Happy Holidays from PMMI Media Group

Our annual holiday music offering for visitors and friends.

Dec 14th, 2017

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For the past several years, PMMI Media Group has created a holiday music greeting for our customers, subscribers and friends. This year, we are featuring Dave Newcorn’s recording of “We Three Kings.” To listen, visit our “Happy Holidays” page.

4 Questions to Ask About Industrial Cybersecurity Software

From regulatory compliance and configuration security to potential downtime impacts, Gabe Authier of Tripwire highlights the major issues to address when evaluating cybersecurity software.

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TSN Plugfest Focuses on Interoperability

Participants in Avnu Alliance’s Time-Sensitive Networking plugfest test their deployments in a collaborative environment.

Matt Rendall, CEO and co-founder of Otto Motors, speaking at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston.

Moving Robots Into the Matrix

Otto Motors uses simulation to mitigate risk when deploying a fleet of autonomous mobile robots.

Fieldbus organizations like the EtherCAT Technology Group acknowledge the value of OPC UA and see it as a complementary standard in industrial control networking. Courtesy: EtherCAT Technology Group

How OPC UA Creates Interoperability and Gives Data Context

This second installment in a four-part series on key industrial network technologies explains why OPC UA continues to be recognized as the global interoperability method of choice for industrial automation technologies.

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The First Cloud-Native Data Historian

GE Digital stakes a claim to the world’s first cloud-native operational data historian with the release of its Proficy Historian for the Cloud on the AWS Marketplace.

Error Detection Automation Simplified: Introducing the In-Sight 2800

Error Detection Automation Simplified: Introducing the In-Sight 2800

See how easily the Cognex In-Sight 2800 can automate error detection. Powered by deep learning, it can solve a wide range of inspection applications quickly and easily — no programming experience required.

Security Alert for Industrial Control Systems

U.S. Government issues warning about new cyberthreats that impact control systems and SCADA devices across industries.

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Managing Network Security on Your Plant Floor

A safe and secure network is paramount to ensuring a company’s ability to thrive in today’s digital age. Simply making the change from an unmanaged switch to a lean managed industrial switch could be the key to saving you from a cyber-attack.

Advantages of a Smart MQTT Broker

Understanding how a smart MQTT broker provides ways to aggregate data streams, keep them consistent, and distribute them securely across a complex network to ensure the success of Internet of Things projects of any size or complexity.

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Answering the Top 7 Questions About Profinet

We get a lot of questions here at PI North America from end users, distributors, system integrators, and device vendors. Here are our answers to the questions we get asked most.

Connecting Cloud-Based Quality Control to the Edge

Intrinsics Imaging’s AI-powered vision system uses edge I/O to integrate cloud analytics into process controls.

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Effective Instrument Commissioning for Seamless Project Startups

Finishing a major automation project on time and on budget depends on putting the best digital tools in the hands of highly skilled people.

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IT-OT Convergence Has Always Been The Path Forward

Long before Industry 4.0 and cloud-connected architectures became possible, innovators championed PC-based technologies for industrial automation.

MESA Foundry Twin: An abstracted framework for a digital twin in a foundry. For more info, visit: awgo.to/1410

Is Continuous Optimization of an Asset Possible?

Learn why detection of sub-optimality is required not only to avoid unexpected failures, but also to achieve superior performance, and how continuous asset optimization can be achieved.

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Eliminating Data Siloes for Better Cybersecurity

ServiceNow is augmenting its Now platform with asset inventory and vulnerability data from Tenable’s Tenable.ot to enable mitigation of operations level cybersecurity threats as part of user workflows.

Why High-Mix, Low-Volume Manufacturers are Adopting Flexible Automation

Growing demands for customization, increasing numbers of SKUs, and ongoing labor issues are leading HMLV manufacturers to adopt more easily configurable automation hardware and software.

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Synthetic Data and Artificial Intelligence Combine to Improve Machine Vision

By creating synthetic data from 3D CAD data, Siemens’ SynthAI helps machine vision systems be more rapidly deployed for applications ranging from quality control to robotic picking and assembly operations.

Technology makes manufacturing more efficient, but also creates vulnerabilities.

Hackers Shift Focus to Packaging and Processing

Pervasive new technology increases entry points for cyber attacks. Discover cybersecurity solutions at PACK EXPO International (Oct. 23-26; McCormick Place, Chicago).

Penn Waste recycling sorting operations. Source: wastetodaymagazine.com

Minimizing Machine Downtime with Bluetooth Gateways and Smart Sensors

Using a combination of Bluetooth gateways from Cassia Networks and smart sensors from Dodge Industrial, Penn Waste provides its maintenance engineers with needed visibility into equipment operations.

What is Defense-in-Depth?

As more IIoT-connected equipment makes its way onto the plant floor, defense-in-depth cybersecurity strategies are supplanting perimeter-based approaches.

More in Home

Honeywell Expands Its Forge Software Capabilities

Through a targeted focus on software-as-a-service, Honeywell Connected Enterprise is expanding its Honeywell Forge technology with the release of Connected Warehouse and updates to its Asset Performance Management software.

Zero-Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Claroty Edge gives end users visibility into their industrial networks to gain a complete inventory of all managed and unmanaged assets

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Beckhoff Showcases Compact Motion Control for Mobile Applications

At Modex 2022, Beckhoff highlighted several motion control products for applications such as automated storage and retrieval systems, autonomous mobile robots, and automated guided vehicles.

Heidenhain CNC controls. Source: Heidenhain

5 Steps to First-Time Right Machining

Heidenhain Corp.’s Gisbert Ledvon explains the connection between first-time right machining and high-mix, low-volume manufacturing of metal parts.

Digital Workflow Tools for Knowledge Transfer Across Operations

J.M. Smucker, Covestro, Pretium use digital workflows for factory, field workers.

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Geek+ Partners with Bosch Rexroth on Intelligent Mobile Robot Systems

Geek+’s MP1000R autonomous mobile robot has been updated with Bosch Rexroth’s Rokit Locator software.

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Intelligent Robotic De-Palletizing System

Designed to address labor shortages in manufacturing and warehouse operations, mixed-case de-palletizing systems, such as those available from Universal Robots and Mujin Corp., can handle complex tasks without the need for advanced programming.

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Proficy Operations Hub Updated

The new version of GE Digital’s Proficy Operations Hub includes an expanded widget library for programming, enhanced visualization capabilities, and improved cloud functionality.

Digital Enterprise Thinking Industry Further

Siemens Transitions to Become a Tech Company

A shift in focus toward delivering all its software as a service—and how that software drives specific hardware capabilities—underlies Siemens new vision of itself as a tech company.

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ABB Showcases Its ASTI Mobile Robotics

At Modex 2022, ABB demonstrated the autonomous mobile robot capabilities of the ASTI Mobile Robotics Group, acquired by ABB in 2021.

Validating Automation Machine Learning Models – The Oracle Problem

Unless commissioning protocols are updated, automation control software may become difficult to perform validation testing on as machine learning and AI become more common.

Robot Predictions for 2022

Activity in the automotive industry, e-commerce, and other sectors will shape the growth of robotics technologies in the coming year.