Articles and News

By Andy Krapf, Loudoun Water Loudoun Water, in Louden County, Virginia, installed an Iconics Genesis64 HMI/SCADA system running under the Vista operating system and reduced their customization times by 30-40%.

The 33rd annual Honeywell Users Group Conference was held June 15 - 19, 2008 at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, AZ with over 700 customers in attendance.

By Rick Zabel, Publisher Automation Insights Network is a select group of controls and automation professionals who agree to help us cover news, emerging trends and technologies on various automation topics. Every two months, we will ask people in the Network to share their observations, knowledge and expertise with us. We take that information, distill it, and pass it on to our reporters and editors for use in future stories.

"The Six Most Common PID Configuration Errors: How to Find and Fix Them" white paper identifies the most common PID configuration issues, and provides techniques to help find and fix these issues.

By Rick Zabel, Automation.com The proposed name change of ISA (to "International Society of Automation") is up for a vote again during ISA Expo in Houston, October 14-16, 2008. Last year, the change was voted down, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument against the change. And there are many reasons for the change. If ISA is truly the global society of automation professionals, then its name should reflect its cause. It's time for a change!

By Rick Zabel Maybe it's because oil, natural gas and propane prices are so high. Maybe it's because it's an election year. Whatever the reason, it's about time we see more activity - in Wind.

Could it be that high fuel prices, the weak dollar and crises in the U.S. manufacturing industry are creating opportunities? Andy Chatha of ARC Advisory Group thinks so. He says the U.S. industry has suddenly become competitive on the world market, and companies are no longer moving operations overseas. Instead, many are expanding their facilities, and he predicts a boom in automation right here in the U.S.

European safety legislation is significant and far reaching. At first glance, it can seem like just more red tape which compounds the problems of operating in a highly competitive world. The truth, however, is far from this. The legislation is based on experience and common sense and represents a consistent message for industry — it must be safe! The rational behind the framework of measures is to ensure the safety of individual workers whoever or wherever they may be.

By Darren Barratt, Omniflex Alarm annunciators which involve the human operator in safety functions can only be targeted at SIL 1 level.

While some companies are slowly seeing the financial benefits of investing in safety, other companies view safety as an encumbering and expensive task.

The first step in any power quality strategy is developing a complete understanding of your electrical environment, implementing a good power distribution system design and using good grounding techniques. If you want virtually maintenance free protection from a wide range of power problems, the constant voltage transformer, correctly applied, is still one of the best forms of total power conditioning.

By PLCOpen Backgrounder article explains what PLCOpen is, and what it does.

By Jeff Hunter, Sealevel Systems Many RS-485 users are completely unaware that they are taking unnecessary risk with their data because of the method they use for driver control. This white paper explains.

White paper explains why mobile device vendors and users can choose to forego today’s pre-standard 802.11n radios and stick with proven solutions that support some combination of 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g.

Leveraging the knowledge and know-how of the people in an organization is a powerful way to make improvements and solve problems. The difficulty is getting this done effectively and avoiding an ineffective committee that creates more problems.

By Grace Engineered Products Wiring a voltage indicator (VI) to the primary power source provides a permanently wired "voltmeter" that gives electricians a full-time, visual, independent, thru-door power indication.

By Darren Barratt, Omniflex (UK) Limited The purpose of an annunciator is to provide the plant operator with early warning of a problem, which allows time to take action before a situation degrades to the point where the process can no longer be controlled.

By Brian MacCleery, NI senior product manager How National Instruments LabVIEW as well as multicore and FPGA technologies are impacting machine builders and the growing mechatronics segment.

By Uson LP White paper contains pointers that can help any manufacturing engineer determine which leak testing equipment can recast the QC department into a strong ally of the production schedule while still upholding the highest quality standards.

InfoWorld, May 2007 By Matt Hines The first remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities in Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have been identified by researchers.