Real-World Innovations

Jan. 26, 2012
One of our favorite parts of conducting the annual Automation World Innovation Survey is to get a glimpse into what readers think are the most innovative automation technologies they’ve seen in the past year. Here are some of the write-in responses.
  • A standardized work in progress system that ensures all products achieved the correct curing for RTV (room temperature vulcanizing application) was the most innovative technology Terry Annas of Delta-Q Technologies (Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada) saw in the past year. Annas says the system, which has been implemented at Delta-Q, does its work in a multi-tier system used to move product between stations.
     
  • For Paul Del Net of Rolmaster Conveyors (Cambridge, Ontario, Canada), a digital markup application for managing revisions of product and system drawings was his innovative highlight of the past year.
     
  • Also on the software side, Eric Rice of Applied Motion Products (Watsonville, Calif.) cited an adaptive servo loop tuning application as his pick for recently introduced automation technology innovation.
     
  • A turnkey assembly operation system was not only the most innovative thing Peter Boyle of Zapco International (Manteca, Calif.) saw recently, it’s also likely to be his next project. Boyle says he is in the process of writing a budget to implement the system.
     
  • A foam gripper made Nick Wisniewski’s list of most innovative automation technologies. He is with World Class Plastics (Russells Point, Ohio). “We were able to take parts out of a mold with our robots using the foam gripper where other vacuum cups could not get a seal on the high ribbed parts we have,” he said.
     
  • Capitalizing on innovation, as Annas, Boyle and Wisniewski have done, was a fairly common theme across responses to this question. Another example of this was provided by Haifa Almarzooq of the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Awali, Bahrain), who is in the process of implementing a high-throughput wireless data infrastructure that caught the company’s attention as an innovative technology worthy of implementation.

Click here to read the full results of Automation World's annual subscriber survey.

Sponsored Recommendations

Why should American-Made Products be a top priority?

Within this white paper, Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar, founder of AVG Advanced Technologies, stresses the importance of prioritizing American-made products to safeguard the country'...

How to Improve Production Accountability in Manufacturing

David Greenfield, Automation World's Editor-in-Chief, and Shalli Kumar, founder of EZAutomation, discuss the idea of production monitors: a preprogrammed PLC/LED display that ...

HALT/HASS: The Ultimate Test for Reliability

Discover how companies like EZAutomation push the limits of reliability with HALT/HASS testing, originally designed to mimic the extreme conditions of space shuttle launches. ...

Your Next Production Monitor Is Only a Few Clicks Away

Shop for your very own EZ Production Monitor. It's designed for non-technical staff, so there's no programming required! It combines pre-coded firmware, real-time data, and WiFi...