Blog - InSource Solutions

21-Sep-2017

Can IIoT and a Modern OT/IT Infrastructure Help Address Food and Beverage Manufacturing Challenges?

The food & beverage industry is facing a number of key manufacturing operational challenges. Food & beverage manufacturing typically consists of complex processes, such as clean-in-place, traceability, capturing mislabeled products, and serialization. The industry needs to ensure the utmost consistency of brand and product quality, taste, and safety while simultaneously lowering the costs of production

07-Sep-2017

Manufacturing Day 2017

Manufacturing Day is an annual celebration of modern manufacturing during which manufacturers invite their communities including; students, educators, businesspeople, media, and politicians to their facilities in a collective effort to educate visitors about manufacturing career opportunities and to improve public perceptions of manufacturing. Manufacturing Day occurs on the first Friday in October. This year Manufacturing

05-Sep-2017

A Year Later, is it True?

Friday, September 1, 2017, marked the one-year anniversary of the InSource Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) purchasing the balance of InSource Solutions company shares to become 100% employee owned. When the announcement was made, we had no idea what this would mean. Who would run the company now? What would change? What would this mean

01-Sep-2017

The Next Manufacturing Revolution: You’re not late.

There’s a lot of buzz about the fourth revolution of manufacturing. Most discussions highlight the exciting new capabilities in a “Digitized Factory”: advanced robotics, the Industrial Internet of Things, Big Data, Augmented Reality, Additive Manufacturing (think 3-D Printing), etc. Some challenge us to change our production models for scale customization and regional trade models. The

28-Aug-2017

InTouch 2017 OMI is a Game Changer for Industrial Visualization. Pass the Orange Juice!

Here in Florida, one of the things that I see plenty of are oranges. Today, our Wonderware InTouch HMI solution is involved in every step of the process as the oranges are received, juice extracted, blended, cartons filled, labeled, pasteurized, and packaged for consumption to the distribution warehouse. Operators creatively use touch screens to navigate

03-Aug-2017

What on Earth is Prometheus?

Imagine a future where you can build complete process automation capabilities with the same high level tools and libraries you use today to build your HMI (Human Machine Interfaces), MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) and process Historians. Now imagine that when you first built your system, you used Rockwell controllers but now you’ve decided to switch

26-Jun-2017

Obsolescence Can Cause Downtime and Production Loss

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

30-May-2017

A Simple Approach to Operational Excellence in Water and Wastewater

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

26-May-2017

Digital Disruption with Microsoft Azure and Wonderware

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

18-May-2017

Serialization Will Make a Difference!

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,