Blending Plant Operations with Enterprise Management

The war between plant operations and IT is over. Here's a look at the major trends in information technology that are having a direct and growing impact on plant operations.

Golf club and golf ball manufacturer Callaway Golf Co., in Carlsbad, Calif., wanted to develop the flexibility to introduce seven to eight new products annually. This meant tight coordination between design teams, marketing and plant engineering. This also meant sharing information with partners in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. The teams needed to share large files of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software.

To ensure that programs could be exchanged effectively, the company adopted Teamcenter Community Collaboration, a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution from Siemens PLM Software, a Plano, Texas-based unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division. The content management tools in the PLM solution, combined with Microsoft SharePoint collaboration tools, let Callaway control changes made to product content by providing document and version histories and e-mail alerts... Read more

Biofuels Thrive with Automation

Global politics and economic expansion in developing countries have shot petrochemical prices into orbit. The political and economic pressures are forcing governments and consumers to take a greater interest in alternative energy sources such as biofuels.

Adding to that momentum is the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that President Bush signed into law just before Christmas. Although the act falls short of the President's original proposal to Congress to reduce oil consumption by 20 percent over 10 years, it does set aggressive targets. The renewal fuel standard set by the law, for example, will require fuel producers to use at least 36 billion gallons of biofuels in their products by 2022... Read more

Fieldbus Reigns in Process Control

After nabbing the savings from easier installation, plant managers are beginning to use fieldbus for asset management.

Plant managers at the water plant in DeKalb Country, Ga., learned about the benefits of fieldbus networks quickly when they installed Profibus in their new water plant. They were so pleased with the results, they retrofitted two existing wastewater plants with the fieldbus. “It makes your life easier,” says Merat Zarreii, F&T Division manager at the DeKalb County Department of Watershed Management in Stone Mountain, Ga. “With fieldbus, I can interrogate the device from my office and get a flag if it needs maintenance or replacement.” Read more

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