Tags: Control System, Cyber Security, Off-site Provider, Remote Management, Remote Systems
What Does Statistical Process Control Really Do? (Part 1)
Posted by John Clemons on February 12, 2013 @ 10:43 am
You’ve heard of SPC. Statistical process control applies statistical methods to control manufacturing processes. You can go look at all the equations yourself, and you’ll see it’s actually pretty cool math and a
practical application of mathematics in manufacturing.
But, what does it really do? SPC is like a lot of things, people have heard about it but few do anything with it. And, when someone actually does something with SPC it’s often a math or quality geek who’s...
Who Will Be In Your Control Room In 2016?
Posted by Bill Tolrud on December 5, 2012 @ 1:29 pm
Take a look at the people in your control room: you probably see a lot of gray hair. How many of those individuals are still going to be there in another three or five years? To answer this question, we need to look at the retirement rate of the baby boomers that are now between the ages of 55 to 65. On January 1, 2011, the first baby boomers turned 65. According to a report from the Congressional Research Service, dated January 30, 2008, the retirement of baby boomers will affect the overall economy and our industries until the year 2020. The industries affected most will be those that have been part of the structure of the U.S. industry buildup: steel and primary m...
Conflict in the Workplace: What to do When Two Worlds Collide
Posted by Bruce Brandt on November 6, 2012 @ 11:25 amRecently I attended a session with a panel of security experts who were discussing process control system security. There were quite a number of surprising revelations from this gathering including the need to ensure that your facility’s control system isn’t found by a search engine called Shodan. It may sound like the villain of some cyberpunk novels, but can be a real threat to the security of your control system. I’d never heard of Shodan, so I was more than a bit taken aback that something like this existed and was regularly being used by hackers to attack industrial control systems. Hearing that the number of systems that can be found using this search engine numbers in the thousands was even more of a shock....
