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Automation.com, January 2013 By Bill Lydon, Editor This article is an update to my 2012 Trends Article and expresses my thoughts on major automation and control trends for 2013 and beyond. These opinions are based on a wide range of inputs from users, suppliers and industry consultants, and from attending numerous events.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Over the last few years a number of automation vendors have announced various services including outsourced maintenance, system integration, manufacturing and business process consulting, and remote operations. I wonder if an automation vendor can continue to be effective as both a product company and services provider.

By Pat Garrehy, Rootstock When SAP recently decided to stop working on its mid-market BusinessByDesign Cloud ERP product, it didn’t take long for the competition to voice their opinions.

By Alex Mills, Chess Logistics Technology Warehouse management systems have come a long way in the last 25 years and the latest versions far surpass their predecessors in terms of performance, sophistication and the value they can deliver to a business. And yet the market is slowing down.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Pharmaceutical automation leaders from around the world gathered to discuss a number of automation challenges, including how their companies are dealing with reduced personnel and the need to support multiple technologies at multiple sites. This article highlights those conversations and addresses the automation support models and the use of managed services.

By Bruce Nicolson, Intelligent Plant EEMUA 191 Revision 3 has revised requirements in terms of generating and representing KPIs. Alarm Management professionals and engineers responsible for control systems on process plants should therefore be aware of these changes and how to interpret them

By Mike Roberts, LNS Research Today’s manufacturing environment exudes more data than most companies know what to do with. While this data can be one of your greatest assets, in many cases it’s surfacing as a source of confusion and proving too difficult and costly to manage. For many, IT architecture is actually the foremost challenge for achieving visibility into manufacturing operations.

By John Browett, CC-Link Just as Asian vehicle manufacturers, such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda, build cars in Europe for the local market, European manufacturers should consider doing the same in Asia. Industry 4.0 can help do this.

By Chris Hansford, Hansford Sensors A range of vibration sensors and monitoring techniques are now available that can help engineers detect and manage vibration, and thus extend the operating life of automated machinery beyond recommended maintenance intervals.

By Dr. Guido Beckmann, EtherCAT Technology Group EtherCAT is an open, real-time capable communication system which is widely used in manufacturing automation and, due to its properties, is also ideal for mobile applications such as heavy vehicles.

By Mark Davidson, LNS Research In most cases and in many large organizations, the manufacturing software and IT resources are capable, but just not being properly business directed to use technology to support this alignment. Here is a list of common MOM and Enterprise IT applications that companies can use to support monitoring, analysis of, enforcement, and visibility of progress toward these goals.

By Darran Kreit, Zettlex For position sensing applications, many engineers are still specifying incremental sensors because they believe absolute versions are too complex and/or costly. This describes the two approaches and compares the relative benefits of each.

By Bob Goossens, Acieta Robots protect workers from jobs hazardous to their health, increase capacity and enable new products that couldn’t be produced any other way. It’s hard to think of a manufacturing job that a robot can’t perform faster and with better repeatability.

By Jonathan Wilkins, European Automation

By Lance Doherty, et al, Linear Technology One of the visions of the Internet of Things is to be able to measure and instrument things that have never before been measured. Applications call for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to deliver wire-like performance and yet be practical to deploy.

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.

By: Pat Garrehy, Rootstock While analysts project that the adoption rate for Cloud HR is over 60 percent and for Cloud CRM over 75 percent, the present adoption rate of Cloud ERP for manufacturers is less than ten percent. One major obstacle is that the larger ERP vendors are On Premise providers.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Downsizing has become a way to increase profits by “leaning out” operations. Most engineers are working with lean staff, which limits their scope of work to basic necessities. In most cases this means they do not have the time to work on improving the competitiveness of their companies.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The Danish company, Universal Robots, has created a new breed of robots that are significantly lower in cost than traditional robots. With this new bread, even small companies can use them to improve productivity. I recently interviewed Thomas Visti, Vice President/CCO of Universal Robots, to learn more. This article highlights my interview questions along with Visti’s responses.

By Dan Miklovic, LNS Research The basic concepts of Asset Performance Management (APM) have been around for nearly 50 years. In this article, we'll discuss the wealth of knowledge on different maintenance approaches available to today's professionals, and also the main challenges with putting those approaches into action.