Frank Blake On Leadership Vision Or The Inverted Pyramid
Andy Stanley's Leadership podcast is the best place on the Web to find consistent advice and teaching about leadership from leaders. While listening to today's episode—a replay of a conversation with retired CEO/chairman of Home Depot, Frank Blake, I had a flashback...
Control and Automation Solution for Sugar Manufacturers
Today's email barrage brought Bill Lydon's Dozen Automation and Control Trends. I haven't compiled a "Dirty Dozen", but this news from ABB Process Automation surely reflects a trend you've seen coming for some time. That is application specific solutions. The first I...
Intellectual Discipline
The man sat next to me at lunch at the conference I attended last month in Florida. He is a reliability engineer. His professional life has a foundation built on numbers. He began talking about Covid and how he and his wife had both contracted a bad case of the virus....
Proficy Historian Updated for 2022
Steve Pavlosky, Principal Product Manager Proficy Historian and Data at the Edge, talked with me about this latest release of Proficy Historian by GE Digital. I asked him for the important points. He responded, "It's our extreme scalability of up to 100 million tags."...
Growing Interest In Magnetic Robot Grippers
A few years ago I wondered if there was much more advancement coming with industrial robots. Then two technology trails appeared. One was the development and interest in collaborative robots. The other applied new technologies for improved grippers and end effectors....
Fifteen Years of iPhone
Remember 10-12 years ago when some worriers considered all the bad things that could happen if workers took their iPhones and other smart mobile devices into the plant? I wrote articles at Automation World about all this mobile connectivity. Companies figured out how...
Standardization Advances From OPC Foundation
OPC Foundation held a virtual SPS press conference combined with annual general meeting last month. The most profound news comes from the group working on Field Level Communications. That seemed to be a bit of a political football when the idea was broached several...
ExxonMobil Announces Open Process Automation Field Trial
I wrote a piece yesterday about software defined control with a new German company called Software Defined Automation. I mentioned the Open Process Automation Forum in the piece. I have followed the developments of OPAF since its inception. It has made a lot of...
Software Defined Control Architecture
A couple of years ago, I was amazed to discover a conversation in Germany regarding PC-based control versus "old, proprietary PLCs". Seeing that the conversation was in Germany, I assumed the "old" one to be Siemens and the new one was relative to CODESYS and...
StorCentric Announces Nexsan Unity Software For Data and Security
The types of products and services covered here keeps expanding with technology and application requirements change. It's the new year prompting reflection on the past and the future. I just happened upon a LinkedIn conversation about an article in Automation World...
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