ZPI, Inc., delivers enterprise manufacturing diagnostic software that enables companies to improve top-line performance, reduce waste, and produce a greater number of products in less time. Their full-service software empowers modern manufacturers to accelerate and refine their business through a process of continuous improvement.

Based in Ontario, Canada, ZPI has earned an excellent reputation for their accurate and comprehensive data collection and analytical product, which provides packaging, manufacturing, and processing facilities with the tools necessary ...

The Customer

SeVein Water Association owns and manages the water delivery system and infrastructure for 2,700 acres of vineyards in Walla  Walla Valley — some of the most technologically advanced properties in Oregon State. Tapping more than 1,000 feet below the surface, the association constructed one of the finest agricultural water delivery systems in the Northwest. SeVein owns, operates, and maintains the wells, pumps, and motors and is responsible for the delivery of water ...

The Customer

DST Controls is a full service control systems and industrial data integration company headquartered in Benicia, CA. It serves customers on five continents with automated control and monitoring of industrial equipment, processes, and data.

As a control and data systems integrator, DST accomplishes its mission by using proven, off-the-shelf hardware and software solutions when possible, and inventing effective hardware and software solutions when necessary.

DST’s multi-disciplined staff provides control, automation, and data ...

The Customer

More than 1.4 million people live in the City of Orlando (Fla.) and this number is growing. The city also is home to some of the state’s most fertile agricultural areas and the headquarters for large companies. This growing need for water services required an expansion of wastewater treatment. In addition the area faced a state requirement for eliminating discharge of treated effluent to surface waters.

In response, Orange County (Fla ...

Kepware Puts Linamar in the Fast Lane to Improved Productivity, Quality, and Maintenance

Headquartered in Guelph, Ontario, Linamar is a publicly traded manufacturer of auto components,
assemblies, and castings. It is the second largest automobile parts manufacturer
in Canada. Linamar supplies its products to automotive and other industrial markets around
the world from its manufacturing centers in Canada, U.S.A., Mexico, France, Germany,
Hungary and China.

The Challenge

Linamar is no stranger to the ...

In the highly competitive oil and gas industry, the need for timely and accurate field data is critical. Optimizing production, planning future drilling and managing well reserves and spot gas supplies are more important than ever. Failsafe Controls is making the best-informed business decisions and saving their customers money in the process, using cutting edge process control and automation technology for its customers.

Failsafe Controls' customer, an oil and gas exploration and production company, embarked on a huge automation initiative in moving their outsourced process control and data acquisition management operations in-house. They turned to the experts in the field; Louisiana based Failsafe Controls to help them develop a fully integrated, web-enabled production automation system that allows real-time and accumulated data from each well to be accessed by key personnel: field operators, engineering, gas/data gathering teams; and regional/executive management. The idea was to empower all the teams and departments with the ability to recognize trends and identify any problematic areas to ensure optimal production levels are achieved.

Arizona State University's (ASU) interactive Campus Metabolism (CM) website (http://cm.asu.edu) offers a unique inside view into the university's commitment to sustainability initiatives, including its focus on the value of alternative energy resources and conservation.

Beginning in 2004 and in partnership with Arizona Public Service's Energy Services (APSES) group, the university installed utility-grade instrumentation to accurately monitor energy usage of its residential and educational buildings on campus. From the gathering of this data, ASU's Energy Information System (EIS) was created.

Drawing on comprehensive data from ASU's Energy Information System (EIS), Campus Metabolism brings a wealth of valuable information to students, researchers and the public. It also supports the initiatives of ASU's Global Institute for Sustainability. CM currently covers initiatives at the university's Tempe campus but will expand, along with the EIS system, to include ASU's three other campuses in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Gerdau Ameristeel is the second largest mini-mill steel producer, and steel recycler in North America, with an annual manufacturing capacity of more than 10 million metric tons of mill finished steel products. Gerdau Ameristeel currently has 11 mini mills running a manufacturing execution system (MES) called QMOS. While QMOS oversees the management of information to the company's ERP system, it relies heavily on KEPServerEX from Kepware Technologies of Portland, Maine, to manage the myriad of diverse PLCs distributed throughout the mills. Currently there are three additional mills scheduled to come online almost immediately with QMOS and the remaining mills in the near future.

Cascade Meadow Wetlands & Environmental Science Center, an impressive new facility located adjacent to restored upland and wetland habitats in Rochester, Minnesota, is utilizing a variety of products from Kepware to gather critical data for environmental education and management of its 'green' facility.

Discrete industry automation continues to experience solid worldwide growth as manufacturing plants and OEM machine builders continue to invest in automation to improve agility and flexibility of operations to meet market demands. The worldwide market for discrete automation systems is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 6.8% over the next five years. Kepware Technologies, the global leader in communication software for automation, reports annual shipments of its automation communications software have exceeded 100,000 units and that number is continuing to grow rapidly due in part to its OPC and embedded device communications experience in the building automation industry. According to ARC Advisory Group, the building automation market is forecasted to grow to over $23 billion in 2011.

Digital Domus, leaders in office and building automation, design sophisticated building automation systems and offer unique solutions based on open industry standards with Internet technology at its core. Most recently, Digital Domus delivered a solution for achieving energy efficiency using its control system and computerized, intelligent network of electronic devices, designed to monitor and control thermo regulation systems and an energy production system.

The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), headquartered in Austin, plays a variety of important roles in Central Texas: delivering electricity, managing the water supply and environment of the lower Colorado River basin, planning and coordination of water and wastewater needs, providing public recreation areas, and supporting community and economic development in 58 counties.

LCRA provides low-cost electricity to more than 40 retail utilities, including cities and electric cooperatives and operates more than 3,300 miles of transmission lines statewide. It operates six dams on the Colorado River, regulates water discharges to manage floods, and releases water for sale to municipal, agricultural and industrial users. Protecting water quality in the lakes and river is also a vital part of LCRA's mission.

Sandia National Labs needed to develop a system to show compliance with pollution standard and to track possible Transuranic (elements with atomic numbers greater than 92) waste flows in groundwater.

Their solution consisted on the combination of several products, Wonderware for the SCADA, Sixnet for the I/O and Kepware for communications.

The system relies on automation spread out over 100s of remote sites, from sewage lift stations to 1000 foot or more deep fresh water wells. This part of the country is far from flat, and the distribution of remote sites requires a vast network of Fiber Optics, wire and radio technology. It is an impressive feat of engineering, and keeping it running efficiently and reliably is the job of automation engineers relying on a collection of controls, Infrastructure components and SCADA technology, all working in harmony day in and day out. When there is a problem, it needs to be diagnosed quickly, to keep the system in balance and to avoid any disruption of service to customers. That is where SNMP comes in.

This is a highly competitive and secretive market. Improving yield, quality and efficiency in photovoltaic production can make a great difference in the scalability of the process. Equipment communications is essential to knowing what is going on.

A new manufacturer of high performance thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules is scaling up their proprietary semiconductor technology for low cost high volume manufacturing. The modules will be deployed in large scale solar PV power plants and will efficiently tap into the vast energy potential of the sun. They will produce environmentally friendly renewable electricity that is economically competitive with electric power generated from conventional fossil fuels.

As the old adage says, if you don't measure it, you can't control it. That is the fundamental principle behind Arizona State University's energy monitoring system. At ASU they take it one large step further - they show it off to the world.

Energy costs are a major factor in Arizona, both in the summer and the winter. ASU is the equivalent of a small city, with a population of 69,000 . In our world of Greener Thinking, Universities play an important role in educating the citizens of the future. ASU takes this responsibility very seriously.

The mission critical environment of a data center for Fortune 50 financial companies requires the highest degree of infrastructure reliability. Thousands of computers use large quantities of electricity, creating lots of heat that as a result takes more power to extract and keep the data center cool - and operating efficiently.

Caspian Technology Concepts, headquartered in Milwaukee Wisconsin, is in the business of designing, building, monitoring and maintaining exactly this type of data center for one of their customers in the financial industry. A recent project required updating the automation system that monitors and controls a 20,000 square foot facility. This space houses over 100 server cabinets, each of which can be using upwards of 3,000 watts.

Briggs and Stratton, the world's leading manufacturer of air-cooled engines, was founded in 1908 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, WI. Their brands include Ferris, Simplicity, Snapper, Giant Vac, and Murray and today, Briggs and Stratton owns 60 - 70% market share. As with most manufacturers, quality and efficiency in manufacturing is high on the watch list.

Briggs and Stratton has a number of manufacturing facilities with different processes for manufacturing. Some production lines have dedicated production; others change over due to seasonal or demand fluctuations. In all cases however, performance is crucial and Briggs and Stratton has chosen to use OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) as one of their standard KPIs (Key Performance Indicator).

iSDEMiR a full scale Iron and Steel plant specializing in pig iron, billets, slabs, wire rods, coil and hot rolling roll located in Turkey was facing a huge automation project with many control systems and processes needing to be streamlined. With so much disparate equipment scattered throughout the mill, there needed to be a way to manage and monitor all of the data. ASP Otomasyon, an established Turkish integrator, took on the task. With years of experience in industrial production, ASP Otomasyon, was able to approach the situation with unique and affordable solutions to improve processes and keep production flowing.

Neteon Technologies out of East Brunswick, New Jersey, specializing in Industrial Ethernet, Serial Connectivity and Fiber to Ethernet solutions was asked by their client, a large military base, to upgrade their legacy fiber Ethernet network. The military base had been collecting HVAC facility related data from multiple PLCs over their existing fiber Ethernet network and wanted to achieve the following improvement:

   • Provide network management capability
   • Provide network media redundancy
   • Increase the overall bandwidth of the network to support future applications and network expansions

After the on-site evaluation of their existing fiber network, Neteon proposed using Moxa's managed redundant networking solution together with Kepware iSNMP software for this installation and network upgrade project. The project involved creating a fully managed network, capable of transmitting real-time information from production facilities with asset data to multiple servers which were located in the data center to manage the performance of the 18 water chilling stations throughout the military base.

The Georgia Pacific paper mill in Yalova, Turkey faced several problems. In the water treatment portion of the paper plant, data needed to be fed into an ABB Advant OCS using a Siemens PLC. At first, they requested to connect in a classic way with a Siemens PLC to an ABB Advant OCS using Profibus. This type of Profibus connection tends to be very costly and time consuming to set up, however. Mill production must stop each time that the Profibus connection and all of its programming requirements is coupled with a DCS controller (which must restart each time it connects to a slave).

Amcor PET Packaging, a division of Amcor Ltd., and a world leader in innovative packaging solutions, is the organization's largest business segment, representing approximately 40 percent of revenue.

As the world's largest PET container supplier, the division's staff of more than 5,300 people is spread over 63 manufacturing operations in 12 countries. From the birth of PET and its first polymer containers for soft drinks, Amcor has continually pushed the boundaries of PET packaging with its solutions for longer shelf life, higher temperature filling, and unique shapes.

The environment is appalling, dealing with the massive pressures found 5 kilometres underwater is only a part of it. Construction work in places like the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico go on all year round. Weather conditions on the surface are often bad and even subsea, the visibility is often measured in a few inches. Surface operations in the splash zone can see a five ton machine thrown around like a toy. Currents can exceed 3 knots and operators (Pilots) may need to weave their way around steel and rope downlines from the vessels, scaffold poles and debris lying on the seabed. Opening an electronics pod in a snow blizzard is always fun. Operators work with voltages up to 5kv or higher, signals measured in mV, digital and analogue electronics, computers and software, hydraulics, mechanics, fibre optics, acoustics, electromagnetics, X-ray equipment and of course the ever present sea.

Hudson is one of the largest full service production and scenic fabrication companies serving the professional entertainment community since 1980. Hudson has provided precision automation systems that lower the Times Square New Year's Eve ball, bring the Lady of the Lake up from the depths in Monty Pythons' Spamalot, and allowed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to swoop over audiences heads. Hudson has the technical expertise that brings the biggest shows to Broadway and takes them on tour, and the award-winning scenic fabrication, automation, and lighting that transform themed casinos, restaurants, and amusement parks into world-class destinations.

Unless you have been in a cave over the last few months, energy consumption and costs have taken over the nation's conscience. Our shrinking industrial base must be wise consumers of our resources such as gas and electricity to remain competitive. Within the metals industries, in particular Aluminum manufacturing, large amounts of gas and electricity are required to generate end product. To generate 1lb of aluminum from alumina, requires about 6.2 kWH (kilowatt hours) of electricity. Once the raw material has been created, aluminum is casted into furnaces or smelters, requiring about 1100 BTU's per lb to liquefy.To examine further, 1 SCF (Standard Cubic Foot) of natural gas can generate a range of 800 - 1100 BTU's. It takes roughly 2100 Btu/lb to melt aluminum to allow for casting. Given a large ingot of 30,000 lbs, the number of BTU's needed will equate to very large natural gas bills.

If developers don't have the time or expertise to write their own drivers, they should consider using the Kepware User-Configurable (U-CON) driver.

To write a driver, or not to write a driver? Developers don't usually have a choice if a driver isn't available, but new tools are making the job easier. An experienced Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) integrator explains how one such tool is speeding up the process of integrating OLE for Process Control (OPC) hardware.

EnterpriseInnovator spoke with John Haydock, Control Systems Engineering Manager with Rea Magnet Wire. Rea Magnet Wire makes wire, as it has since the 1930s -- and as such, it needs to maintain its competitive edge by using new technologies, and streamlining its production processes. Its main product is film insulated magnet wire, which is copper or aluminum wire with an insulating layer on it that is thin and temperature-resistant. It's used in winding wire coils that are used to create magnetic fields used in motors, transformers, and electronic devices.

With over 1,900 customers in 39 data centers in 10 countries, Equinix is the global leader in network-neutral data centers. Their customer list is a virtual who's who of network providers, large content companies, and enterprises, including MSN, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast Google, PayPal, IBM, Electronic Arts, and YouTube. These customers rely on Equinix's Internet Business eXchange (IBX) data centers to keep their mission-critical applications running securely and reliably.

EVSystems Data Solutions is a system integrator, allowing customers to connect SCADA and automation systems to their operation, business and information systems. Services include: Data Historian implementation and integration, SCADA Design and optimization, System architecture evaluations and consulting, Multi-platform integration, and Custom software and Relational Database design and development. EVSystems was recently contracted by GE Sensing to develop an I/O driver for a cryogenic tank monitoring application. The customer was installing 50 Cryogenic tanks; each would be monitored and controlled with TEC 2000 / 3000 controllers by MVE Bio-Medical, Chart Industries, Inc. The controllers support a robust ASCII protocol over RS-485. EVSystems would need to develop a driver that could support this ASCII protocol but easily integrate with the GE Labwatch™ system that would be monitoring the tanks.

Advanced Production Systems, Inc. (APS) is a solution provider based in Louisville, Kentucky. APS has been providing solutions to the manufacturing industry since 1986 and is now positioned to help manufacturers and their associated trading partners capitalize on emerging economic and technological trends in manufacturing. Typical APS solutions have an emphasis on, 1) optimizing and automating manufacturing operations and processes, and 2) enhancing front-line employee productivity through better information flow and communication systems. A few of the manufacturing strategies APS focuses on include: Lean Manufacturing, Real-time Data Collection, Error-Proofing, Traceability, Product Quality Tracking, OEE Analysis and Process/Machine Automation.

Alyeska Pipeline Service Company (APSC) is the operator of one of the largest pipeline systems in the world. The Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) stretches 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope through rugged and beautiful terrain to Valdez the northernmost ice-free port in North America. Since TAPS startup in 1977 APSC has successfully transported over 15-billion barrels of oil through the pipeline.

A leading automotive manufacturer desired to maximize supply chain efficiency in their newest automotive manufacturing facility in North America. With twenty-one of their key suppliers located in close proximity to the main plant, work-in-process buffers were very short. Real-time data exchange between the automation systems of suppliers and the manufacturer was essential so the solution would need to be highly reliable and would need to securely pass data through a firewall.

Proton Energy Systems and Northern Power, both wholly owned subsidiaries of Distributed Energy Systems (Nasdaq: DESC) were designing and building a hydrogen fueling station to be installed in New York State. The system would generate hydrogen on site from electricity and water using Proton Energy Systems' H-Series electrolyzer (hydrogen generator).

Advanced Monitoring Technologies Inc. (AMT) provides cost effective control solutions with energy-saving control logic for refrigeration plants and ice arenas. They are on the cutting edge of energy-saving technology and were recognized by Canada's National Research Council in 2003 as a finalist for the Canadian Innovation Award for Sustainable Development.

CRG Logics, Inc an OEM supplying auxiliary blending and material handling equipment for the plastics industry specializes in integrated, PLC-based control of continuous loss in weight gravimetric blending systems. They have a line of Simplicity series vibratory feeder continuous gravimetric blenders but also provide PLC-based control retrofits of blenders produced by other manufacturers. Regardless of whether it is a new system or retrofit, CRG Logics, Inc. knew customers wanted reliable equipment that is simple to operate, yet accurate and affordable.

EVermont is a nonprofit R&D organization working with engineering firms, energy companies and vehicle manufacturers to spearhead design, development and evaluation of new technologies and to integrate existing technologies into alternatively fueled vehicles. Proton Energy Systems and Northern Power, both wholly owned subsidiaries of Distributed Energy Systems (Nasdaq: DESC), were contracted by EVermont to build an advanced demonstration hydrogen fueling station in Burlington, VT. The project was partially funded through the U.S. Department of Energy's Hydrogen Program.

The SCHMIDT Technology PRC4000 6-axis ServoPress controller is an "open source" logic and servo control unit that provides sequencing, calculating, process monitoring, SPC, and motion control, as well as a built-in HMI. This controller also contains an OPC server that is used as an interface to allow for real-time exchanging of data with OPC clients. By using an OPC interface, any word or Boolean information can be easily exchanged between the SCHMIDT controller and another PC-based control, HMI, or PLC.

Wally is a Monaco based shipbuilder known for some of the finest sailing and power vessels in the world. The 118 WallyPower is one of the fastest pleasure yachts over 100' in the world. With a normal cruising speed of over 60 knots (70 mph!) this boat challenges the concepts of traditional nautical travel.

Three Vericor Power Systems TF-50 Gas Turbine Engines that are rated for 5,600 horsepower and weigh approximately 1,500 pounds, power the 118 Wallypower. With  a combined total of 16,800 horsepower she travels the sea with impressive speed, power, and comfort.