Applied Automation

How to implement a DCS By Brian Batts and Chuck Toth
It’s time to start up your new distributed control system (DCS). How do you make the transition as positive and painless as possible?

Automation World

Web Technologies Change the Landscape for Visualization By Hayden Serio
Led in large part by consumer expectations carrying over to industrial settings, HMI, SCADA and other visualization tools are becoming more accessible from more places, with the data more intuitively digested. See Serio’s comments regarding augmented and virtual reality on page 38.

Control Engineering

What can the IIoT do? By John Clemons
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) enhances manufacturing operations by improving connectivity, equipment management, monitoring production and customer relationships. See nine benefits.

Analyze data quality for process control systems By Norm Kincade
Data obtained from process analyzers need to be trusted and verified to help the user make an informed decision. Considerations include communications reliability, analyzer status and logic platform.

Integrating control system safety with plant safety By Susan Colwell
Implementing and maintaining safety processes is vital to help prevent and identify safety risks and hazards for industrial automation workers. Ask operators these six safety questions.

CONTROL

Control Talk Column: Achieving the Best APC By Jim Ford and Greg McMillan
Automatic process control was initially developed to respond to unmeasured disturbances. The development of the automatic control valve ushered in the era of modern process control. The first truly automatic control valves were developed to replace manual valves to control flow. The flow control loop has become the foundation of all automatic process control, for several reasons.

Knowledge on Demand By Tim Goecke and Tim Gellner
Tapping into better, faster, more useful process information—for wiser decisions—can be easier than you think. See what insights MAVERICK experts, Goecke and Gellner, provide on the topic.

Open 24/7: Wireless expands availability through innovation, simplification and acceptance By Bruce Billedeaux
Wireless may not get all the attention, but digitalization wouldn’t be as powerful without wireless technologies supporting it 24/7/365 from behind the scenes. Billedeaux shares his expertise on wireless technology in level measurement and monitoring.

Control Design

Machine Design with Maintenance in Mind By David Paul
When it comes to machine maintenance, pay me now, or you will pay me later. Look for Paul’s comments about making best-practice machine-design choices and carefully weighing the tradeoffs between CapEx and OpEx budgeting.

A Better Mouse Trap David Paul
Consider new methods and additions, but keep what’s best to improve machine control. Read Paul’s point of view regarding standard panel designs and more.

A Better Interface By Hayden Serio
The possibilities for using mobile-device apps for HMI control and monitoring of a machine is growing, along with access to more and better data. Look for Serio’s comments regarding mobile computing power in the palm of your hand.

Forbes

What C-Suite Executives Need To Know About Smart Manufacturing By John Clemons
C-suite executives tend to delegate manufacturing strategy to the manufacturing experts and IT strategy to the technology experts. Historically, that was a good strategy. Now, with the emergence of new technologies that collectively comprise what’s known as smart manufacturing or “Industrie 4.0,” it’s time for C-suite executives to reconsider their hands-off approach.

Six Fundamentals To Know Before Creating A Smart Manufacturing Business Strategy By John Clemons
It’s one thing to say that C-suite executives must lead their companies’ smart manufacturing strategies. It’s quite another for them to know what to do and how to do it, especially when they’ve become accustomed to delegating those strategies to their manufacturing and IT people. The first step is to understand how smart manufacturing technologies are transforming manufacturing business strategy. The second is to fashion a vision and a plan to implement a smart manufacturing strategy.

Five Critical Components Of A Successful Smart Manufacturing Strategy By John Clemons
At its core, a smart manufacturing strategy is about creating a more competitive, profitable business by adopting the latest smart technologies. As with all business endeavors, “It’s all about the money,” asserts Mike James, chairman and CTO of ATS International B.V. in the Netherlands. “Make sure the technology and business models deliver an ROI.”

How Smart Manufacturing Strategies Help Meet Increasingly Complex Customer Expectations By John Clemons
The half-life of a successful product or business strategy is shrinking, and the rate of change is accelerating, primarily due to increasingly complex and quickly changing customer demands. Succeeding in this new environment requires nimble, innovative and fast-moving businesses and factories. That means you need to continually change what you’re doing, even if it’s been successful so far. Because what worked in the past may not necessarily work in the future.

Smart Manufacturing Quickens Decision Making By John Clemons
When most C-suite executives think about better, faster decision making, they usually think it’s up to them, the leaders. In traditional organizations, questions go up the chain of command and decisions come down, a painstakingly slow process. Smart manufacturing is challenging that approach, just as it has upended other conventional business strategies and tactics.

Hydrocarbon Processing

It’s Not Double Trouble, It’s Digital Twingenuity By Jake Henn
Much ink has been spilled over the concept known as the “digital twin.” However, very little has been done to implement this technology in the oil and gas industry (especially in the midstream and downstream sectors). The industry still relies heavily on using traditional data analytic tools and techniques while continuing to run on legacy computing power. These tools and legacy systems lack the processing capability needed to decipher and enable the data that is generated by sensors and transmitters. To stay competitive, refiners can leverage the large quantity of historized and sensor-generated data to create and implement an accurate digital twin model.

InTech

Executive Corner: Why Automation Slept By Paul Galeski
Process manufacturing has come a long way since the days of pneumatic and mechanical controls. Over the past several decades, firms have updated their equipment and operations, increasing capacity and improving quality by varying degrees. Typically, however, process plants and facilities have not been early adopters, and are reluctant to embrace state-of-the-art automation technology and methodologies. This slow-to-adopt approach has driven many of them to a critical crossroads: modernize or face inevitable decline.

Why Automation Projects Are Tough to Manage By Lee Swindler
Reflecting on my 30-year career as a project manager, I have come to realize process automation projects have unique challenges, which make them more difficult to execute than other types of projects. Why is that? Based on my experience and many discussions with peers, here are some key reasons.

InTech Plus

Process Safety: The Road to Risk Reduction By Lee Swindler
Process safety management (PSM) can be a confusing topic with many specialized concepts and unique terms. One of the more complex concepts is the subject of risk and how to reduce process risk to an acceptable level.

Oil and Gas Engineering

SCADA in the Oil and Gas Industry By Stephen Milton
As oil & gas refineries upgrade or migrate legacy control systems to 21st century technologies, they face having to address past third-party interface methodologies. Upstream, midstream and downstream end users can rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. As a go-to solution, SCADA is a highly configurable application that streamlines operations. Yet it remains possible for end users to achieve even more, using SCADA and applications considered native to modern distributed control systems (DCSs) to make effective, data-driven decisions that fuel operational efficiencies.

Plant Engineering

Control systems migration: Plan early and collaborate By Lynn Njaa
The time to modernize and optimize your manufacturing facility’s day-to-day operations has come. Change can be hard—but managing that change can be even harder. Every day, you and your team are responsible for managing and executing policies and procedures, production, maintenance, safety and quality, as well as other production-related tasks. Now, add to that workload the challenge of managing the upgrade and migration of the plant’s legacy control systems.

Plant of the Future: Seeking the ‘next level of perfection’ By Paul Galeski
Will technology make manufacturing better in the next five years? Paul Galeski’s insightful views cover the pages, starting with him saying: “Technology in and of itself doesn’t change anything for better or worse. People do. Technology is merely an enabler for improved human performance. As we bring in the next generation of automation workers, they can utilize modern technology to bring new insights and innovations to manufacturing processes.” Read more to find out what MAVERICK’s President and Founder has to say along with other industry leaders.

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Overall Equipment Efficiency By Tim Gellner
Industry experts weigh in on the application and value of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) in pharma. Gellner shares his pearls of wisdom regarding OEE program implementation.

Disrupting the Status Quo of Legacy Systems By Tim Gellner
How embracing modernization will put pharma on the path toward operational quality, efficiency and regulatory compliance.