Most Recent

• Looking for practical alternatives to fossil fuels

  By Paul Studebaker

  Gasoline has been on my mind a lot lately, and it’s not just the vapors from diagnosing and repairing the reason why my car started running out of it while the gauge still read a quarter tank. Well, maybe driving around with a full can of premium sloshing in the trunk contributed to a certain…

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• OPAF expands membership, releases O-PAS Version 1.0

  By Jim Montague

  Every dream house needs a solid foundation. In the case of the Open Process Automation Forum's (OPAF) quest for interoperable, plug-and-play networking and process controls, this means defining common requirements, securing participating members, gaining consensus, and testing to achieve compliance…

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• Digital twin's missing piece: Real-time location

  While plants and factories have long used deterministic communication networks to gather sensor data and close the loop on manufacturing processes, the real-time location of assets, tools, people and in-process inventory is often uncertain.Indeed, as production process themselves have become…

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• Modern data historians provide for optimization, savings

  By Jim Montague

  Shed a few pounds. Jettison some physical constraints. Both allow greater speed and freedom of movement, and this is just as true for process control components as it is for the people and processes that rely on them.In the case of process historians and other data storage devices, as they've…

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• Two-wire power supply alternatives

  By John Rezabek

  The wirelessHART gathering point would be bringing in more than 50 wireless temperature sensors along with other assorted measurements, which would be displayed on the host DCS using Modbus. The gathering point, or WiHART gateway, could also be connected to the asset management system using…

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• How to get legacy machines IoT ready

  There's gold in legacy devices—if you can reach it. Long-serving equipment, machines and systems may be the backbone of industrial manufacturing, but many if not most were built and installed in the years before today's on-board microprocessors and Ethernet or wireless network connections were…

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