Articles and News

Automation.com, February 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor During a half day session at the Sixteenth Annual ARC World Industry Forum Conference some automation vendors made it clear they are adopting OPC UA. This adoption is intended to close the gap between advances in the general computing industry and industrial automation systems.

Automation.com, February 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor OPC UA is emerging as a fundamental technology for implementing Digital Factory concepts to increase production efficiency. The concept was reinforced at the ARC Forum in a session titled, Transforming Manufacturing with OPC UA: From Embedded to the Enterprise.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Revit MEP HVAC drives equipment is available to architects and engineers during the design phase.

Automation.com, February 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor These results of the Pharmaceutical Automation Roundtable (PAR) Emerging Technology Benchmarking Survey addressed major automation topics including DCS vs. PLC, Fieldbus Technology, Smart Devices, VFDs, PAT, APC, Wireless, Operator Interfaces, Computing Technology, Validation and Skills gaps.

ÅF AB will use AVEVA Plant across all new large and medium sized design projects, including new paper machines, biomass power plants, nuclear, thermal and renewables.

Impuls in Russia reports that projects that typically took three months or more are now being completed in 5-6 weeks.

QA Graphics is an Iowa-based interactive design company specializing in Flash development, touchscreen applications, 3D design/animation, mobile apps and other multimedia.

Invensys will provide SimSci-Esscor simulation solutions to improve Shell’s global upstream, downstream and petrochemicals production.

The system will allow owner-operators and EPCs to rapidly capture as-built plant environments and create intelligent 3D models that improve the efficiency and safety of plant operations.

EuroChem will use UniSim to create simulated process scenarios as part of its training program for plant operators.

Rice University has been awarded prototyping and production services to help launch a group of robots designed for undergraduate engineering students.

Vistagy is a supplier of specialized engineering software and services for designing and manufacturing structures made of advanced composite materials.

Siemens PLM will provide software products including NX CAD/CAM/CAE, Solid Edge 2D/3D CAD,Teamcenter lifecycle management, and D-Cubed software.

ASCON's KOMPAS-3D software is being used to create all of the parts of drill bit sanding machines at Pilco in Finspеng, Sweden.

By scanning an existing upper and lower bowl assembly and modifying the CAD models to fit parts they already had tooling for, Aircraft Technologies substantially reduced the tooling cost.

BTS will deliver dynamic process simulation and other training systems for deployment in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Automation.com, October 2011 By Bill Lydon, Editor The CArS architecture is a modern systems level approach defined by the joint Chrysler and Fiat Manufacturing Engineering Council that improves the process flow for designing and implementing production lines.

The Siemens design team employs the Opera electromagnetic simulator from Cobham to help develop new wind generator concepts.

Automation.com, October 2011 By Bill Lydon, Editor National Instruments typical applications in the automation industry require very high speeds, high precision, and special functions. According to Christian Fritz, in these challenging applications, they are not competing against PLCs - PLCs just cannot do the job.

Virthualis’ 3-D visualization technology, called MindSafe, will be linked to Honeywell’s existing UniSim simulation tool.