At the end of the day, a process automation project is measured by how it delivered the unit of production – or in many processes, the “molecule” – to the client. I know, we hang our hat on a lot of other metrics, such as improved asset utilization, better selectivity, increased throughput, higher quality, less [...]
Presidential Executive Order on Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity draws comprehensive response from ISA and AF U.S. Presidential Executive Order 13636, announced in President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address and signed on 12 February, is intended to confront the growing threats and risks of destructive and potentially deadly cyber attacks on the nation’s critical infrastructure. [...]
Voting for this year’s Member’s Choice Awards is now open. The Member’s Choice Awards recognizes those individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership as decided by someone who knows them best — you! There are many wonderful things about being awarded the Member’s Choice Award — peer recognition, an amazing trophy, bragging rights, and an incredible [...]
A supplier selection can end your career or launch it. With leaner engineering departments and more options to choose from, selecting the right solution is an ever growing challenge. These decisions often represent millions in long-term total cost of ownership. Making up a process on the fly isn’t an option. You need to select a [...]
The process manufacturing industries are undergoing constant change as a result of the introduction of new systems or corporate mergers and acquisitions. Technical staff and project management can often smooth out the rough spots resulting from corporate and technological flux through the development of a common set of documents for instrumentation and control systems. Investment [...]
I/O, I/O, so off to work I go…simple, right? Input. Output. Repeat. That’s the recipe for process automation, there’s no denying it. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? If only it were that simple. If it required nothing more than to memorize this little recipe, we could get a dumb robot (programmed in Fortran!) to handle our [...]
Last time I talked about the Top 10 pitfalls for manufacturing IT projects. It putting that together I realized there were way more than 10. I could probably do like a Top 100 or so but that would be too much. Instead I’d simple like to mention a few more pitfalls that are way too [...]
I’d like to change gears a little and talk some more about successful and unsuccessful manufacturing IT projects. There’s lots of factors that can derail a manufacturing IT project and simply being aware of them can go a long way to helping you avoid them. So, here’s what I call the Top 10 pitfalls for [...]
The commissioning and configuration of digital communications of a field-level network, such as Foundation Fieldbus, is fundamental to obtaining certification of the digital communication of the segments and, hence, approval to start up the plant. Despite the fact that the Fieldbus Foundation (FF) project may have been developed and designed following all concerns, standards, such [...]
The rapid developments and innovations in automation, control and remote monitoring have increased the levels of production while shortening the time and lowering the cost of designing and deploying complex systems. One of these developments, the growth of AC-based automation and control systems, is due to a number of factors. As control systems migrate from [...]
