Mondi Steti a.s. a Steti , Czech Republic, a business unit of the Mondi Group, produces 1,500 tons of pulp and paper daily, consuming more than a ton of logs per day. The facility is located about 25 miles north of Prague.

  No matter how fast, efficient, technologically advanced or well staffed any production process is, nothing matters much unless you acquire reliable operating data, preferably in real time, to understand how to maintain competitive manufacturing.

  The proliferation of digital networks in manufacturing has resulted in a job description change for most, if not all, automation engineers.

  The Web standard for communicating information, the eXtensible Markup Language or XML, is more than eleven years old. Its use in automation is still in infancy, however.

  Expand a single-node system by a couple or more nodes, or change topologies, or connect computers to another server—and “things get complicated,” states Rashesh Mody, vice president of human-machine-interface (HMI) and supervisory-control-and-data-acquisition (SCADA) services for manufacturing software vendor Wonderware (www.wonderware.com), Lake Forest, Calif.

  Current trends in robotics will enable better human-robot interaction, making robots easier and safer to use.

  Mnemonics such as “all people seem to need data processing” or “aliens probably stole the Ninja Dew pop” make it easy to recall the seven layers or levels of the International Organization for Standardization’s (www.iso.ch) Open System Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model—application, presentation, session, transport, network, datalink and physical.

  Calling OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA or UA) from Scottsdale, Ariz.-based OPC Foundation (www.opcfoundation.org) “very scalable,” Jeff Harding identifies two principal features that make it a communication mechanism across various protocols or standards: its ability to model complex things, and the basic set of services it provides.

 ILS Technology Inc. (www.ilstechnology.com), of Boca Raton, Fla., leverages 25 years of experience in device-and-automation-to-enterprise connectivity through its deviceWise platform.

  Data acquisition, or DAQ, brings to mind the recording of test or manufacturing data in real time on a personal computer (PC) or data logger.

  Amy Walker has for years advised clients in eastern North Carolina about using pre employment tests to assess potential staff.

  Try talking seriously about network administration without mentioning security. You can’t, can you?

  Because of the power to analyze numbers for all manner of uses from accounting to engineering, companies have needed to live in spreadsheets. Oftentimes, though, that lifestyle has produced pain and agony when one tries to verify a single point of truth.

  Training of automation technicians, technologists and engineers should encompass mechatronics’ four facets mechanical engineering/technology, electronics, process control and computer science states Keith Campbell, principal of Campbell Management Services, Palmyra, Pa., and former director of automation and integration for The Hershey Co., the Harrisburg, Pa.-based chocolate and snack food manufacturer.

 While Microsoft Corp.’s Visual Studio is an integrated development environment for general Windows and Web-based applications, the “automation studio” focuses on industrial automation applications, explains Donald Mack, senior marketing specialist in the Process Automation Systems group of automation vendor Siemens Energy & Automation Inc. (www.sea.siemens.com), in Spring House, Pa.

 Confused about Ethernet and the transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) stack and/or suite of protocols? That’s not surprising.

  If you’re seeking best-practices standards for designing graphical operator-interface displays, you won’t find them. Edward Tufte’s book “Envisioning Information” has useful information, though, notes Kevin Harris, director of the Honeywell Inc. (www.honeywell.com)-led Abnormal Situation Management Consortium (www.asmconsortium.org), in Phoenix.

   “As Services scale globally within and across enterprises—for example, collaborative commerce—Web Services and AJAX remain the only widely adopted solution.”

 Businesses will still be busy through the coming five to six quarters…the rate of growth will be slower than what we have seen in the previous two years.

 As the International Electrotechnical Commission (www.iec.ch) Technical Committee 65’s Working Group 7 polished its definitions of electronic device descriptions and the languages (EDDLs) to support them, the need arose to define something relating to field-instrument repair technicians’ ability to maintain such instruments, recalls network consultant Dick Caro, principal and founder of CMC Associates (www.cmc.us), Acton, Mass.