Wayne Labs has more than 30 years of editorial experience in industrial automation. He served as senior technical editor for I&CS/Control Solutions magazine for 18 years where he covered software, control system hardware and sensors/transmitters. Labs ran his own consulting business and contributed feature articles to Electronic Design, Control, Control Design, Industrial Networking and Food Engineering magazines. Before joining Food Engineering, he served as a senior technical editor for Omega Engineering Inc. Labs also worked in wireless systems and served as a field engineer for GE’s Mobile Communications Division and as a systems engineer for Bucks County Emergency Services. In addition to writing technical feature articles, Wayne covers FE’s Engineering R&D section.
Food loss and waste (FLW) happens on every-level in the supply chain. The impacts of FLW are devastating and, thankfully, can be avoided through swift and direct action on every level.
Smartphones and other devices make accessing IT/OT systems on the plant floor easier, but the use of personal devices may cause security and legal problems.
Smartphones on the plant floor: Bring your own device (BYOD) or use company-owned devices? This question no doubt conjures up a multitude of things—good and bad—for personal devices on the plant floor, for example, connecting people with equipment and company data and providing workers with actionable information on the process and maintenance to make good decisions.
Shrimp farming comes with complications from contamination to environmental impacts. Atarraya has create d an alternative method to farming shrimp through automated aquaculture. The company’s Shrimpbox aims to be a modular and scalable solution to traditional shrimp farming.
In the last few years, it seems that hurricanes, tornadoes and resultant flooding have become stronger and stronger. Maybe chalk it up to a warming planet, which amplifies the power of these storms.
A concept by a 20th century architect points toward today’s digital transformation—bringing all systems in a plant together as a single integrated tool.
Known for its industrial line of printers, Videojet has extended networking options for users who need wireless connections but are squeamish about connecting their printers via just Wi-Fi—or Ethernet cabling—to internal plant or enterprise networks.
The problem with a single article describing what’s new in saving energy is that by now we know where most of the energy waste is, and we’ve probably already fixed those issues—picked the low-hanging fruit.