WIRELESS WORLD REVIEW

When Will Wireless Take Off?

When I laid out the plan for this series of special reports on wireless technologies in manufacturing last summer, I anticipated that there would be many successful applications that we could share, along with tips for success from the pioneers.

Turns out my crystal ball was a little cloudy. When Contributing Editor Dave Gehman went out in search of wireless sensor network users, no one wanted to talk. A few marketing managers at vendor companies were willing to discuss projects in progress, but only if we only quoted them, and not the customer. In fact, customers refused to participate.

In some cases, end-users feel that they are gaining a significant competitive advantage. They fear that discussing their successes will excite their competitors about the technology and they'll lose their advantage. There are two problems with that idea. First, there is the first-mover advantage... Read more

Wireless in the Real-World - Using wireless sensor technologies in process automation is finally getting out of the labs and into the plants. There remains a reluctance to publicly come out of the closet about using it.

The pull of wireless technologies in manufacturing monitoring and control is strong. You can reach equipment whose motion or remoteness makes hard wiring impractical. You can integrate systems in which physical layouts, overstuffed cable trays or expensive trenching mean that wired alternatives add up to more expense than going to the airwaves. In general, you can add devices faster than is possible with wires, at least if your situation demands new wires.

That said, attaching names to specifics turns out to be hard—at the moment. Few want to put their names to applications. To be fair, the situation is influenced by the fact that wireless control and monitoring offers ways to do things that have not been done before, and some are concerned that speaking up might lose them competitive advantage. Plus, while a good many installations are relatively cut-and-dried, a significant number are literally moving into new territory, at least for the company who is being asked to talk about it. Until the bits and pieces of common experience coalesce into a more or less public body of knowledge, people have a right to be a tad uncertain about the glare of publicity.... Read more

Past Articles from Wireless World Review, from Jan. 2008 - Wireless Links Railcars into Croda's Sensor Network

Wireless instrumentation proved to be the best way to monitor chemicals in remote rail cars. The nature of many pharmaceutical, home care and personal care intermediates is that they are chemically active. For many years, Croda Inc.’s Mill Hall, Pa., facility faced a worrisome possibility: liquids arriving in rail tank cars were capable of reacting with residue from previous contents. Should contamination be present, any exothermic reaction would be signaled by temperature rises. Temperature rises are easily monitored with sensors, but the cars could be positioned anywhere along a 1,400 foot rail stub, and they could be moved at any time, so maintaining a continuous view on a car’s internal temperatures was problematic.

“We simply could not wire to the cars,” says Croda Instrument and Electrical Designer Denny Fetter. “You can’t make slip rings that long, and you can’t run wires across an active yard. As a result, we had to send a guy regularly around to the cars with a temperature probe and a clipboard, and hope that the instrument stayed on calibration, and that the sampling methodology was followed - and that the temperatures were recorded accurately.” Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT

Packaging Automation Forum 2008

MES implementation that reaches into packaging — Learn how an MES application delivers impressive benefits to the packaging operations of a startup innovative medical device manufacturer, at Packaging Automation Forum on May 20. Learn more.