Articles and News

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.

By Bill Lydon, Editor At the recent Honeywell User Group (HUG) 2013 conference, Honeywell announced new services under the Assurance 360 program for owners of Honeywell systems. The overall goal of these programs is a reduction of unplanned events, faster problem resolution, and better plant performance.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The Louisiana Sugar Refining, LLC (LSR) completed a new plant, representing the single largest investment in America’s sugar cane industry in over 40 years. With a newly engineered Siemens automation system, the white sugar refinery is capable of refining two billion pounds of white sugar annually for distribution to commercial and retail customers throughout the United States.

Classes typically are a combination of classroom and hands-on training on either the Endress+Hauser Process Training Unit (PTU) or live instruments in training stands, both designed to simulate operating conditions.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The Honeywell system integrator initiative was launched in 2009 and has quickly become a solid program to serve small to midrange customers with Honeywell’s modular systems. There are 200 system integrators in the program with 55 of them located in the United States.

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.

Optima Group Consumer, a German manufacturer of coffee capsule filling stations, is using an IDS camera to check the quality of coffee packets.

Beef producer in Kansas uses KEPServerEX software to help confirm that its meat automatically moves from the warehouse to the retail location without human intervention.

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.

By Bill Lydon, Editor In February 2013, Schneider Electric announced the PlantStruxure PES (Process Expert System) as, “The innovative Process Automation System that brings together the best from the PLC/SCADA and DCS worlds and combines this with integrated energy management features…” To gain a better understanding, I had the opportunity to ask their Product Marketing Manager some questions about this new offering.

As end users increasingly focus on energy-efficient production, pump manufacturers for the food and beverage industry will need to design cost-effective offerings that support energy optimisation.

Catalog covers weighing solutions for the chemical, pharmaceutical and food industries with hazardous environments.

Wilkinson has over 14 years’ experience in the industry having worked for some of the world’s leading control systems manufacturers including Honeywell, Siemens and Rockwell Automation.

Shipments for the U.S. industrial valve industry will grow to nearly $4.3 billion, according to figures released by the Valve Manufacturers Association (VMA). This exceeds the industry’s previous 10-year peak in 2008.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Siemens COMOS 10 is an enterprise platform for the process industry that integrates functions including automation design, plant engineering, operations, and enterprise interfaces.

Analytical Technology’s Q45P AutoClean pH monitors and D15-76 monitor with an Air Blast AutoClean system to indicate water quality and the presence of suspended solids in its waste water stream for Britannia Food Ingredients.

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.

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.