Articles and News

The division is being formed in response to customer and supplier demand, along with the Northwest region’s lack of service providers for robot-based automation.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com The industrial automation industry has a reputation and history of being behind the technology adoption curve. With an prganizational need for reliability and system availability, the key question is: When is a new technology reliable enough that the benefits outweigh the risk?

The theme of HANNOVER MESSE 2019 underlines the growing importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the production and energy industries, including such areas as energy efficiency and use and autonomous production processes as well as challenges in terms of interfaces, protocols and security.

Highlights from ABB’s showcase include solutions that can enable digitalization and enhance the grid, in line with this year’s conference theme, “Re-imagining utility of the future.”

The ICC is hosted by Inductive Automation for partners and customers of the Ignition SCADA system.

To help ensure 24-hour energy autonomy throughout its global expedition, the Energy Observer uses a combination of intermittent renewable energy: solar panels, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries and a hydrogen production system.

ECT was tasked with developing a turbomachinery control system for two trains, each with three parallel compressors. Because the operations will be expected to run continuously for years at a time, a redundant architecture was essential to ensure a backup system would take over and reduce the likelihood of downtime should a failure occur.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) was envisioned to create single network to meet all requirements including audio, vision, and data with guaranteed speed and determinism for all applications.

This year, Rockwell Automation will conduct a series of presentations and demonstrations for end users, machine and equipment builders in packaging and related industries to share the most recent innovations in independent cart technology, analytics and network security.

The Laval office establishes an automation solution center for Beckhoff customers in Quebec, located conveniently within driving distance from downtown Montreal and Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

The Siemens Converting Toolbox has separate modules for each of the Siemens product categories typically found on converting machines, including SIMOTION motion controllers, SINAMICS drives and SIMATIC PLCs.

To meet growing demands for increased crop yields, Mosaic needed to add a premium fertilizer product line to its New Wales, Florida, facility. In order to accommodate the new process, the company needed to drastically expand the existing distributed control system (DCS).

By Stefan Reuther, COPA-DATA Research by IndustryWeek shows that equipment failure is the cause of 42 per cent of unplanned downtime. This article explains how to leverage predictive analytics to reduce factory downtime and increase business competitiveness.

By Larry Smentowski, Rockwell Automation Smart manufacturing or Industry 4.0 initiatives present an opportunity to help all automakers address their challenges. But those initiatives will only be successful if automakers first have network, control and software standards in place.

By Nick Boughton, Boulting Technology The proposed benefits of data collection from smart sensors are huge, but some manufacturers still feel that a smart factory is out of their reach. This article explains how plants with legacy equipment can retrospectively upgrade their facility to a smart factory.

CLPA’s activity with the OPCF aims to expand its existing CSP+ (Control & Communication System Profile) technology from just describing individual devices and to apply it to complete machines and production lines. This is the key concept behind CSP+ for Machine.

CLPA’s activity with the OPCF aims to expand its existing CSP+ (Control & Communication System Profile) technology from just describing individual devices and to apply it to complete machines and production lines. This is the key concept behind CSP+ for Machine.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com Featuring numerous displays of the newest technologies, along with dozens of Honeywell and customer led sessions and technical discussions, the Honeywell Users Group Americas (HUG) buzzed in San Antonio this June with over 1,300 attendees.

By Robert Landavazo, Tripwire The OT/IT convergence will no doubt be looked back upon as a turning point in industry’s fight for cyber security and further harnessing of technology for business success. Being an early, proactive leader in that regard certainly, in general, seems like a good role to be playing.

The whitepaper, Chapter Five: Industrial Control Systems Life Cycle Cost Analysis – Quantitative Evaluation, delineates 450 different factors that impact costs across the following six phases of the industrial control system (ICS) life cycle: engineering, installation, commissioning, maintenance, system, and cyber security.