Just Like Distributed Control, Distributed Safety Is Coming Soon to a Process Plant Near You, Maybe Your Own In the beginning, all control was distributed in the field near each particular process. Much of this control was manual, with islands of pneumatic-based automation. Then came the inaptly named “distributed control system,” which was, in […]
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Follow these step-by-step tips for synchronizing data between your electrical design and control system configuration software. Companies are increasingly moving toward collaborative engineering, and they’re integrating systems and processes to accelerate time-to-market, speed start-up and improve engineering data quality. To this end, a new utility bridges the hardware and software engineering by effectively improving the […]
As mentioned in my previous blogs on the book Control Loop Foundation – Batch and Continuous Processes, the application examples included in Chapter 16 illustrate the various ways single loop and multi-loop control techniques may be used automate plant control. The second workshop exercise in this chapter allows the reader to explore the different features […]
In the wee hours early one morning not too long ago a firewall ceased operating at a major oil company refinery, and while there were no dramatic explosions or oil spills, the end result was five hours of lost production and a cyber incident that caused unplanned downtime. The shutdown was not the result of […]
February U.S. manufacturing technology consumption totaled $329.43 million, according to AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology and AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association. This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTC program, was down 10.9% from January but up 99.3% when compared with the total of $165.31 million reported for […]
The control systems commonly used in the process industry are based on the single-loop and multi-loop techniques described in Control Loop Foundation – Batch and Continuous Processes. Some combination of these techniques is often required to meet product specification and plant throughput targets. The application examples included in Chapter 16 of Control Loop Foundation are […]
What Is the Truth About the Separation of Safety and Process Automation? In a session at this week’s ABB Automation and Power World in Orlando, Luis Duran, ABB’s development manager for safety instrumented systems for the Americas, led a panel of experts in trying to answer the perennial question, “What is the truth about […]
Summary – Senior Project Manager with over thirty years engineering experience with DCS’s (Fisher DeltaV, Honeywell, Moore APACs, Siemens T3000) and PLC’s (Allen Bradley) in multiple industries (utilities, paper, chemical). Experience includes the specification, design, installation, start-up of field instrumentation and control systems (DCS, PLC), the design, implementation and tuning of control loops and Mimic […]
Defense in depth: It’s more than just the technology By Jason Urso The biggest cybersecurity vulnerability could very well be a belief—the belief that a cybersecurity system, even a good one, is guaranteed to stop every threat, every time. This is simply not true. Due to ever-changing cybersecurity threats, a cybersecurity program must be designed […]
Unlike an engineering firm, integration company, or process control vendor, we do not “do projects”. While we may be involved in projects both large and small, Insight’s business model is to provide an individual, not a turnkey solution. We find that our clients know the most efficient methods of getting projects done, both in terms […]