Heavy industries (and many lighter ones) are just that—heavy. Their components and facilities must be strong enough to handle the endless volumes of even heavier raw and intermediate materials they process, and withstand the operations required to produce them. And, most must run consistently for decades, even as planned downtime periods for maintenance and repairs get fewer and further between.
Maintaining these epic levels of stability traditionally means bolting down equipment to equally heavy-duty frameworks and infrastructures. However, the push towards digitalization—including recent advances in wireless networking, edge computing, robotics and other technologies—are giving many components and their users greater mobility, freedom and effectiveness than they’ve enjoyed before.
Day 1: Lucky Peak’s tablet PCs implement Phoenix Contact’s implement secure WLAN radios at its hydropower facility. Read more.
Day 2: Cosmo Oil works with Yokogawa to test quadruped robot from Boston Dynamics at refinery in central Japan. Read more.
Day 3: System integrator QDS uses Wi-Fi and 5G to help Mactech develop mobile power station for heat treating pipe welds. Read more.
Day 4: EPC Platinum and Schneider Electric build a robot to coat U.K. aircraft carrier decks. Read more.
Day 5: System integrators Patti Engineering and Interstates experiment with lower-cost edge devices. Read more.
Day 6: System integrator Gray Solutions shows how audits, skills, standards and cybersecurity build combined wireless, mobility and edge computing solutions. Read more.
