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Mexican Power Utility Uses Radios for Smart Grid Project
The only utility power company in Mexico uses FreeWave wireless data radios for monitoring and control of critical electric power applications.
FreeWave Technologies (www.freewave.com), a Boulder, Colo. manufacturer of reliable, high-performance spread spectrum and licensed radios for critical data transmission, was chosen by Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) (www.cfe.gob.mx) for wireless data radio applications such as power consumption and substation monitoring, as well as control and monitoring of power networks...
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Optimizing Maintenance through Information
Establishing an efficient and effective maintenance team requires sufficient and timely information.
Sensors with increasing intelligence, instrumentation, digital networks and advanced diagnostic algorithms combine to provide the tools necessary to accomplish the task. All of these tools produce large amounts of information that usually get locked away into large database vaults.
Writing on the concept of “Big Data” in the November 2011 issue of Popular Science magazine, Rena Marie Pacella says, “A database isn’t a vault—it’s a garden.” This statement excellently captures modern trends, even in industrial automation applications...
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Building an Innovative Automation Team
In his new book “Growth or Bust: Game-Changing Secrets from a Leading Corporate Strategist,” Mark Faust describes how managers can participate in corporate turnarounds.
Faust is a growth and turnaround consultant, syndicated writer, professional speaker and executive coach to owners and CEOs. Since 1990, he has run Echelon Management International. Faust begins with innovation and describes how companies can start a process toward becoming innovative. Here are the Seven Parts of Building an Innovation Culture that begins the “Echeloned Innovation Process...”
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How to Create and Sustain Successful Continuous Improvement Teams
Manufacturing plant managers and Lean manufacturing experts from Honda America, Irving Oil Refinery and elsewhere share their advice for those serious about continuous improvement. The process is not always easy, they say, but the results include energized, empowered and committed employees who know they are part of helping their companies prosper.
Deming says ‘your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you get.’ My experience so far completely agrees with Deming in this respect,” says Mark Porter, Operator Driven Reliability (ODR) project manager for Irving Oil Refinery in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, referring to quality management pioneer W. Edwards Deming. Because that’s true, Irving Oil Refinery set out to change its systems a little more than a year ago to create a culture of innovation and continuous improvement...
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