Articles and News

This is a Q&A with the ISA Boston Section.

Automation.com, January 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor The next major frontier in the evolution of open architecture is the development of application standards built around Use Cases to increase automation productivity and efficiency. Packaging machine standards from OMAC's Packaging Workgroup is a good example.

Process control migration best path forward: How do you achieve both when schedule and cost are constraints or better yet roadblocks?

Virtual Boxes

Automation.com, January 2012 By Gianni Minetti, Paradox Engineering Chemical plants struggle with growing complexity and are often instrumented for process control. Wireless sensors might not always be a viable option, while wireless transmission seems to be the best choice. So how to conjugate these two elements?

Automation.com, January 2012 By Sarah Erdman How energy dashboards have evolved over the past several years, mostly for key performance indicators, but now also for educating building occupants to encourage energy efficient practices.

Improving performance using cascade control and a Smith predictor

Automation.com, January 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Here are my thoughts on major automation and control trends in 2012. These opinions are based on a wide range of inputs from users, suppliers and industry consultants, and from attending numerous industry forums, conferences and trade shows every year.

It is possible to create a documentation format that works for design and construction and then can be gradually “morphed” into a format that meets the needs of production

Automation.com, January 2012 By Rockwell Automation To harness the wealth of untapped “manufacturing intelligence,” companies must overcome the barriers to collecting, correlating, visualizing and sharing plantfloor information with the overall operation.

Automation.com, January 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor The 17th Annual PI North America General Assembly Meeting was held October 4-6, 2011 in Phoenix, AZ and included vendors and users who provided updates on PROFIBUS and PROFINET technologies. Topics included PROFINET survey, GE IP, Chrysler-Fiat, Wireless and PROFIenergy.

Automation.com, January 2012 By Bill Lydon At the recent PI North America General Assembly Meeting, Bernie Anger of GE Intelligent Platforms discussed why they chose PROFINET as the backbone for their Programmable Automation Controller portfolio. The PROFINET philosophy fits with GE's evolving legacy of high performance distributed systems.

Operator effectiveness is often overlooked but is an area that can improve the performance and safety of your control system or plant.

Automation.com, December 2011 By Bill Lydon, Editor Companies are looking for ways to improve efficiency and profits but the use of and Real-Time Optimization (RTO) including Advanced Process Control (APC) is still limited. Why?

MEMS development stems from microelectronics industry and combines conventional techniques developed for IC processing with MEMS-specific processes

Guidelines for the tuning and the evaluation of decentralized and decoupling controllers for processes with recirculation

Test time for tuning temperature control can be reduced by using the near-integrating method. It identifies the deadtime and initial ramp rate.

Automation.com, December 2011 By Bill Lydon, Editor An enthusiastic OMAC Packaging Working Group recently presented plans for packaging machine standards. Bryan Griffen from Nestle explained their packaging philosophy and current vision centered on OMAC standards and how they want to optimize control systems in three ways.

IEC 6-1131-3

If on a trend recording a change in an input flow or speed (load) associated with a primary process loop causes a significant change in the primary process variable, there is an opportunity for feedfo