From Reuters By Liz Hampton and Ethan Lou | HOUSTON/NEW YORK All it took was a pair of bolt cutters and the elbow grease of a few climate activists to carry out an audacious act of sabotage on North America’s massive oil and gas pipeline system. For an industry increasingly reliant on gadgets such as […]
Systems
Solvay Green River is developing a 20-year vision for the future of its process control system assets. Kevin Kelley learned the value of control system lifecycle management the hard way. Following three losses of control system power in 2012, the process control foreman at Solvay Chemical’s Green River soda ash production facility in southwestern Wyoming […]
After experiencing its worst year in 2015 since the great recession in 2008, the market for distributed control systems (DCS) is expected to drop again for 2016 before slowly bouncing back in the following years, according to a new study by ARC Advisory Group. The five-year market analysis, “DCS Global Market Research,” presents forecasts for […]
From Control Global Submitted by Joe Weiss on Thu, 09/15/2016 – 00:39 Protective relays are critical to the operation of the electric grid and the protection of large electric equipment in many industries including electric, nuclear, manufacturing, etc. Protective relays were originally electro-mechanical switches but have progressed to complex networked digital devices with enormous […]
Protective relays are used to protect electric equipment such as motors and generators from electric faults. As an analogy, they are the circuit breakers in your house. Digital protective relays provide a higher level of reliability, more functionality, and the ability to provide direct integration into multiple devices including SCADA compared to the older mechanical […]
Sometimes executives view automation as a black hole where money goes in, but no benefits ever come out. In the third in a four-part series on increasing the return on automation investments, we explore how to justify the investment to win over their support. The U.S. economy continues to grow despite challenges within certain industry […]
DuPont’s global alarm management leader, Nick Sands, walks Stan and Greg through the elements of ANSI/ISA-18.2-2016, “Management of Alarm Systems for the Process Industry.” By Greg McMillan and Stan Weiner Stan: I remember the alarm panels in the good old days of analog controllers. You had to be selective as to the type and number […]
Improved training methodologies and technology itself can narrow the skills gap, attract younger workers. The process industries face a demographic workforce gulf in part of our own making. “And we have only two levers available to address it,” said Vimal Kapur, president of Honeywell Process Solutions, in this morning’s Honeywell Users Group Americas keynote session […]
SMX removable media scanner, deep packet inspection among latest Honeywell cyber security enhancements. When it comes to cybersecurity, there’s no set it and forget it. Today’s malicious probes, intrusions and attacks don’t just multiply, but constantly shift and evolve. This means cyber security solutions must also continuously update their awareness, coverage and responses to […]
The Process Instrumentation and Automation (PI&A) market in the United States did experience growth in 2015, however that growth was minimal. At $11.6 billion, the increase was 0.3 percent above the 2014 level of $11.1 billion, according to the latest Annual Market Forecast from the Measurement, Control & Automation Association (MCAA). Lack of growth was […]