Automation is global
CSIA adds first Chinese member. Hollysys of Beijing has joined the Control Systems Integrators Association. Jack Yu, international business director, will attend the annual CSIA Executive Summit April 29 to May 1 in Seattle.
Safety
TUV Qualified Safety Package. There will be more in the March issue of Automation World, but Altera Corp. of San Jose, Calif. has gained acceptance from TUV Rheinland of a pre-qualified development tool chain that includes safety manuals and safety intellectual property cores. The base product includes FPGAs with certified tools.
Speaking of safety, ABB is touting global growth of its Safety Execution Centers–expanding from eight centers to twenty centers over the past four years. These centers provide customers with local resources for safety instrumented system (SIS) design, engineering and project execution, as well as access to resident safety standards experts and technology experts. In total, this global team includes more than 500 TÜV certified and ABB technology certified safety engineers. It claims to have more safety centers with TÜV certification for Functional Safety Management System (FSMS) delivery and implementation than any other supplier in the industry.
In late 2009, ABB Safety Execution Centers in Beijing and Shanghai, China and Bangalore, India were certified by TÜV as having in place and applying an FSMS for delivery and implementation of safety system projects in accordance to international industry standards. ABB also recently announced that its Safety Execution Center Buenos Aires, Argentina was certified by TÜV. Other TÜV certified centers are located in Denmark, Germany, Italy Singapore, and the United Kingdom.
One more safety information piece comes from Beckhoff, which has introduced TwinSafe Terminals for the EtherCat I/O system. Rated for SIL 3 and conforming to IEC 61508 and EN ISO 13849-1 PL e, TwinSafe Terminals for EtherCAT are certified for use throughout North America. EL6900 safety PLC terminal can integrate up to 128 4-channel safety terminals (512 safety devices) and is capable of processing 256 safety-relevant function blocks. The safety function blocks integrated into the EL6900 Safety PLC are configured according to each unique application. In this way, safety functions such as emergency stop, safety door monitoring, two-hand control, serial/parallel muting, timers and latches can be easily programmed. Even a connection shutdown function can be established so interchangeable sections of equipment with safety terminals installed can be removed from the machine without causing safety system errors.
Products
In product news, N-Tron Corp. <> announced six new models of fully managed industrial Ethernet switches. Housed in compact, hardened enclosures, the 709FX, 710FX2, 711FX3, 712FX4, 714FX6 and 7010TX were designed to provide maximum performance in harsh industrial environments.
Product highlights include:
• -40°C to 70°C Operating temperature
• Rugged DIN-Rail Enclosure
• ESD and Surge Protection Diodes on all Ports
• Redundant Power Inputs 10-49VDC
• Configurable Bi-Color Fault Status LED
• Store-and-forward Technology
• Onboard Temperature Sensor
• SD Memory Card Configuration Backup (optional)
Invensys Operations Management announced that its Wonderware IntelaTrac mobile solution has achieved Enterprise Mobility validation through Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Validated Solution Program. The IntelaTrac solution is a mobile workforce and decision support system. Featuring configurable software and ruggedized mobile hardware, it enables better workflow, procedural and general task management focused on plant operations, maintenance management, production tracking and compliance applications.
The mobile component of the IntelaTrac application can operate with a wide variety of hardware from Motorola, which is available through the Wonderware brand as a part of a customer’s purchase of the system. These products include the MC55 and MC70 Enterprise Digital Assistants (EDA) and MC9090 family of mobile computers.
Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Validated Solutions Program enables partners to test and validate their mobility solutions on Motorola products to help ensure interoperability and meet the application-specific needs of customers, as well as reduce risk and time to deployment.
