I have recently gotten a few requests to help setup communication between an Allen-Bradley PLC and a B&R PLC. B&R Industrial Automation is becoming more popular in North America, as more OEMs are opting to go with the Austrian controls company recently acquired by ABB.

Upgrading your obsolete control system is a helpful 7-part blog series addressing the important technical aspects of upgrades and written by an industry professional with over 25 years of experience.

Digital security is a big deal these days. Your whole plant is run by computers. Computers break, software gets corrupted and voila, your whole plant is down and you’re hemorrhaging cash.

Custom software applications can provide great benefit to plant automation and engineering teams. Any task that includes the management of large amounts of data, repetitive entries or utilizes the same information in multiple places lends itself to developing software that can automate these activities.  The benefits from a well

In Part 1  and Part 2, I covered general preparation and site-specific preparations for Remote Site Deployments.  In part 3, I would like to briefly recap that information and share with you some lessons learned from my own Man Camp experiences.

Operational Technology (OT) networks for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) exist at every industrial facility. These sites exist for all manufacturers, both public and privately owned. These sites all want their ICS to perform with high availability, the way it was designed.

Upgrading your obsolete control system is a helpful 7-part blog series addressing the important technical aspects of upgrades and written by an industry professional with over 25 years of experience.

In Part 1, I discussed How to Bid and How to Prepare for deployment to a generic remote site.  Part 2 covers some site specifics that will be important for your expectations and success.

A Data Historian is a type of time-series database designed to efficiently collect and store process data from a SCADA or automation system. The stored data can then be used to display trends of process data on charts, create reports, or perform data analysis.

They are called “Man-Camps” for a reason – you don’t often see women in them.  Some see only a few hearty and adventurous women.  Some never do.  Most are far from any place you might consider to be a town or village.  Lots of them are in tough locations – deserts, mountains, permafrost.