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Instrumentation and Control News
See Archive Page for earlier news.

28/1/99

• Europe and America - A new report from International Data Corporation (IDC) reveals that the European IT market is now more closely integrated with the US than ever before, and this is a trend which now appears irreversible. As the IT market becomes a global market, vendors must thrive in both continents in order to succeed. US-based vendors are increasingly dominant over here - and Europe-based vendors are increasingly active over there! Will sombody tell the politicos?
• New automation resource and training centre - Tánaiste (Deputy head of Government) Mary Harney officially opened the Resource and Training Centre for Automation at the University of Limerick (Irl). The centre is a joint initiative between Festo and the university. Festo also provides an extensive range of industrial automation training courses and many Irish crafts people and engineers have received London City and Guilds accreditation through Festo Ireland's training programmes. Speaking at the opening Ms Harney said, "The promotion of close collaboration between industry and the third-level sector is a vital ingredient of our national innovation programme. The growing linkage between business and third-level colleges is most encouraging; the linkage between the University of Limerick and Festo reinforces this very desirable co-operation".

• New accessory - Bustronic Corporation has introduced a new accessory designed for fast, easy and accurate testing of circuit cards. The product, the VME64x extender board, compliments their VME64x backplane, introduced earlier this month (see 12/1/99).
• LonWorks moves in Europe - Graham Nichols has joined Echelon as UK Country Manager, Leif Wicklund, based in Sweden, is Director of Sales, Wouter Smit is Sales Executive especially in the building industry and will be based in the Netherlands. Bob Warden leaves Europe for the States as Director of Corporate Sales. Finally the Offices of Echelon EMEA (Europe Middlee Esat & Africa) has changed to Printerweg 3, 3821 AP Amersfoort, The Netherlands; Tel: +31 33 450 4070 and Fax: +31 33 450 4079.
  Information on fieldbus on our Fieldbus Page
• Electronic gauging system for India - Solartron has received its largest single order from India for 16 hydrastep electronic gauging systems for boiler protection at Vindhyachal II and Unchahar II power stations.

• Another merger - Steeplechase Software, Inc has announced that it has acquired Ann Arbor Automation as a wholly owned subsidiary. The acquisition immediately expands Steeplechase's application expertise and implementations capabilities so that Steeplechase can provide the expertise to teach, demonstrate, and deliver the most productive PC-based control practices across its customer base.

• Marriage approved - ABB has announced that it has received approval from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to complete its acquisition of Elsag Bailey Process Automation. With the receipt of the FTC approval, all conditions to the tender offer have been satisfied and ABB has announced that it will now close the deal. As a condition of the FTC approval, ABB has agreed to divest Elsag Bailey's gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer business, which has annual revenues of roughly US$50 million and employs some 340 people.
• Digital oscilloscope - The DL1520 digital oscilloscope series manufactured by Yokagowa, has been repriced and reconfigured to include a number of new features. See their British Site.

• New study on renewable energy - A new study by Frost & Sullivan, the international market consulting company, observes substantial differences from region to region with respect to levels of maturity in the small and medium biomass boiler systems markets. Manufacturers located in the more established regional markets in Europe, such as Austria and Finland, are increasingly penetrating the less developed regional markets, such as the UK and Germany. Domestic manufacturers in these latter markets are expected to face an intensifying level of competition from these more experienced suppliers. (See Europe's first wood fired power station 18/1/99 below!)

• Control systems at mTEC'99 - Among a range of new products on the Lucas Exhibit is their Schaevitz range of P1200 pressure transmitters and transducers.
• Europes first wood-fired power station - Two Elsag Bailey companies have joined forces to supplu turnkey engineering, supply and installation of Elsag Bailey DCS - Freelandc 2000 etc to the new Biomass power station near Selby in Yorkshire in England. The Netherlands and British operations are co-operrating on this project.
• Ministepping indexer-drive - The new PDFX package from Parker Hannifin, combines a high performance ministepping drive unit and intelligent switch-mode power supply with state-of-the-art indexer.

• New development in stepper drive development - Smartdrive, is using the 1999 Drives & Control Exhibition (Mar 16-18) to demonstrate a new development in integrated stepper-motor driver/controller systems. The new package known as Taranis, uses digital signal processing (DSP) to control the switchinbg of the power devices, allowing sophisticated control of motor currents and greatly enhanced motor performance. Call Dennis Murphy.
• Level gauging for Korean marine LNG carriers - Whessoe Varec is supplying level gauging systems for two LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) carriers being built by Hyundai Heavy Industries.

• ESB SEEKS IR16M TO MEET COMPETITION IN DEREGULATED WORLD - The ESB (Irish electricity board) claims that it requires an extra IR16m in revenue if it is to retain market share in a deregulated environment. This can be achieved if the Government allows a 2.5% to 3% increase in the price paid by domestic customers. According to an ESB spokesman, industrial consumers are subsiding domestic users. The company has said that it must build a new IR250m gas power plant by the end of 2001 in order to meet demand. Peak demand for electricity in the Republic is currently 3,500 megawatts but international standards dictate that the ESB should have 30% excess capacity. The current excess is just 22% at peak times and, in view of projected increases in demand, construction of a new generating station must begin before summer if deadlines are to be met.

• Backplane Equipped With Onboard Electronic Daisy Chaining - Bustronic Corporation, designer of high-performance backplanes, today announced the expansion of its family of VME products to include a standard VME64x backplane series. Incorporating full power capacity plus full stripline design, their VME64x series also offers ease-of-use and cost benefits with onboard electronic daisy chaining (EDC) standard with every model. EDC, an electronic circuitry configuration in which vacant slots are bypassed automatically, is said to offer greater convenience to system operators.

• ProfiBus scanner module for A-B PLC - SST has developed a ProfiBus scanner module for Allen-Bradley's PLC-5 family of processors. The scanner will be shown at Hannover Messe 19/24 April.
• New People - Malcolm Coster's appointment as chaoirman of The MTL Group is a keystone of the group's new global strategy. He has begun laying the foundations to grow the group by restructuring and extending product and market areas acording to a recent release.
  The Fieldbus Foundation has announced the appointment of Larry Rice, (Senior VP & General Manager Peperl & Fuchs Inc) as co-chairman of its North American End-User Council. He joins Joe Fuchs (BP Oil) as co-chair.

• Tail Gas Analyzer - Applied Analytics has just introduced a new revolutionary tail gas analyzer. While previous generations were based on extractive systems that required transporting a sample to an external analyzer, and the removal and control of sulfur vapor levels, the new TLG-837 uses mathematical tools and superior optics to achieve better analytical results.

• Motor interface for decentralised motor control - The new Han Q 8/0 from Harting is a motor interface connector designed to aid the implimentation of decentralised motor control with greatly reduced wiring requirements.
• New manufacturing systems business unit formed - Wonderware Corporation has formed a new business unit, Wonderware Manufacturing Systems, to provide manufacturing productivity applications and consulting services to global manufacturing companies.
• Compact load monitor - It is now possible to make substantial savings in industrial processes, by using an electronic load monitor to protect sensitive process machinery that extracts all necessary information directly from the asynchronous motor. Emotron offers an entire range of small and simple load monitors that can be used in basically any industrial application.

• Flow chart programming with increased productivity and ease-of-use - Steeplechase Software, Inc., has announced the release Version 4.0 of its Visual Logic Controller software, which has an array of features that will revolutionize the industry standard for flow chart programming. With the release of Version 4.0, Steeplechase sets a new milestone in its offering of productivity tools.
• OMAC Group poised to deliver open breaking control justification model - The Business Justification Working Group is approaching a critical milestone in its drive to deliver a quantifiable Cost/Benefit Model for open automation controls. With the November 1998 release of Version 2 of their draft open control justification document now behind them, the Business Justification WG is driving towards release of its open control lifecycle model arid quantitative cost/benefit software tool in the first quarter of 1999. The results of the Business Justification group's efforts reflect important recognition that open architecture control is a means of achieving business objectives and not an end in itself. Final details will be published in an OMAC white paper scheduled for publication in February. Here are the Draft Paper

• New Editor - ISA the international society for instrumentation and control, has named Gregory S. Hale Editor of InTech, their leading periodical.Greg Hale comes to InTech from Post-Newsweek's Reseller Magazine where he was Editor in Chief. Greg's extensive editorial, web and management experience includes executive editorial positions with CMP's Computer Reseller News and Tour & Travel News, the Times Herald Record (Middletown, NY) The Knickerbocker News (Albany, NY), The Boston Globe and other New England newspapers.
  Jim Strothman, Editor til now, will continue in a non-management role with Journals and will especially work with ISA on-line publications.
• Teach yourself - A new range of self-learn software packages for industrial automation and process control is to be launched in several markets in Europe. Written and produced by P & L Automatiok AB, the LearnWARE(tm) suite of programmes is already in wide use in Scandinavia, where over 8000 new users were registered in 1997 and 1998. These packages (Windows multimedia based) offer students individual tuition right through the program, allowing different rates of progress and different lines of study depending on the student's ability. Animation and simulation make the training very realistic and motivate the student, stimulating experimental learning, where the student can search for the answers to his or her questions using the built-in search engine.

• Use your GSM! - FF-Automation tells us that GSM telephone technology can now be efectively utilised in conjunction with AutoLog PLCs. This almost universal technology (except for North America!) makes it possible to receive status information and alarms no matter where you are.
• Position and Velocity Sensors at shows - ASM, one of the worlds leading manufacturers of cable actuated position and velocity sensors will be showing a selection of position sensors with ranges from 50mm to 40,000mm and outputs 0-10v, 4-20mA (2 or 3 wire), adsi, Incremental Encoder (SSI or Parrallel), ProfiBus, Can-bus or Interbus-S at the MTEC'99 (Birmingham - 17-18 Feb) and Drives and Controls'99 (Drives & Controls (16-18 March) in Telford.
• On-line fieldbus product catalogue expands - The on-line member products catalogue of Fieldbus Foundation has been expanded to accomodate the growing number of registered FF products. This catalogue contains complete information on registered and registration-scheduled field devices, complient host systems and ancilliary products.
  See our Fieldbus Page
• "Simple, adaptive, plug and play multivariable control - " Process industry users can easily and effectively control both simple and complex processes using CyboCon 2.0 and CyboCon Pro, two new, enhanced versions of General Cybernation Group Inc (CyberSoft).

• Welcome to the EURO - The Euro became the official currency of 11 countries in Europe this morning. The complete changeover will have been completed by 2002. The IeP is worth 0.787564. Britain has decided not to join this new venture which includes Austria, Benelux, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Finland and Ireland. See our EURO page.
• NAMUR and WIB liaise - The mission and objectives of NAMUR and WIB justify a closer relationship between the two associations. "Liason activities will concentrate on the effective actions and communications aimed at improving the quality and 'fitness of purpose' of instruments and systems used in the process industry, and on obtaining an international profile on behalf of its members."

The Instrumentation Signpost has interesting pointers for the I&C Professional.

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