Industrial Automation Blog

This is a partial transcript of the Talking Industrial Automation episode that featured an encore presentation of a CSIA MasterClass that was originally published on the CSIA Website called Business Value: GPS for Your Business. The panel was moderated by Bryan Powrozek of Clayton & McKervey. Panelists included Clint Bundy of The Bundy Group, Ben Smith of Clayton & McKervey and Jane Tereba of Capital Valuation Group.

Bryan Powrozek: I am Brian Powrozek with Clayton & ...

The digitization of manufacturing and ongoing industrial evolution towards Industry 4.0 is a trend that simply can’t be ignored and one which, when properly strategized and implemented will allow the organizations who embrace it to establish significant competitive advantage. Smart factories driven by cyber-physical systems monitoring physical processes, processing vast amounts of data, and autonomously acting through decentralized decision-making systems are emerging throughout every ...

Adoption and utilization of automation and robotic technologies continues to proliferate across industries while evolving into use in increasingly complex tasks and processes. In-order-to effectively address these increasingly advanced applications, the implementation of emerging technologies such as Co-bots, Artificial Intelligence, and Autonomous Vehicles is becoming significantly more common. Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV’s) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR’s) are both ...

By Wayne Labs

Many large food and beverage manufacturers have their own engineering staffs, which provide system integration and automation services to their various facilities. However, most medium- and small-sized processors often don’t have these capabilities—and may have just a single plant engineer.

Therefore, for any number of reasons, a food processor may need to look for a system integrator (SI) to help with its automation strategy, whether to update aging and existing ...

By Steve J. Malyszko, P.E. and CEO, Malisko Engineering.

Different clients are at different points of their journey along the road of fully integrated digitization in their manufacturing operations. Some end-users are “getting it” about why digitization on the shop floor up to the carpeted space is vital now and into the future.

What we see being more of a challenge is grasping the how. How does a manufacturer get to a point where they feel confident that they’re heading in ...

Welcome to the fourth installment in Plant Services’ quarterly feature, Ask An Integrator, developed together with the Control System Integrators Association and its member organizations. In this installment, the panel checks their crystal ball to find out what next year holds in two key industrial areas.

For this month, we asked the integrator community to predict how current issues of the day would play out next year. System integrators have been crucial to assisting plants ...

By Matteo D'Incecco

Fandis is one of the most important manufacturer of thermal management devices for control panels.
 
Would you like to know more about them? Fandis North America Corp. invites you to join the first Fandis digital event, organized  by FANDIS SPA in Italy.

On November 18, Fandis will virtually open its doors for a streaming event. You will be able  to visit different plants as production and R&D watching their machineries and technology. The event ...

By Aaron Heinrich

For a host of reasons, many companies—including those making or modifying hydraulic components, controls and equipment—strongly resist asking for help when it comes to product development and implementation. Most of their reasons may revolve around ego and short-term cost considerations, but some companies just insist on doing everything in-house. From a business perspective, however, “doing everything” entails undertaking tasks outside a ...

For this column, Plant Services asked integrators:

“What do you see for system integration looking ahead to 2021? Share some of the challenges in your particular industry this past year, and the solutions and services that are helping your team and end users manage during this time. What should end-users keep in mind if they are considering an upgrade or new solution in the year ahead? And how should they be adapting?

Karen Griffin, P.E., VP
Heath Stephens, P.E., engineering leader
Todd ...

By Mark T. Hoske

A four-year financial and operational benchmark study of 26 control system integrators says “the system integration business can be a good investment,” according to the report analysis – “Leading Pack vs. the Rest – A Data Driven Story.” The 16-page white paper from the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA), underwritten by Rockwell Automation, discusses success factors that separates 16 system integrators leading the pack from the ...

This article originally appeared in Plant Services.

In this installment of Ask an Integrator, if you want to collect the right data, then involve integrators during the design and/or retrofit process.

Welcome to the next installment in our quarterly feature, Ask An Integrator, developed together with the Control System Integrators Association and its member organizations.

The idea behind Ask An Integrator is simple: increasing levels of plant automation and the growth of online / ...

On December 10,2020, Talking Industrial Automation Host Lisa Richter talked with Tim Finerty, a shareholder with Clayton and McKervey to find out what pitfalls and opportunities business owners should know about to ensure maximum cash flow and minimum taxes before the end of the year.

Here is a transcript of the episode. You can listen to the episode here.

Lisa Richter: Welcome to Talking Industrial Automation, a podcast where you get to know the people who make modern industrial ...

By Jim Ford

As a systems integrator we are seeing a significant shift in our customers’ understanding of machine safety and the need to provide safe systems. We get a lot of questions about safety. We see more customers adding functional safety into their control’s specifications.

In the past many customers would perceive functional safety and risk assessments as just added costs to a project (expensive!). There was a time when this was probably accurate. Risk assessments can be ...

By Wayne Labs

System integrators and machine builders are great sources when you want to learn how to protect control networks from viruses and ransomware. After all, they design and build machines that must operate continuously without incident, supplying operational data to those who need it—and keeping their equipment and the rest of the plant safe from cybersecurity intrusions—malware, viruses and ransomware.

One such machine builder that has been making cyber-secure, safe ...

By Jim Montague

Because they're often shoulder-to-shoulder with plant-floor personnel, system integrators have some definite views and advice on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting process applications and how mobile technologies can help.

McEnery Automation

"Tablet PCs have been available for a number of years, and are very practical because users can easily take them into their process settings. Some examples of these applications include classified areas, if they're ...

The retail surge of March saw a rise of 8.5% in retail trade according to the ABS, the strongest rise since it began tracking retail trade. Whilst the panic buying saw empty shelves in supermarkets across Australia, what often goes unseen are the Australian manufacturers behind the scenes struggling to fill this unprecedented demand.

“Determining appropriate inventory levels is one of the most important and most challenging tasks faced by supply chain managers,” says Levi Martins, ...

The following is a partial transcript for episode 44 of the Talking Industrial Automation podcast with Cullen Raichart, founder and CEO of GreenBroz Inc., a pioneer in automated marijuana harvesting solutions based in Las Vegas. It was recorded June 10, 2020, by show host Lisa Richter.

Lisa Richter: Talk about your background and your journey to where you are today.

Cullen Raichart: I’ve had about a million jobs throughout my life. But as an adult, I had a very successful career doing ...

Machine Design and the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA) have partnered to feature the association’s popular CSIA Exchange portal on Machine Design’s home web page.

The CSIA Exchange allows end-users to find potential system integrators and suppliers through a robust search engine. Manufacturers can search based on location, industries served, automation specialties, product lines, certifications, and other categories. More than 2,500 integrators -- including CSIA ...

By Doug Fagaly and Lee Schulte

“Safety isn’t that important to us,” said no company ever. We all know that safety is important, and the cost of a recordable incident is expensive in more ways than one. Yet we continue to see reports of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) fining companies for violations, some in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

Fatal work injuries actually increased in 2018 by two percent from 2017, and incidents ...

By Michelle Jacobson

Testing and validating medical devices are the final steps before delivery to a customer. Therefore, it’s critical to uphold the highest quality at this point in production. Companies that have automated some testing may still rely on manual processes because they don’t leverage all of automation’s benefits. To ensure a full understanding of the benefits of automation, ask the right questions and evaluate each type of system to determine which will be ...