Articles and News

Deutschmann attained certification to the current PROFINET 2.2 and GSDML 2.25 specifications for the UNIGATE IC and UNIGATE CL series.

By Chad Sullivan, 5 Star measurement, et al Five Star Measurement of Weatherford, Texas uses Software Toolbox's Electronic Flow Measurement (EFM) Suite to remotely monitor and manage more than 700 wellheads as an initial stage that may eventually expand to 6,000 sites.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The OPC Foundation held their General Assembly meeting on December 4, 2013. Dr. Grant Wilson of Emerson Process Management and Foundation Chairman of the OPC Board opened the meeting, and Tom Burke summarized the Foundation’s current successes as accelerating adoption of OPC technology, successful OPC certification program, IEC standardization, and continuous improvement.

Spirax Sarco provides expertise, service, products and turnkey solutions for the control and efficient use of steam, air, and other industrial fluids for industrial and commercial users worldwide.

B&B's Spectre 3G cellular router starter kit now includes a 3-month data plan from KORE's GSM or CDMA North American 3G cellular network.

Since adopting KEPServerEX communications platform, the food production system integrator has been able to improve interoperability and reduce production facility downtime for its customers.

By Mike Fahrion, B&B Electronics Ten commandments—rules, that is—for wireless communications. Covers RF power, frequency, long range reception, noise, rain, interference, antenna placement and more.

SCADA systems were traditionally “walled off” from other systems operating independently from the network. Prior to the awareness of possible attacks, this seemed to provide all the protection the SCADA system needed. They were largely proprietary systems with such limited access and esoteric coding that very few people would have the ability to access them to launch an attack. Over time, however, they became integrated into the larger company network as a means to leverage their valuable data and increase plant efficiency. Therefore, the reality is their security is now often only as strong as the security of the network.

New members of Sercos include Innovasic, Festo, Beijing Shouke Catchet Electrical Technology, STGCON New Energy Technology and Huangzhou Wahaha Group.

20 students were provided scholarships covering tuition and stationary expenses for the first year of their graduation courses in engineering, R&D or manufacturing.

Armstrong International is a manufacturer of steam, gas, and hot water systems.

By Bill Lydon, Editor At Automation Fair 2013, I spoke with Rockwell Automation’s Frank Kulaszewicz about the progress on their new architecture developments. The new controller architecture will consist of a backplane and each module will have its own IP address. Every motor drive, intelligent overload, intelligent sensor, intelligent light curtain, and other device will have an IP address.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The improvement of manufacturing productivity and quality requires sharing data and synchronizing controllers. This can now be accomplished by using new standards that were jointly developed by PLCopen and the OPC Foundation.

When released, the adapter will enable wired field instruments or analytical sensors to be used as ISA100 Wireless devices.

Schneider Electric added EtherNet/IP Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to the ConneXium Tofino Firewall to further harden industrial control systems against network incidents and cyberattacks.

By Bill Lydon, Editor At the 2013 Rockwell Automation Fair, Cisco described how their routers are becoming distributed embedded computer devices, intended to process and react to information from devices and sensors at the edge of the network. Could your next automation controller be embedded in an Ethernet switch?

Softing's PROFINET device implementation has passed the Class III category of the "Net Load Test" performed by PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI).

The OPC Data-UA toolkit was certified by the OPC Foundation for OPC UA client development.

By Bill Lydon, Editor With this acquisition, Schneider Electric significantly enhanced its position to serve the process industries and now has a complete portfolio of products to serve the entire industrial and process automation industry. This article highlights a few key aspects of the integration of the two companies.

How to use Mobile Devices to Improve Operator Effectiveness