Articles and News

Fourteen vendors successfully tested 22 OPC products at the three-day Asian Interoperability (IOP) Workshop, an event sponsored by the OPC Foundation and hosted by the OPC Japan Council this past June in Tokyo, Japan.

Project management is really just risk management, and a large source of risk to an automation project is the control panels.

One of the most overlooked aspects to providing good customer service is ensuring that employees feel invested in their jobs and are part of a corporate team.

Design of Emergency Steam Load Shedding System Using Dynamic Simulation

Autotuning of a new PI-PD Smith predictor based on time domain specifications

By John Rinaldi, Real Time Automation This article examines USB and its applicability for factory floor applications. It addresses the history of USB, the technology, the advantages and limitations of USB in the factory floor environment and how USB will most likely be deployed in the coming years.

Use a PID control to eliminate manual actions and scheduled actions whenever a reasonable PV measurement is available.

Automation.com, August 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Greg Bodenhamer is responsible for Schneider Electric's internal integration and services group and has been building a program to cooperatively work with independent system integrators. The overall goal is to put the customer first and provide the most effective and efficient solution.

By Peter Seeberg and Jürgen Lange, Softing The third part of this series of articles outlines ten key reasons that have led to the development of an entirely new technology generation, the OPC Unified Architecture.

Connectivity is great for consumers and businesses, but the owners and operators of large and dangerous industrial processes ask a different question.

Automation.com, August 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor To reach higher levels of productivity, Dow Corning made the decision to migrate 32 disparate and unique site-based control systems solutions to one globally consistent automation system - the Siemens PSC 7 platform.

The electrical analysis of the systems should not be assigned to a junior engineer.

With the increased demand for automation professionals over the past year, many of you might be considering a job change, perhaps even a career change.

Selecting the right asset monitoring strategy is a balancing act between implementation cost and expected reliability.

Automation.com, July 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Productivity was a key theme of Siemens 2012 Automation Summit this year because it is one of the most important business topics in the world today. According to Siemens Industry Automation President Raj Batra, productivity is the backbone of the United States economic recovery.

As a result of the need for improving process sector functional safety, ISA developed the ISA-84 standard for industrial automation in the computer age.

Minimize the largest sources of dead time in process control applications and consider the use of an enhanced PID developed for wireless and feedforward control for large dead times.

The Reliability of Wireless Mesh Networks in Industrial Environments

Automation.com, July 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor In the past, Phoenix Contact's products were typically hidden in control cabinets. Their new vertical market initiative puts them in the mainstream of automation and control solutions, including further expansion in the United States.

Several different on/off actuator designs are available today. Some employ a scotch yoke mechanism, others use a rack and pinion, Plant experience suggests that the diminutive piston o-ring design can