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Case Studies and White Papers on Effective Industrial Automation Solutions
Real Time Automation Case Studies & White Papers
OPC UA Finds Success in the Gas and Chemical Industry
Meeting demanding challenges at scale for a machine to enterprise communication is a challenge faced in many industries. It is even more demanding in chemicals and gas where communication with a huge base of legacy, mission-critical systems must be maintained. Recently, an industrial IoT Edge software engineering company in Philadelphia successfully deployed a fully compliant OPC UA based system for a Fortune 500 industrial gas and chemical delivery equipment manufacturer. Read more here…
ARCX Wins Automotive Project with a Little Help from their Friends at Real Time Automation
Head office of one of the Top Three automotive makers decided that ‘recipe’ data for car assembly should be sent to the shop floor using a new, standardized methodology. The catch: the new controls system would need to communicate seamlessly with legacy equipment, including SLC 500 and Micrologix-controlled machinery too expensive to replace, not to mention requiring downtime the car maker couldn’t afford. Read more here…
EtherNet/IP Drives Mining Standards Down Under
When we turn up the heat during the winter, most of us give little thought to the coal mining industry. Images of Kentucky coal miners with blackened faces may come to mind – images that are surely out of date. But most of us have no modern images to replace those with. Here’s a new image to replace the old one: picture a 90 ton, 50 foot long automated Coal Shearing machine that eats its way through layers of coal underground. Read more here…
Modbus in the IoT Era: Collision of Two Worlds
Around the world, in factories large and small, worlds are colliding. The Modbus world, massive and pervasive, is colliding with the even larger, more pervasive Internet of Things (IoT) world. Modbus devices and the data they contain are often not easily included in today’s HMIs, analytic systems, historians and critical applications, even though they contain a lot of important manufacturing data. This paper voices some important truths about the collision of these two worlds on your factory floor and what you should do about it – before it’s too late. Read more here…
AB PLC Programmer’s Guide to IoT: The AB PLC Programmer’s Common Sense Guide to the Internet of Things
In the last 30 years, we’ve had any number of new technologies and products introduced into the automation market. We’ve seen the introduction of the programmable controller replacing relay logic, electronic drives replacing mechanical line shafts and high-speed networks replacing direct wiring just to name a few. But nothing has rivaled the attention on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or the Internet of Things (IoT) as it’s known across all sectors. Read more here…
PackML Over OPC UA: Two Technologies that will Make Your Machines Hit a Grand Slam
Unlike managing a playoff baseball game, managing a manufacturing plant used to be simple without much in the way of strategy. Manufacturers are now faced with unprecedented strategic challenges in this Cloud-enabled, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence world. Staffing the factory floor, reducing costs, increasing efficiency and productivity and making technology choices are now exceptionally difficult, strategic challenges in the age of everything online and everything integrated. Read more here…
The Show Must Go On: RTA Keeps the Bellagio Fountains Running
The Bellagio Hotel and Casino – modeled on the opulent Lake Como Resort in Bellagio, Italy, and known as the pinnacle of luxury in Las Vegas – had a big problem and a small budget with which to fix it. The Vegas landmark’s 200 fountains, drawing crowds from around the world for its spectacular water and light show, was hitting a technical glitz. Some of its automation parts – motor drives installed 11 years before – had become obsolete, no longer for sale or even available on secondary markets. Read more here…
Modbus Router Enables Remote Monitoring
For more than fifteen years, in the town of Sabadell, just north of Barcelona, Spain, Joan Ramon and his team of specialists at Elecsan S.A have supplied the local and international market with counters, timers, indicators, text displays and other types of off-the-shelf and custom controls, much of it communicating over Modbus networks. With many of their Spanish customers requesting more remote monitoring and control from Elecsan’s control products, Ramon faced a significant problem. Most of the controls Elecsan delivered over the years were Modbus RTU, not Modbus TCP, and a large part of their inventory was point-to-point RS232. Read more here…
BACnet/IP Gateway Integrates PLC into Building Automation System for Motorcycle Wind Tunnel Control
Automation Solutions LLC, an electrical contractor specializing in automation technology, based in Germantown, WI, was approached by a leading motorcycle manufacturer to implement a control system for the wind tunnels used to test the bikes. Beyond implementing the control for the wind tunnel, the motorcycle manufacturer in the Milwaukee, WI area required that the system be accessible to its building automation control system via BACnet/IP. With more than 40 years of industrial automation control experience, Automation Solutions LLC was confident they could implement a cost-effective control solution built around Allen-Bradley’s MicroLogix PLC. Read more here…
RTA DF1 Stack Helps Win Quarter Million Dollar Project
Head office of one of the Top Three automotive makers decided that ‘recipe’ data for car assembly should be sent to the shop floor using a new, standardized methodology. The catch: the new controls system would need to communicate seamlessly with legacy equipment, including SLC 500 and Micrologix-controlled machinery too expensive to replace, not to mention requiring downtime the car maker couldn’t afford. Read more here…
Ready Robotics Gets Device Connectivity
Born from cutting-edge robotics research at Johns Hopkins University, Ready Robotics has created the world’s first universal operating system for industrial robots. This system was created to solve the labor challenges of programing the diverse set robots, co-bots and associated devices that make up most robotic applications. The solution promises to boost output, improve quality, reduce costs, and augment the customers’ workforce through automation. This would be accomplished by delivering a universal robotic motion and control solution. However, there was just one problem. How would the system interact with factory floor devices? Read more here…
Local Vs. Cloud: Are You Going About Data Logging All Wrong?
There was a time in the not too distant past when data logging meant someone walked around the plant gathering USB sticks from data recorders and transferred the data to Microsoft Excel. Before that, they were walking around the plant with a clipboard carefully writing down values. When long-term storage was required, there were circular chart recorders and people whose job was to file those charts in rusty, old, metal filing cabinets.
Those clipboards are now used to level formerly wobbly table legs. The USB sticks were unceremoniously chucked into the nearest dumpster after the Stuxnet malware attack. Read more here…
Who Wants the Truth about Electronic Controls Outsourcing?
If outsourcing of your electronic controls is not part of your strategic plan, It Should Be. All product manufacturers are under intense pressure to rapidly design, develop, test, certify and produce the next-generation product. Increasingly, the single point of leverage where additional capabilities, functionality, and higher-value is the electronic components and software. Product development teams must design and develop electronics which matches marketing requirements; perceived and real customer needs in an era of quickly evolving technology, all while meeting cost targets. Internal product development teams not only must be highly cognizant of customer needs but of all the various technologies which can be brought to bear against these problems. Read more here…
EtherNet/IP:An Application Layer for Industrial Automation
This paper presents an overview of EtherNet/IP™ (EIP), a high-level industrial application layer protocol for industrial automation applications. Built on the standard TCP/IP protocol suite, EIP uses all the traditional EtherNet hardware and software to define an application layer protocol that structures the task of configuring, accessing and controlling industrial automation devices. EtherNet/IP classifies EtherNet nodes as predefined device types with specific behaviors. The set of device types and the EIP application layer protocol is based on the Control and Information Protocol (CIP) layer used in both DeviceNet™ and ControlNet™. Building on these widely used protocol suites, EtherNet/IP for the first time provides a seamlessly integrated system from the sensor-actuator network to the controller and enterprise networks. Read more here…