Industrial Manufacturing News

Control's October edition is packed full of knowledge any end user of process automation equipment, systems and software can use.

The cover story, "Face Time" takes a look at collaborative engineering tools, and whether end users will actually use them. In the software and information systems feature, Control's staff looks at "Control Systems and IT Integration, and determines that the plant floor and the IT department can actually play well in the sandbox together. In the analytical instrumentation feature, Jacobs Engineering's Gary Nichols talks about "Accurately Scoping Process Analyzer Projects" and shows the relationship between lifetime cost and the attention to detail in planning the project. Also in the "analytical instrumentation" section, two engineers from JEA in Jacksonville, FL, show how to save $170,000 a year in a water treatment and distribution system using a rules-based optimizer. And finally, in the "primary process measurements" department, flow instrumentation guru David W. Spitzer discusses new developments in flow measurement in water and wastewater applications.

In the Departments, Control's Editor in Chief, Walt Boyes, talks about ISA, the International Society for Measurement and Control, and its former function as a huge user group. He suggests that if ISA wants to earn back its place in the heart of end users of process automation, they'll have to spend the kind of money that Emerson Exchange, the Honeywell User Group, ABB Automation World, and Rockwell Automation's Automation Fair spend each year producing user group meetings. Will ISA step up or not?

John Rezabek, Control's fieldbus and networking editor, talks about the huge benefits of Foundation Fieldbus diagnostics in his "On the Bus" column, entitled, "Data Validation: Jewel in the Fieldbus Crown?"

In the Resources Department, Control's staff provides a detailed set of process analyzer technology resources for PAT and other process systems, including how-to guides, catalogs and courses to update end users' process analyzer data banks.

Noted futurist, Jeffrey Harrow, author of the Harrow Report, writes in his "Other Voices" column "Unintended Consequences: It's the Law" about potential information threats from RFID that process automation and manufacturing technologists need to be concerned about.

Senior Technical Editor Dan Hebert talks about Emerson Process Management's embedded Advanced Process Control software offering, and how embedded APC should work better than the add-on kind.

Process automation gurus Bela Liptak, Cullen Langford, and Harold Wade answer a tricky Ask The Experts question about multiplexing thermocouples to retrieve jacket temperatures.

Rounding out the field, Control's staff brings end users a roundup of DAQ (data acquisition) hardware and software, a whole raft of new product offerings, and two new product exclusives: a new wastewater flow monitoring system from Eastech, and a new powerline Ethernet networking product from Aboundi.

Control's "ControlTalk" guys, Greg McMillan and Stan Weiner, talk about model predictive control, serve up a novel way to analyze distillates, and provide the "Top Ten Signs You Have a Dysfunctional MPC Team."

For the "Windup" former Control editor and Putman Media VP of Content, Keith Larson talks about the best practices gap in enterprise integration, manufacturing optimization, manufacturing execution systems, and real time enterprise control strategies. "The gap is poised to widen," Larson says.

The October edition can be read on the web at http://www.linkpath.com/data/flash/CONTROL/9000000363/index.html in Flash, HTML and PDF formats. The PDF format is unencrypted and can be downloaded for later reading. The HTML version can be read on PDAs and other mobile Internet browsers.