Articles and News

IWK Verpackungsteckni and OYSTAR IWK USA make tube filling and cartoning machinery for the pharmaceutical and personal care industries.

Belden previously was Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at the Rockford site as well as heading the PCI operations in Hay-on-Wye, Wales in the United Kingdom.

Global shipments for motion control products fell by 6.8% in the first half of 2013, according to the Motion Control Association (MCA), the industry’s trade group.

June U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $426.83 million, down 5.8% from May. With a year-to-date total of $2,538.55 million, 2013 is down 5.7% compared with 2012.

Alpha Packaging deployed InfinityQS ProFicient at its St. Louis and Bethlehem, Pa., plants with the remaining five plants scheduled for rollout during the 2013 calendar year.

The total was up 13.6% from April but down 7.6% when compared with the total of $465.38 million reported for May 2012. 2013 is down 6.9% compared with 2012.

By Thomas R. Cutler More than 80% of large (200,000+ square foot) distribution centers throughout North America and Europe are expanding automation spending in 2013-2015. The challenges for large operations include an effective turnkey solution with superior design, increased production, and reduced costs. Automation is at the heart of these solutions.

By Bill Lydon, Editor On May 30, 2013, I attended the grand opening of Beckhoff Automation’s new $8 million North American headquarters. The facility features a training center, an ESD-protected PC repair center, and a building automation system based on Beckhoff‘s own hardware and software.

The market for industrial automation equipment will grow 6.2 percent this year to approximately $170 billion, helped in part by the recovery of global manufacturing in the first quarter, according to IHS.

$372.50 million in orders were down 26.6% from March and down 12.6% when compared with the total of $426.44 million reported for April 2012.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Over the last two years, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) UK Petrochemicals has empowered users to create custom dashboards based on Excel spreadsheet data and calculations using software from Sabisu. The software enables people to organize their data around "Communities" related to areas of interest.

The high standard of living in Europe has popularised packaged goods, including packaged food, beverages, toiletries and cosmetics, thereby spurring demand for packaging machinery in the region.

The AMT Sao Paulo Technology Center in Brazil lets AMT members establish operations within Brazil, build relationships and explore the market’s potential.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Part 3 - A survey conducted by pharmaceutical companies identified that more than half of the companies felt automation was meeting operational goals. The panel then outlined the areas for improvement in automation over the next 5-10 years.

By Bill Lydon, Editor At PackExpo there were two innovations that really stood out as representing “thinking outside the box” creative solutions - one was Adaptive Robotic Tooling by FESTO and the other was the XTS Linear Carrier System by Beckhoff Automation.

Machine Control Group, an engineering focused solution provider, will represent B&R Automation in Missouri, Arkansas, and western Tennessee.

December U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $499.43 million according to AMT, the highest order total in 13 years.

Automation.com, January 2013 By Bill Lydon, Editor Art to Part has been a vision since the 1970's to have a holistic computer aided product design to manufacturing process. The technology is available today, but manufacturers also need to make organizational changes to fully leverage it.

Automation.com, January 2013 By Bill Lydon, Editor The addition of an EtherNet/IP stack to the Siemens Sinamics drives offers another option and makes life easier for users and machine builders. The Sinamics S120 drive products now support Profibus DP, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, and Ethernet TCP/IP.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The Tofino Security Appliance and its management software withstood a variety of sophisticated reverse engineering attacks conducted by Digital Bond, the world's most respected sources for control system security research.