Articles and News

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.

ARC says Asia will become the largest PLC market from 2016 onwards. But what about Industry 4.0 and reshoring? Just wishful thinking?

The Asia-Pacific region accounts for more capital expenditures on industrial automation products than anywhere else in the world, with 46 percent of global investments in 2012.

Spuntech Industries’ North Carolina plant has a Profibus network that runs seven PLCs with approximately 350 nodes. To help diagnose problems, Spuntech installed Trebing + Himstedt’s TH LINK hardware and TH SCOPE diagnostic software.

On-line store provides application modules and productivity tools, including device description files, utilities, tested application libraries, additional visualization elements and tool plug-ins for CODESYS users.

A possible acquisition of Invensys Operations Management (IOM), for a proposed $5.0 billion by the French company Schneider Electric, has led to speculation of a potential bidding war for the U.K. engineering company.

By Bill Lydon, Editor There has been speculation for a long time that the Invensys automaton business would be sold. Now Schneider Electric has made a 3.3 billion pound ($5 billion) takeover proposal for Invensys.

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.

Beckhoff opened a regional office in Woodridge, Ill., in the Chicago suburbs.

Bertelkamp's training center provides Mitsubishi Electric university-based training for its programmable logic controls (PLCs), human machine interfaces (HMI), variable frequency drives (VFD) and robots.

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.

Products include ControlLogix PAC Modules and Network cards for various computer buses and Rockwell Automation networks such as ControlNet.

Spiesshofer will succeed Joe Hogan as CEO on September 15, 2013. Hogan will continue with ABB for some months as Senior Advisor to the Board.

$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 Reid Schook Rockwell Automation is controlling the HVAC system at an unnamed oil company in the Athabasca Oil Sands region in Canada.

Prosoft lets each PLC on SkySurfer communicate with the Allen-Bradley MicroLogix 1100 master PLC on the flight deck. The master PLC has an HMI connected to it so an operator can start a cart and monitor data.

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.

Microchip delivered the 12 billionth MCU approximately 10 months after delivering its 11 billionth.

On the heels of Joe Hogan's departure, Chief Technology Officer, Prith Banerjee, has decided to leave ABB for family reasons.

Hogan will continue to lead ABB until a successor is announced. He is committed to a smooth transition.