Sensors, Sensors, Sensors

AutomationDirect’s sensor line includes miniature rectangular ultrasonic and diffuse photoelectrics with background suppression. Shop now.

Nov 2nd, 2007

AutomationDirect has the proximity sensors, photoelectric sensors and limit switches you need to sense the presence of objects in a variety of applications. Our high-quality line of proximity and limit switches come from high-tech European manufacturers with years of experience developing and supplying reliable sensors.

With more than 1,000 disks on each sheet, disk picking by hand was extremely time-consuming.

Delta Robot Eases Encoder Disk Production

US Digital operators can focus on more important tasks while a new robotic workstation handles disk-picking duty for the company’s new optical kit encoder.

Dr. Ananth Seshan, member, International Board of Directors, MESA International

Digital Transformation for Small and Medium Manufacturers

Small and medium manufacturers have largely been hesitant to make the transition to a smart manufacturing system due to concerns over the cost and time investment. However, those hesitations may not actually be true when the implementation is done right.

Larry White, executive director, Resource Consumption Accounting Institute

Effective Manufacturing Analytics Need Finance and IT

As digital manufacturing continues to expand, and the associated advanced analytics capabilities, organizations need to align information technology, finance, and manufacturing resources to ensure that the business is successful.

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Smart Glasses for Remote Assistance at Schneider Electric Batam Factory

A look at how workers at Schneider Electric's Batam, Indonesia, factory use Smart Glasses Remote Assistance to connect with third-party OEMs for help with equipment troubleshooting, maintenance, and repair.

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How Automation Advances Affect OEE

Overall Equipment Effectiveness is a long-used equation to determine the effectiveness of production machines. But as automation technologies—and their associated analytic capabilities—rapidly advance, what role does OEE serve as industry digitizes?

Next-Generation Andon

The ‘Christmas-tree’ stack lights of yore are all grown up. Thanks to the rise of smart communication technologies, today’s Andon systems are IIoT- and intelligent-messaging-enabled indicators of real-time shop-floor KPI performance.

Brian Reynolds, senior director of engineering at Honeywell Process Solutions demonstrates how Honeywell's Experion PKS controller backup mesh works.

Changing the Controller Redundancy Paradigm

Honeywell highlights how its Experion PKS HIVE products are designed to change industry’s approach to controller redundancy by creating a mesh of controllers in which backup can be provided by any available controller’s compute power.

Daren Dielman, Director of Operations, Interstates

The Value of a Peer Group

Coming into any industry without much background knowledge or experience can be difficult. A peer group can help ease the transition through idea sharing and general conversations of the specific industry by peers with a deeper knowledge base.

The Road to 5G Starts Now

Proponents make the case for 4.9G wireless technology as a stepping stone to 5G to empower new Industry 4.0 applications, from cobots to augmented reality-enabled predictive maintenance.

Technology Matters: Automated Quality, Valves, Software as a Service

In this episode we look at how quality inspections are evolving in light of new automation technologies, how CIP valves helped reduce downtime and waste for Noosa Yoghurt, and how the rise of software as a service is changing industrial software.

Delivering IIoT Data Across the Enterprise

How the Sparkplug Working Group is defining data transmitted using MQTT for use by any system, anywhere.

Industrial Ethernet cable from Molex.

Molex Joins Single Pair Ethernet Industrial Partner Network

To help advance its Industry 4.0 technologies, Molex joins other technology suppliers in supporting the adoption of an Ethernet technology that reduces wiring requirements and enables miniaturization.

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Conducting Virtual FATs: Best Practices

Brand-new guidance from PMMI's OpX Leadership Network addresses the critical need for virtual factory acceptance testing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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How Aveva Insights is Used in Schneider Electric's Batam Factory

Learn how Aveva Insights software is used to monitor machine operating parameters and send alerts if operating parameters are not within set levels. Also see how machines are retrofitted for IIoT with plug-and-play sensors and edge computing technology.

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Packaging Robotics Playbook

This new playbook from Packaging World showcases the trends, case studies, and how-to tips to help you make the best possible robot purchasing and application decisions for your operation.

Luigi De Bernardini, CEO at Autoware, and president Autoware Digital,

Operations & Supply Chains After COVID-19

How supply chain operations and processes will need to change to have the best chance of success after the coronavirus, and where system integrators can play a role in the transition.

Enterprise Connectivity and Home Version Announced for Ignition

The Ignition software platform from Inductive Automation can now connect more easily to SAP ERP systems; also a personal home version of the software is available for the maker community.

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Application Kits for Cobots

Expanding its UR+ platform, Universal Robots adds software and hardware kits for collaborative robot applications.

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Digitization and Adaptation to a Changing World

The Aveva World digital conference focused on the factors accelerating industry’s digital transformation and how Aveva is not only supplying the technologies to support this, but using them to transform the way they do business themselves.

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BMW Outfits Robots with Artificial Intelligence

To help produce its custom-configured cars more rapidly, BMW used Nvidia’s Isaac robotics platform to add advanced computing and visualization to its factory logistics robots.

More in Home

Day one of go live with the upgraded ERP system at Avery’s manufacturing site in Northampton, UK.

ERP Upgrade Enables Direct-to-Consumer Model for Avery

QAD’s latest cloud-based enterprise resource planning system has helped Avery better integrate its operations to provide the flexibility needed to depart from its traditional big box pallet model.

Emerson Adds Augmented Reality for Asset Management

This summer’s update to Plantweb Optics will include augmented reality capabilities to help users locate troublesome assets and correct issues with the aid of experts via real-time collaboration.

Georgia Pacific Facility

Georgia-Pacific’s Approach to IT/OT Convergence

Like many industrial organizations, Georgia-Pacific was struggling with the loss of operating expertise created by a retiring workforce. Coordinating the company’s IT and OT departments is helping to solve the issue and improve the way the company operate

Siemens Teamcenter X (1)

Closing the Loop Between CAD, PLM, Digital Twins, and the Cloud

Siemens Digital Industries Software adds to its Xcelerator portfolio to enhance design, engineering, and manufacturing software, and partners with IBM on service lifecycle management.

Paula Hollywood, senior analyst, ARC Advisory Group

The Road to Reducing Unplanned Events

Reducing unplanned events is high on the priority list of many industrial facilities. However, it is possible to leverage technology and talent to optimize an organization to reducing these events.

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Doosan Bobcat Moves from Paper-Based to Digital Production

Implementation of FactoryTalk InnovationSuite is helping Doosan Bobcat create a five-year technology advancement program to take its operations digital and enable data-driven decision-making at all levels.

Advanced polymers, synthetic rubber, fertilizers, metallocene plastomers, polyethelenes, and engineering thermoplastics are among the products made at the Chemelot campus.

By Seeing Patterns, Analytics Software Models Improve Process Control

Translating raw data into usable information has been a difficult task for industrial companies. Using TrendMiner, a self-service industrial data analytics software, Sitech was able to overcome this problem.

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Technology Matters: Wearable Sensors, Vision Systems, Industrial Networking

In this episode we look at wearable sensor technologies for social distancing, using vision systems to inspect liquids and solids, and the rise of publish/subscribe communication protocols in industrial networking.

Noosa Production2

Noosa Yoghurt Cuts Downtime, Product Loss With Valve Upgrade

The TrueClean CIP’able air blow check valve from Central States Industrial enabled the yogurt maker to save hours of downtime and many pounds of product every week, with an expected savings of $350,000 a year.

Is The Digital Transformation Changing Industry’s Approach to Quality?

An update to the Automation World survey on the use of automation for quality inspections detects some surprising changes in the era of digitalization. Quality may be becoming associated more with process feedback than classical inspection technologies.

Steve J. Malyszko, P.E., CEO, Malisko Engineering

COVID-19 Spawns New Opportunities for Increasing Efficiencies

Though the coronavirus has put a lot of projects on hold, virtual conferencing, screen sharing, and remote access have changed the way system integrators are interacting and working with clients.

Does OEE Have a Role in the Digital Transformation?

In this episode, we connect with Sam Russem of Grantek to get a better understanding of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) metrics, how they're applied, and the impact on the digital transformation of industry.