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Media Contact:
Advantech Corporation, Industrial Automation Group
Chuck Harrell
Phone: (513) 742-8895 x333 Fax:
(513) 742-0554
Email: chuck.harrell@Advantech.com
SOFT
MOTION SIMPLIFIES MOTION CONTROL PROGRAMMING
SUMMARY: Motion control was once performed exclusively
through tedious and painstaking low-level code-based programming of hardware
devices; but, modern machine automation hardware and software greatly
simplified this task and allowed some of elements of machine motion software
programs to be automatically generated from user-entered move data. At
the same time, users began to write machine control software programs
by mixing and matching the five IEC 61131-3 programming languages, all
of them high-level and some of them graphical.
THE
INTERNET OF THINGS
SUMMARY: Your game console talks to Netflix and other
sites on the Internet. Your TV, DVR, smart-phone and tablet PC are all
capable of accessing the Internet. You may very likely have a smart electric,
gas or water meter that is connected to your house and able to talk to
your heating and cooling systems. You can buy a refrigerator that can
inventory itself and message the grocery store with an order for pickup
or delivery. Your tires talk wirelessly to your car’s main computer
system. Your car accesses the Internet for GPS and other services. In
the factory, embedded diagnostics use ubiquitous networking, both wired
and wireless, to message maintenance computers and generate work orders.
You wear an RFID tag in the plant so that in case of emergency, safety
personnel can find you. All of this happens without you pressing one key.
All of this is happening now.
INSTALLING
AUTOMATION IN HAZARDOUS AREAS
SUMMARY: For most process plants, it’s not possible
for all automation system components to be installed in non-hazardous
areas. As a result, some form of protection is required to prevent fires
and explosions that could occur when a hazardous gas and energy source
combine. Fortunately, there are standards and associated products that
if properly designed, installed and maintained virtually eliminate the
risk of an accidental explosion in hazardous areas.
REAL-TIME
ETHERNET/IP - PROFINET TECHNOLOGY
SUMMARY: The evolution of operator interfaces has moved
quite far beyond the pushbutton you see below. Once, the intelligence
resided in the operator’s brain and considerable experience and
training were required to operate any complex piece of machinery or process.
The evolution of the operator panel is actually two parallel evolutionary
tracks. First is the movement of that intelligence from the operator’s
brain into the operator panel itself. So, we now refer to them as “smart
operator panels.” The other track is how the evolution of the operator
panel tracks Moore’s Law, making them incredibly more powerful and
less expensive over and over.
EXPANDING
THE USE OF SMART OPERATOR PANELS
SUMMARY: The evolution of operator interfaces has moved
quite far beyond the pushbutton you see below. Once, the intelligence
resided in the operator’s brain and considerable experience and
training were required to operate any complex piece of machinery or process.
The evolution of the operator panel is actually two parallel evolutionary
tracks. First is the movement of that intelligence from the operator’s
brain into the operator panel itself. So, we now refer to them as “smart
operator panels.” The other track is how the evolution of the operator
panel tracks Moore’s Law, making them incredibly more powerful and
less expensive over and over.
AUTOMATING
THE SMART GRID
SUMMARY: Automation and industrial PCs have improved
productivity in every area of industry over the last few decades. The
electric power generation, transmission and distribution systems have
been integrating automation systems and industrial PCs as well - but now
must face the challenges of full conversion to integrated automation and
information platforms.
INTEGRATING
DISTRIBUTED ENERGY RESOURCES INTO THE SMART GRID
SUMMARY: Electrical power generation, transmission and
distribution system thrived for decades with limited intelligence. But
present and future demands are necessitating a transition to a smart grid,
particularly the need to incorporate distributed energy resources (DERs)
into the generation mix.
CONNECTING
AND CONTROLLING THE FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRIES
SUMMARY: The food and beverage industries have a history
of manual operations, from one end of the plant to the other, including
lab and quality operations. In order to improve productivity and quality
control, many food and beverage operations have begun integrating these
operations and making them conform to automation standards.
DRIVING
THE NETWORKED INDUSTRIAL PLANT - POWER OVER ETHERNET
SUMMARY: In the 1990s, industrial plants began to integrate
and merge their “islands of automation” by networking devices
to programmable controllers and controllers to control systems and HMIs
(human machine interfaces). As the number of intelligent devices increased,
the demand to supply power to these devices also increased.
SWITCH
WITH CONFIDENCE: AVOIDING THE PITFALLS WITH INDUSTRIAL MANAGED SWITCHES
SUMMARY: The office isn’t a factory but its networking
standard, Ethernet, can be successfully applied in a plant – if
the proper steps, and some care, are taken. Done right, the benefits include
an inexpensive communication and control network with a low total cost
of ownership and virtually 100 percent uptime. Done wrong, the results
could be unexpected downtime, a loss of product, and the kind of events
that make the news.
INFORMATION
ON SCREEN: VIDEO SURVEILLANCE IN INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION
SUMMARY: Seeing is believing, according to the old saying.
That explains some of the advantages video surveillance has to offer for
industrial automation. With cameras and the right technology, operators
and engineers can survey a scene in a remote or dangerous area safely.
Also, they can be in many places at once, seeing with their own eyes what
is happening without risking those eyes – or other body parts.
USING
HMI'S TO LOWER YOUR COST OF OWNERSHIP
SUMMARY: Thirty years ago, operator stations consisted
of indicators, push-buttons, possibly a recorder, all mounted in the door
of a large enclosure or on the face of a pedestal enclosure. Inside the
box was the PLC, and each of the components of the operator station had
to be hard-wired together by hand. Each of the terminations and each of
the components was a single point of failure just waiting to happen and
the cost of producing each operator station was very high. Jump ahead
to today?
MAKING
THE SMART GRID WORK
SUMMARY: In order to bring down the cost of supplying
power and reduce the carbon footprint of the power industry worldwide,
many governments and industries have been moving the transmission and
distribution of electricity to a new "smart grid" model. This
model is expected to produce a real-time responsive electric system from
power generation to end consumers.
DIVIDE
AND CONQUER: MULTI-CORE PROCESSORS AND AUTOMATION APPLICATIONS
SUMMARY: In this white paper, we will look at why multi-core
processors were developed, explore the characteristics of an industrial
automation computer and then examine what features a multi-core system
should have. The paper will then detail the advantages a multi-core system
offers for automation applications and describe a real-world example.
It will conclude by looking at what the future holds.
POWER
OVER ETHERNET: MYTHS, MYSTERY, AND THE FACTS
SUMMARY: When Ethernet and TCP/IP becase the de-facto
standard for all networks, weather on the plant floor, in the control
room, the plant office, or the entire enterprise connectivity level, the
concept of Power over Ethernet (PoE) was born. This white paper goes into
great detail on this topic.
NEXT
GENERATION OF EMBEDDED COMPUTING PLATFORMS
SUMMARY: It all started with Moore's Law, of course.
In the April 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine, Intel co-founder Gordon
E. Moore described the doubling of electronic capabilities. "The
complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly
a factor of two per year ..." he wrote. "Certainly over the
short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase."
HIGH
AVAILABILITY ARCHITECTURES FOR ETHERNET IN MANUFACTURING
SUMMARY: Outside of craft manufacture, like blacksmithing,
or custom jewelry making, it is no longer possible to manufacture anything
in any quantity without automation. In some cases, such as semiconductor
manufacture, it is not possible to manufacture without automation at all.
THE
RISE OF THE PROGRAMMABLE AUTOTMATION CONTROLLER
SUMMARY: It was only thirty years ago that most industrial
processes were controlled either by hardwired relay logic or analog loop
controllers. It was only thirty years ago that the Space Shuttle's three
computer systems had less than 100 kilobytes of RAM and ran their entire
complex programs in that space. It was only thirty years ago that there
was no such thing as a PC.
BENEFITING
FROM INDUSTRIAL ETHERNET AT THE DEVICE LEVEL WITH SMART REMOTE I/O AND
PEER-TO-PEER TECHNOLOGY
SUMMARY: Industrial enterprises can grow to big for efficient
automation control using traditional technology. However, advances in
Industrial Ethernet can provide a solution.
BEST
PRACTICES FOR NETWORKING AUTOMATION COMPUTERS
SUMMARY: Automation computers can be anywhere, and do
very many things. Modern automation computers are connected to networks
that may be connected to other networks throughout the plant, and via
TCP/IP to the entire world.
ETHERNET
ENABLING SERIAL DEVICES IN HIGH AVAILABILITY MANUFACTURING?
SUMMARY: Today, manufacturing organizations world wide
are working on reducing complexity in the manufacturing process and increasing
the transparency of processes throughout the enterprise. The
ability to communicate data from any part of the enterprise to any other
part of the enterprise is core to making modern manufacturing work.
WHAT
DOES AN AUTOMATION COMPUTER LOOK LIKE?
SUMMARY: Every day, without thinking about it, we use
hundreds of computers in every facet of our lives. Nearly every device
with a display or a control in our homes, in our offices, and in our factories,
has a computer in it. In our factories this is especially true.
THE
ADVANTAGES OF SMALL FORM FACTOR HMI
SUMMARY: As embedded computers have become ubiquitous,
so too the need for human machine interfaces has grown. Once found in
only complex control systems, like distributed control systems in refineries
and other process plants, HMI systems are now found in many guises and
many locations, from games to industrial machines and tooling systems,
with many stops in between
CHASING
MOORE'S LAW - THE TRUTH BEHIND THE OS AND CPU UPGRADES FOR INDUSTRIAL
PC USERS
SUMMARY: The COTS effect has been almost as big a revolution
as that signaled by the phrase uttered by Alexander Graham Bell, "What
hath God wrought?" COTS is a three letter acronym that stands for
"Commercial, Off The Shelf," and the COTS revolution has changed
commercial computing, created personal computing, impacted telecommunications,
and made huge changes in the industrial environment. Most of these changes
have been incredibly beneficial. Some have made technologies practical
and affordable for applications that were unthinkable thirty years ago.
Some have been problematic and some have caused significant FUD. (FUD
is another three letter acronym, standing for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.)
CARRYING
SERIAL DEVICES INTO THE FUTURE
SUMMARY: First in the laboratory, and then on the plant
floor, serial digital communication was the earliest means of data transmission
from device to device. What's the future?
EMBEDDED
HARDWARE AND OS TECHNOLOGY EMPOWER PC-BASED PLATFORMS
SUMMARY: Everywhere we look we find computers. Many of
them don't look like traditional desktops, or laptops. In industrial infrastructure,
we find them in displays, in networking appliances, in machine controllers,
in HMIs and in industrial controllers and PACs (programmable automation
controllers). We find them in low power, portable devices, and even in
field transmitters
GIGABIT
ETHERNET: MEETING THE FUTURE WITH INCREASED BANDWIDTH
SUMMARY: Much has been written about the use of Ethernet
in manufacturing. Ethernet has been around a long time. For computers
and networking, it has been around practically forever. One of the great
benefits of this fact is the time-tested and de-bugged nature of the Ethernet
protocol for networking. Since the mid-1990s, Ethernet networks have become
ubiquitous. They are used in offices, in homes, in workplaces, in building
automation, and with increasing dominance, not just frequency, on the
factory floor.
GET
ON THE BUS: USB IN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
SUMMARY: For industrial automation users, technology
giveth and taketh away. On one hand advances in semiconductors and software
result in smarter and more capable computer and machines, making the job
of automating a process easier and more robust. On the other hand, those
same advances spell trouble. The answer to this question maybe the USB.
PROGRAMMABLE
AUTOMATION CONTROLLERS FIND THEIR NICHE...EVERYWHERE!
SUMMARY: In the beginning there was the relay and the
timer. And in the process industries, there was the hardwired controller.
Then, there was the Programmable Logic Controller (PAC). Today, it's the
Programmable Automation Controller (PAC).
HIGH
BRIGHT DISPLAYS...GET THE PICTURE!
SUMMARY: In the old adage, seeing is believing. In today’s
modern industrial applications, seeing is more than that. It’s the
essence of control, since the human machine interface (HMI) involves the
presentation of visual information. That’s why there’s such
a demand for high bright displays in highly customized industrial computers
and in stand alone industrial monitors.
PRODUCTION
MONITORING AND DATA MINING - NO STRIP MINING ALLOWED!
SUMMARY: Any manufacturing or process plant has many
sources of production data, and that data, if kept, very soon becomes
voluminous.
THANKS
FOR THE MEMORIES - STORAGE MEDIA IN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
SUMMARY: When it comes to data storage for industrial
applications, users no longer have to go around in circles. They now have
a choice between rotating magnetic media – hard disk drives with
spinning platters – and flash memory
EVOLUTION
OF PC BUS TECHNOLOGY
SUMMARY: Over the last decade, there's been an increasing
trend toward the use of PC-based automation solutions. In the early 1990's,
large automakers and other manufacturers began using standard PCs for
machine control.
WINDOWS
XP FOR EMBEDDED APPLICATIONS
SUMMARY: The embedded version of Windows XP is a componentized
version of the well-known Windows XP Professional operating system. Instead
of everything being wrapped tightly into a single package, XP Embedded
breaks the OS down into more than 10,000 individual components, allowing
developers to create systems that have the functionality and familiar
features of XP.
Elements
of Robust PC-Based Control
SUMMARY: The combination of declining PC prices and increased
robustness of operating systems and softlogic control applications have
resulted in enormous growth in PC-based control since the mid-1990s. But
while the basic PC is standardized, not all PCs are equal – particularly
when it comes to operating reliably in industrial environments...