InTech, October 2012 By Rick Zabel While job satisfaction remains high (79.9%), this year’s survey indicates salaries are on the rise—up a respectable 4.4% over last year. This rise is indicative of the noticeable increase in the demand for qualified automation professionals.

Automation.com, October 2012 By Patrick Supanich, Contributing Writer Over the past year, a number of PROFINET technology developments and organizational structure changes have occurred. First, the release of specification Version 2.3 that covers applications from standard to high speed processes. Second, called performance upgrade, has dramatically increase the speed of the PROFINET network.

By Peter Seeberg and Jürgen Lange, Softing OPC specifications are created with the aim of permitting interoperability between products from different manufacturers. To ensure that a product actually complies with the specification it must undergo a series of compliance tests. Part 6 in a series of eight articles.