Articles and News

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.

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) will host an exclusive press event for editors - CEO Round Table Discussion - at AUTOMATE in Chicago on 22 January 2013.

Beam Global Spirits & Wine has three 939s Versatron Case packers handling bottles of cordials at a plant in Cincinnati, OH, running at 25-30 cases per minute.

Based on initial experiences using the PackML standard, OMAC clarified and simplified ISA TR88.00.02 language.

STICorp has brewing expertise and SlimSoft provides packaging solutions.

AMT says with a year-to-date total of $4,753.68 million, 2012 is up 5.3% compared with 2011.

VEE software allows end effectors to be configured online in just a few minutes.

PMMI’s research shows total consumption in the United States climbing by 23 percent to US$8.8 billion.

InTech, October 2012 By Rick Zabel While job satisfaction remains high (79.9%), this year’s survey indicates salaries are on the rise—up a respectable 4.4% over last year. This rise is indicative of the noticeable increase in the demand for qualified automation professionals.