Industries across the country receive thousands of end-of-life (EOL) notifications throughout the year. What are the possible consequences of these notifications? What are the risks involved in a delayed response when handling obsolescence? An industry average of approximately 20% of identifiable plant equipment is obsolete. Obsolescence, simply put, is the transition from availability from the
Whether you’re running control processes for a municipal water / wastewater facility on the edge of a metropolitan city, or in rural America, sharpening operational excellence is critical when you are under continuous public scrutiny, dealing with pending risks and penalties for lack of compliance with regulations. Naturally, one of the key themes to operational
You may have heard of the Internet of Things the growing network of devices that can connect, communicate and transfer data between one another. The same transformation is prevalent in the world of industrial manufacturing and automation through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The reduced cost of connectivity, the high volume of data from
For several years, I managed a beverage plant where we continually had issues with placing sugar products into non-sugar product containers. They were produced, packaged, and shipped to customers because of poor manufacturing practices. These product crossovers and manufacturing mistakes came from different sources; constant production schedule changes, production schedule variances between quality and production,
If you’re like most industrial report customers, you’re being pushed to deliver a report, likely due to some regulation. That can be EPA, FDA, or any of a slew of other agencies or recommenders of best practices. In many applications, reports are a requirement. We call those compliance reports. That’s true of water and waste
For some time now, we’ve been making it a part of our mission to help simplify life for our clients; make the complex simple as we say. While we have room to improve, one thing we wanted to do was make training a little simpler. When clients come to our training web site, they are
Ahh, the proverbial tree falling in the proverbial woods question…can something exist without it being perceived? Does the same question apply to a water company’s disconnected automation assets out in the field if the utility doesn’t know that there is problem with the device? That question can be answered quickly with a definitive “yes.” The
Many local governments and municipalities are facing major challenges in their water supply networks. This is due to water shortages, economic constraints and ageing water supply networks. You don’t have to look far to find indicators of the condition of our water supply network. The number of current and anticipated pipe bursts and leaks offer
Regardless of the industry your plant competes in, your plant leadership and operating departments have one thing in common: they’re being asked to cut expenses from an already tight operating budget. Most are also being charged with energy efficiency and sustainability mandates. That is a very challenging job since they already have the responsibility to
IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) in its fundamental form is not new to manufacturing; just replace the word “Internet” with “Intranet” and you get my point. We connect to industrial devices like PLCs and Control Systems, which are connected continuously to equipment, sensors, thermocouples, meters, etc. They control, monitor, and report information back to HMIs,