By Matt Ruth on February 3rd 2012

 

A chunk of my world today revolves around following up on my kids.  Confirming they do what they are supposed to do or hounding them if they don't do it.  I spend entirely too much time checking and rechecking that they:

 

By Nicholas Imfeld on January 18, 2012.

            I’ve recently been reading a book entitled The High Performance HMI Handbook. Our Director of Engineering requested that I tackle this one and report back. As an integration services company that has developed hundreds of HMI applications of various shapes, sizes, complexity, and industries, we are always on the lookout for new concepts and ideas that we can implement to make our customer’s HMIs better. We want to be continually improving our practices and standards (after all, as a previous post said, our industry is always advancing, and so must our standards). So my mission is to read this book and see what we could learn and apply.

By Dennis Page on January 5, 2012

As more and more companies are recognizing the importance of electrical safety, it is becoming obvious that there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I would like to focus on one particular aspect – designing for safety.

By Roger Pritchett on November 30, 2011

A catch phrase I find myself using over and over again as I run into difficult or stupid situations is “I hate that when it happens.”  Frankie and Willie of SNL fame, use to tell the most ridiculous stories of pain and end it with “I hate that when that happens”.  Heineken extended the use of the phrase in their beer commercials.

By Omer Bin Abdul Aziz, November 9, 2011

If you are a Startrek fan, the term “Holodeck” would sound familiar to you.  It was depicted as an enclosed room in which you could simulate reality. People with arms and limbs (peripherals) and objects could be simulated with exquisite detail.  The space farers would design Holodeck programs, that they could share with others, for training & diagnostic purposes, or for solving crime scenes – or so they let us believe!

By Brian Fenn, October 12, 2011

A number of weeks ago a hurricane, tropical depression and several other rain-inducing events caused widespread flooding in our area. A large number of roads were closed causing a simple fifteen minute commute to take one or even several hours. I was grateful that I worked for a company that both permitted and had the capabilities to facilitate working from home. My little car has little ground clearance and is a good candidate for stalling easily in rain-filled streets. I can also be much more productive just getting up and starting to work as opposed to trying to find a way that is not closed off and fighting all of the other re-routed traffic in the process on the way to the office.

By Frank Burger, on October 5, 2011

Abraham Lincoln said, “Given 6 hours to chop down a tree, I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe”.  From this, we learn that Lincoln was very bad at sharpening axes. Another interpretation is that he was describing the importance of proper preparation to the successful outcome of any task. It sounds both obvious and simple, but out there in the real world, few things are either obvious or simple. There’s another, more modern saying that underscores this: “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over”.

By Martin W. Michael, Smart Manufacturing Editor on March 3, 2011

At a conference last month, I sat in a room with several product managers from different OEM companies.  The speaker was there to talk about the value of cloud computing and why the current trend was continuing to escalate into all markets, including manufacturing.  He was quite convincing.  He addressed the biggest concerns over privacy and security of data and concerns over a loss of control.  He discussed at length the tremendous cost advantages and the ability to rapidly achieve value and reduce project life cycles.  Real time continuous improvement and reduced maintenance management costs were also key elements in his message.  I was convinced, but I was already a believer before he spoke a word.  It’s part of my DNA to be looking outside of what we do today, and I have been absorbing everything I can on this subject for quite a while.  I guess I am always trying to find a better way.   That same DNA gets me in trouble sometimes, for I will sometimes pursue a solution based on innovation and technology before the market and the users are ready for it.   Is that the case now with Cloud Computing in the industrial and manufacturing world?

By Robert Vogel, Aug 23, 2011

In waging “war”, the strategy of “Divide & Conquer” is usually an accurate predictor of victorious results. In your ongoing battle against unscheduled downtime, choose a strategy of “Divide & Distribute” to spread the maintenance tasks among your available workforce.

By Neal Collier, July 5, 2011

A local High School District uses a Career Study Program (Job Shadowing) Program designed to assist students with career planning before graduation. Two of the High School Seniors asked to learn about the exciting world of Automation Integration and a short program was put together where each student will program and document a working Traffic light. The traffic light will be controlled by a ControlLogix PLC (Emulate Mode) with Wonderware InTouch as the Graphical User Interface (GUI).