Articles and News

After traveling to Germany last week for Hannover Messe (Fair), the world's largest industrial trade show, I was struck again by the difference in how engineers are perceived in Germany versus the U.S. German Engineering is often revered as a high quality engineering standard. I'm convinced that this reverence has everything to do with the deep-rooted culture surrounding engineering in Germany.

By Rick Zabel, Publisher There is nothing better than face to face meetings. Unfortunately, face to face meetings are not always possible, especially if the participants live in different parts of the country or world. Social networking tools have become a defacto standard of communication for many people and the trend is spreading from younger generations to older generations.

By Steve Lankford, Diamond Phoenix There are many things to consider when taking on a material handling project. It's in your best interest to have a systems integrator take responsibility for delivering a system that meets your expectations and goals.

Project management is critical to ensuring projects are implemented correctly, on time and within budget. Good project management also communicates to your management or stakeholder that you are a professional.

By Carl Hosier, Honeywell Process Solutions Many manufacturing facilities have taken to integrating plant subsystems with their DCS to maximize productivity and improve overall efficiency. Applying this same concept to power generation could help electricity and steam generators streamline production in a way that makes sense to both their pocketbooks and the regulators.

Molded rubber and silicone electrical connectors, plus short-run production of completely custom-connectors help manufacturers get the most up-time and ROI from new equipment

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.