ABB has established a foundation to honour the achievements of the former chairman and CEO, Jýrgen Dormann. The foundation will offer scholarships, starting in 2008, to talented engineering students in different parts of the world who need financial support to enable them to study. ABB announced in May 2007 that it would set up the not-for-profit foundation with total funding of 20 million Swiss francs ($16,6 million).
The partnering universities in the first year are based in Brazil, China, Egypt, India and Poland. Additional universities and/or countries may be selected in subsequent years.
The application process for scholarships is expected to begin around December 2007. About 50 students are expected to benefit from the scholarships in the first five-year period.
Advantech Industrial Automation Group plans to become a globally integrated enterprise (GIE) in order to meet the challenges and opportunities driven by the advent of Web 2.0 and an increased global business climate.
Advantech's CEO, K.C. Liu, has cited the emergence of Web 2.0 as a catalyst for transnational competition, and noted that increasing industrial globalisation is making it necessary for entrepreneurs to think hard about restructuring by devoting enterprise resources in the most strategically competitive places.
An all-round structural reorganisation will be launched in second half of 2007 to stimulate direct marketing deployment and strategic development; the goal is to create a more globalised and integrated organisation.
Emerson has announced it has acquired Decision Management International (DMI), which becomes part of Emerson Process Management, adding leading software and expertise, including electronic management of workflow, materials, equipment, personnel, and documentation, to Emerson's realtime manufacturing solutions. The acquisition includes all DMI technologies, applications, services, and employees.
Compliance Suite by DMI software is tightly integrated with Emerson's DeltaV Batch software as part of PlantWeb digital architecture. The technology provides high data integrity in paperless manufacturing solutions and an integrated, electronic batch record that improves overall cycle times and reduces manufacturing costs. Data integrity is a critical part of operations for manufacturers that must comply with requirements in regulated industries, such as life sciences, specialty chemical, and food and beverage production.
Emerson and DMI have had a close relationship since 2002, delivering integrated manufacturing solutions to process facilities.
Emerson and Motorola have entered into a definitive agreement under which Emerson will acquire Motorola's Embedded Communications Computing (ECC) business for $350 million in cash. Motorola's ECC business, which had 2006 revenue of approximately $520 million, will strengthen Emerson's position in the $6 billion-and-growing merchant embedded computing industry. On completion of the transaction, Motorola's ECC business will become part of Emerson Network Power.
Motorola's ECC business is a leading provider of embedded computing products and services to communication infrastructure and equipment manufacturers in telecommunications, medical imaging, defence and aerospace and industrial automation.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
Endress+Hauser Wetzer has acquired Pyrotemp Services of Johannesburg as from 1 September 2007. E+H Wetzer specialises in industrial temperature measurement. The products of Pyrotemp, primarily temperature sensors, are mainly used in South African primary industries. The acquisition is in line with the strategy of Endress+Hauser Wetzer to serve customers speedily and competently as a local partner. Pyrotemp is a long-time business partner of Endress+Hauser.
GE Fanuc Automation has announced that it and solution provider Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro will work together globally to provide the automotive industry with solutions in the production management area. This relationship will provide significant value to customers looking to integrate their Production Management and ERP systems by leveraging Wipro's knowledge of GE Fanuc Production Management solutions and their expertise in ERP.
The scope of the agreement covers services, point solution development and joint go-to-market activities. Wipro's knowledge of supply chain, plant floor operations, enterprise technologies and business processes will enable timely and effective deployment of GE Fanuc Proficy Production Management solutions. The Proficy family of products includes: Proficy Tracker, Proficy Plant Applications, Proficy HMI/scada CIMPLICITY and iFIX, as well as Proficy Historian, Proficy Change Management and Proficy Real-Time Information Portal.
Honeywell has become a founding member of the ISA Security Compliance Institute, an organisation of industrial technology vendors and end users dedicated to establishing specifications and processes for testing and certifying control systems products.
The institute will work to establish an ISASecure designation, which will identify and promote standards-compliant process control products and systems.
Institute members will develop compliance requirements based on the emerging ISA99 and other relevant security standards. Using these requirements, the institute will derive and publish compliance test specifications covering everything from the device-level products up to gateway interfaces, business planning and logistics systems.
Invensys Process Systems China recently delivered a fully-engineered DYNSIM-based operator training simulator (OTS) to BP Zhuhai (BPZ) for the No. 2 purified terephthalic acid plant project. The 900 000 ton per year plant is located in Zhuhai, in the Guangdong province of China.
The training simulator was built using advanced DYNSIM dynamic simulation technology from SimSci-Esscor. The program applies first-principles chemical engineering modelling techniques and rigorous thermodynamic data to provide detailed unit operation process modelling coupled with an exact control replication. The OTS delivered to BPZ includes interfaces to the distributed control system and safety integrated system simulations.
National Instruments and the University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering are working together to offer electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS) students a new graphical system design environment in which to design, prototype and deploy their projects. The NI Embedded Systems Laboratory provides experiential research opportunities for upper division undergraduate and graduate students.
All students in the UC Berkeley EECS department, which recently was ranked No. 2 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report's undergraduate and graduate college rankings, will work in the lab.
Students will focus on RF, embedded systems design, and test and mechatronics topics while receiving real-world experience in the design, prototyping and deployment stages of embedded systems. The lab includes 12 workstations, and four of those offer NI PXI chassis with modular instrumentation including arbitrary waveform generators, digitisers, multimeters, power supplies and USB data acquisition hardware.
Schneider Electric has partnered with the Open DeviceNet Vendor Association (ODVA) to bring together Industrial Ethernet protocols EtherNet/IP and Modbus TCP with the aim of creating a common, worldwide Industrial Ethernet standard for plant floor communications. Since both these protocols will be supported in the enhanced standard, current users are assured of future interoperability with multivendor systems. Schneider Electric currently offers an HMI product that supports EtherNet/IP. Other devices, such as I/O, drives and safety controller products that support EtherNet/IP, will be available later this year. These devices will also be compatible with existing Modbus TCP devices and systems. The partnership with ODVA expands the company's Transparent Ready Web-enabled power and control technology. By supporting EtherNet/IP and the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) model, Transparent Ready technology can take advantage of CIP Sync, CIP Motion, and CIP Safety profiles and protocols.
Waters Corporation has announced that subsidiary Environmental Resource Associates (ERA) will collaborate with Scott Specialty Gases to provide a comprehensive air and emissions proficiency testing (PT) program. Scott will team with ERA to provide volatile organic standards for methods TO14 and TO15 that will complement ERA's common air and emissions PT standards. ERA will sell the standards and administer the proficiency testing studies for industrial and contract environmental laboratories responsible for air and emissions testing.
Proficiency testing is widely employed by analytical laboratories testing soil, water and waste-water samples. State and federal regulations require the use of PT standards to demonstrate the accuracy of the analytical measurement process.
Wonderware has announced the release of four new DA Servers for connectivity to Omron programmable logic controllers (PLCs). These advanced device connectivity servers are designed and tested to support the Omron FINS Serial, FINS Ethernet, HostLink Serial and E5 Series protocols for communicating to a variety of Omron PLCs and temperature controllers. The new servers are compatible with Wonderware's DA Server Runtime Components 2.0 SP1, which significantly increases connectivity performance.
These DA Servers comply with the OPC 2.05 protocol, enabling interoperability with any OPC client application. OPC clients can browse the DA Server's configured tag database and obtain device tags for use in client applications.
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