Articles and News

By John Miles & Paolo Butti, Rockwell Automation Smart manufacturing strategies are helping today's manufacturers produce high-quality electric vehicles quickly, affordably and with minimal risk. We aren’t likely to see a slowdown anytime soon

With complex, critical products manufactured across multiple manufacturing sites, the challenge was to ensure manufacturing execution with the highest level of traceability, which could no longer be met by legacy tools.

By Sean Robinson, Novotek UK & Ireland Over the past five years, the industrial sector has begun to see the value in digitalisation and has invested more in adopting it. This article explains how plant managers can make proactive maintenance even more effective with machine learning.

The Nymi Band is a multi-factor biometrically authenticated wearable that is worn by shop floor workers to perform day-to-day authentication tasks, such as digital signatures within an MES.

By Jakob Björklund, IFS Manufacturers are beginning to see the value in integrating business software such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). However specialist Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) often do the same job as these supporting solutions, acting as an unnecessary middleman. This article asks the hard questions about whether MES is necessary in many industrial situations.

By Jason Andersen, Stratus Even as the anything-as-a-service (XaaS) model for operational computing gains popularity, many manufacturers are hesitant to make the move. This article explains what manufacturers can do to make the right decision for their business

The collaboration is intended to enable both companies to leverage their combined experience in this area, targeting to further improve the offering for CANopen, SAE J1939 and CAN/CAN-FD.

This combination of MES and RFQ software is intended to allow manufacturers to respond to changing customer and market demands.

Under the partnership agreement, Stratus will work with ISA to co-develop a range of informational and promotional resources, including: ad inserts within ISA’s bi-monthly InTech magazine; and a diverse range of online and e-newsletter ads, video alerts, and ebook sponsorships delivered on and through Automation.com

By Randy Blaylock, eFlex Systems The old model of OEE implementation was capital intensive and prohibited most small and mid-sized manufacturers from using a well-respected tool. The SaaS OEE is positioning itself as a game-changer by inviting ALL manufacturers to utilize these most needed metrics.

The acquisitions, with Bentley’s reporting and data management software gINT, are intended to serve to make Bentley a source for geotechnical professionals “going digital.”

By dovetailing their solutions expertise, the PLM specialists plan to focus on the market in the Digital Twin sphere. They also intend to build real time data integration capabilities to drive company-level digital transformation in manufacturing and Industry 4.0.

Seeq will join more than 500 control system integrators from around the globe on April 24-27 in San Francisco for the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA) Executive Conference.

The mission was to drive scrap down from the historical 10 percent autoclave levels down to below 4 percent. Plasan Carbon Composites implemented the FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition (SE) and FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI enterprise manufacturing intelligence software from Rockwell Automation

By Robert Glass, ABB It’s widely understood that improving the efficiency of equipment and processes will make a business more competitive and reduce operational costs. This article explains how to reduce sugar plant carbon emissions.

With the 3rd edition of the IEC 61131-3 standard and some additional wishes from the implementers, an update was needed. The final version 1.01 will have the major changes in Table 26 – Mapping IEC 61131-3 elementary datatypes to OPC UA built in datatypes, which in addition contains a new column with a NodeID for each type , and in Table 39 – Numeric Identifiers for IEC 61131-3 defined nodes.

The combination brings together AVEVA’s design, engineering and construction capabilities with Schneider Electric’s industrial software business, which ranges from simulation through to real-time manufacturing operations management.

Markus Schmidt, President of Swisslog Logistics Automation Americas, announced the appointments as part of Swisslog’s global initiative to focus on key customers and industries.

By Vikrant Angia, VCO Systems Too many in the picking product space fail to understand the complexities of the fast-changing omni-channel experience and associated total supply chain costs. Organizations must be optimized to provide the right product to end customers, across the various channels that share inventory.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com Taking place from November 2-3 2017, the event put a spotlight on SAP’s IT/OT real-time transaction processing and integration of manufacturing controls and automation for their customers.