BEST OF THE BLOG

Digital Factory

By now you’ve seen some news of the “memorandum of understanding to develop a joint solution” (a phrase obviously painfully contrived by lawyers - the arch enemy of sense) between Rockwell Automation and Dassault Systemes (specifically Delmia). So despite the lawyers’ antipathy, we ordinary folks would say that the two companies are partnering to provide a technology to support the coming “digital factory.” Read more

Choose Your Pedia

Saw these two TechCrunch articles in my feed reader this morning regarding Google. Apparently it is seeking to enter the collaborative online knowledge base / encyclopedia market now probably dominated by Wikipedia. Remember the times when Google was known by the mantra "do no evil" (an obvious reference to Microsoft, who was large and Google was small at the time). I haven't heard that for a while. Might be a reason... Read more

Page Views

It seems that Bill Gates was lamenting that the general blogger population (I suppose such as Robert Scoble, TechCrunch, GigaOm, etc.) ignores enterprise software and focuses on consumer electronics. Scoble answered that there weren't enough page views among CIOs compared with the general population of Internet junkies. And those seeking page views need to reach the masses. He got some push back from a few places... Read more

News From ODVA

I chose not to attend the SPS trade fair in Nuremberg, Germany the end of November. Missed the ODVA press conference and announcements. It had three. First, specifications for the integration of Modbus devices into the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) architecture have been published. It provides for a standard translation of a subset of CIP functions into the appropriate Modbus functions. This gives existing Modbus/TCP users a path to CIP networks. The release states the extension requires no change to existing Modbus/TCP or EtherNet/IP target devices in order to take advantage of the connectivity. Also, no changes are required for installed CIP-Modbus gateway devices. Products incorporating this new functionality are anticipated to be on the market in 2008... Read more

Not Your Grandma's Layer Cake

When discussing various industrial Ethernet protocols, spokespeople from Rockwell (and occasionally now Schneider) like to use the phrase about competing protocols, "it corrupts the stack." The best explanation I have received is that "only EtherNet I/P uses unmodified Ethernet." I got a nice explanation from Brian Oulten (I see him often, but didn't grab a card, so I may have misspelled his name, if so, many apologies) at the recent Automation Fair... Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT

Understanding Lean packaging

AstraZeneca discusses the Lean model, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and related purchasing strategies at this year’s Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum. March 12, Philadelphia, PA
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ANNOUNCEMENT

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