Articles and News

The companies plan to deliver cellular solutions that help enable Rockwell Automation customers to securely collect, manage and take action on data from industrial equipment located in plants and remote sites around the globe.

By Steve Hughes, REO Industry 4.0 will ultimately represent a significant change in manufacturing and industry. In the long run, the sophisticated software implanted in factory equipment could help machines self-regulate and make more autonomous decisions.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Some industrial automation vendors and computer technology providers are offering cloud services that include historians, analytics, and complete MES (Manufacturing Execution System). These services offer a new way to improve operations by applying more computing power. Another important trend is leveraging new, more powerful controllers within the secure automation system environment. Should you be using one or the other, or both?

The influx of wireless technologies and intelligent devices has resulted in the rapid evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), a disruptive cross industry force.

By Robert Reid, Panduit, on behalf of Industrial IP Advantage Given that greater than 60% of Ethernet link failures are related to physical infrastructure, it is important from the outset to design and build a resilient network that is architected to recover quickly from a failure condition.

By Paul Brooks, Rockwell Automation, on behalf of Industrial IP Advantage Without standard, unmodified Ethernet on the plant floor, many industrial automation companies can’t easily take advantage of higher-level protocols and the immense functionality they support. EtherNet/IP enables organizations to save money by moving away from expensive, closed, plant floor dedicated networks.

Enhancements in MTConnect standard version 1.3.0 include inter-device connectivity to enable machine-to-machine communication, and additional data items for equipment and devices.

FDI Cooperation, FieldComm Group and Profibus & Profinet International gave FDI to the FieldComm Group.

The specification makes it possible for automation suppliers to develop products and host systems compatible with FDI.

PLCopen and OPC Foundation created an open standards ecosystem that simplifies the communications of packaging machines with other plant systems and the business enterprise.

By Mike Granby, Red Lion Controls Bringing a factory into the 21st century involves more than just connecting devices to Ethernet and wireless networks. The fundamentals of a successful Connected Factory must be prepared to ensure information can be accessed, monitored and controlled from anywhere.

The Network Intelligence Alliance (NI Alliance) is an industry organization created for collaboration among vendors of products and solutions based on network intelligence.

Linux has long been on the “wishlist" for control systems. Until now, most systems have been locked-in to the Windows operating system due to reliance on classic OPC—a ubiquitous communication standard based on Microsoft’s Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM). The name of the game is changing, however, with the arrival of the next-generation OPC standard, the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA). The new standard was designed for cross-platform compatibility, which makes room for Linux to gain popularity in the automated control industry.

By Bill Lydon, Editor There is a growing frenzy over the application of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to industrial automation. The question is, “Why do we want to do this?” The high level goal is to improve manufacturing processes in a number of dimensions, including efficiency, responsiveness, and the ability to meet individual customer needs in a timely manner.

Traditionally, body panels are inspected by using a robot to present the part to an array of proximity switches. Ford improved on this method by using machine vision. The camera connects to either the robot or the PLC using the Ethernet/IP protocol.

By John Lewis, Cognex The need to use PCs to interface with vision systems and ID readers required the purchase of expensive hardware and development of sometimes complex software. A new generation of vision systems and ID readers with built-in EtherNet/IP connectivity streamlines factory network integration.

Exide had difficulties in reading 2D data matrix codes burned into plastic with a laser burner. The problem was solved by switching to image-based Cognex DataMan 200 readers with 2D decoding software and an EtherNet/IP interface to the PLC.

Centero will distribute and support the ISA100 Wireless Device Test Kit and ISA100 Wireless Stack Test Kit.

Using Kepware’s KEPServerEX, Cascades now supports communications across all of its seventeen plants, seventeen paper machines, and nearly ninety converting lines with just one piece of software.

To simplify the development of complex machines, Rexroth is integrating safety technology into the Sercos automation network.