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News Release from: Industrial Automation INSIDER | Subject: December issue
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 07 December 2006
Industrial Automation Insider December
issue
Summaries of the main stories in this month's Insider are presented below: further information is presented on the website, and in the Insider Podcast, downloadable from the website
Summaries of the main stories in this month's Insider are as follows: further information is presented in the Insider Podcast and on the website * There were no prizes for guessing what the press had come to hear about at Honeywell's EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) User Group or HUG Conference in Seville, Spain in mid November
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 8 Aug 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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From wireless boloney to fibre-optics
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Sure, during the first morning's general sessions they showed polite interest in EMEA vp and general manager Paul Orzeske's review of Honeywell's current position on his patch and in senior technology consultant Jean-Marie Alliet's typically breathless and all embracing technology update.
However, it was the press wireless roundtable that followed, with contributions from ARC's Harry Forbes, 3e Technologies International vp John Jacobs - he's providing Honeywell with the means to overcome potential users' concerns over security - and Honeywell ACS Chief Technology Officer Dan Sheflin, that promised what the hacks had needed to convince their editors and publishers that four days in the Andalucian sunshine were not just desirable but essential.
"Battery life is the elephant in the room," said Sheflin, as Honeywell takes powered approach to wireless mesh.
Further reading
Honeywell acquires Enraf - an 'Insider' report
The July issue of 'Insider' reports that Honeywell is in acquisition mode, "looking for portfolio expansion" after the agreed acquisition of Enraf, the oil and gas terminal automation system suppliers
ICS Triplex teases the competitors
The August issue of Insider from Andrew Bond has commentary on the latest version of the NI LabVIEW, a viewpoint on the latest MTL acquisition and notes how ICS Triplex is teasing their competitors
October INSIDER for further industry insights
Common sense in the wireless wars: Emerson steals the HPS clothes: ABB leads in the DCS stakes: Gensym is acquired, and Invensys gets moving with Cimnet - all are reported in this month's Insider
To read the full story of the Honeywell attitude to wireless sensor technology, take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* Hackers target US water utilities' SCADA systems.
Recent months have seen an upsurge in attempts to hack industrial control systems in the US, cyber security guru Eric Byres told a general session of Honeywell's European User Conference in Seville in mid November.
Best documented of the incidents was that at a Harrisburg, PA water treatment facility where a foreign-based hacker gained access to an employee's laptop over the Internet and then, using the employee's remote access as the point of entry, installed malware and spyware on the plant SCADA system.
The incident has been investigated by the FBI which has apparently reached the conclusion that the attacker was not targeting the plant itself but intended to use the system to distribute e-mails.
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* Is Wonderware's new Platform InFusion in drag? Wonderware has unveiled the latest stage in the evolution of its product offering from a loosely associated portfolio of stand-alone products towards a genuinely integrated spectrum of capabilities drawing on a common set of application software services.
Built on ArchestrA, the 'Wonderware System Platform' might more accurately be described as InFusion for the discrete manufacturing environment and is in effect what many people thought ArchestrA was in the first place.
It's designed to provide users with a common strategic platform for all of their networked supervisory HMI, SCADA, production management and performance management solutions.
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* Invensys now "a normal well financed company".
Invensys reported a 41% increase in operating profit for the second quarter, up from GBP45m in the same period of 2005/06 to GBP61m on revenues from continuing operations up 7% from GBP604m to GBP633.
Net profit was GBP165m, which included a GBP120m gain on the sale of Invensys Building Systems (IBS), compared with GBP39m in the same period last year, and net debt at September 30th last was GBP291m, down from GBP730m on June 30th as result of the recent rights issue and the IBS disposal.
As a result newly appointed CFO Steve Hare was able to claim that Invensys now "looks more like a normal well financed company rather than a distressed company".
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* ABB's new Dow inspired features target downtime.
ABB has announced a new release of Industrial IT Extended Automation System 800xA, incorporating new features developedas a result of its ongoing partnership with Dow Chemical with the aim of eliminating unnecessary downtime.
ARC estimates that more than US$20bn is lost to unscheduled downtime in the process industries, equivalent to almost 5% of total production.
Of that some 78% is reckoned to be readily preventable and as much as 40% can be attributed to human and primarily operator error.
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* Emerson builds on close relationships.
Emerson has formalized its already close relationship with Intergraph by joining the latter's SmartPlant Alliance Programme.
The two companies will collaborate to enhance bi-directional integration between PlantWeb and Intergraph's SmartPlant Enterprise products, starting with integration of DeltaV with SmartPlant Instrumentation.
Bi-directional data exchange is expected to reduce time and increase accuracy when configuring and documenting PlantWeb projects.
The integrated software will also form the engineering information basis needed to support key activities during the operation and maintenance of process plants.
Emerson vice president of marketing for process systems Duncan Schleiss described Intergraph's SmartPlant Enterprise strategy as "clearly one of the primary components in the broad industry trend toward interoperability".
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* Siemens adds redundancy to Profibus PA.
Siemens recent technology exchange agreement with Emerson covering their respective expertise in Profibus DP and Foundation fieldbus appeared specifically to exclude Profibus PA.
Emerson implied that they weren't interested in PA while Seimens went out of its way to assure the Profibus community that it would continue to support it.
That seems be confirmed with the news that Siemens has developed a DP/PA coupler which supports redundancy, together with an Active Field Distributor (AFD) for creating high-availability ring topologies.
As a result it is now possible to configure a scalable, redundant solution from the automation system to the PA field unit and hence provide fully redundant Profibus PA based fieldbus communications.
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* DuPont selects Rockwell to bridge DCS-PLC overlap.
Rockwell Automation has been selected by DuPont as a 'Global Alliance Supplier' of PLC discrete and process systems.
The two companies have enjoyed an alliance relationship covering PLC-based control systems for some 15 years but this has now been extended to take advantage of Rockwell's process system capability in applications where the functionality of DCS and PLC technology overlaps.
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
* More "stuff" in the MES space.
Hitherto David Brearley hadn't taken too much notice of S95 - or ISA 95 as we should get used to calling it.
One day in Warwick was sufficient to convince him that he - and the rest of us - should start doing so.
The search for clarity reached the Warwick University campus late last month when the IET - think IEE merged with IIE - hosted a one day seminar entitled "Enterprise Integration of Control Systems - Introducing SP95 and its Advantages in Business and Manufacturing" and many and diverse speakers bravely attempted to explain the ISA 95 "stuff".
To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation Insider.
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