Manufacturing execution systems (MES) can help manufacturers and other industrial organizations reduce costs while improving operations, collaboration, asset management, workflow, and safety.

Industry works diligently to increase the level of safety in process operations. Standards such as IEC61511, IEC61508, and ISA 84 provide practitioners direction and goals in the form of best practices for implementing safety technologies. Technology suppliers have addressed these standards head-on with sophisticated relays and logic solvers that have an out-standing record.

Huge piles of abandoned waste coal from historical mining operations in Pennsylvania pose a threat to the state’s water quality and public safety. While technologies are available to enable companies to burn the waste coal to produce electricity, due to the current availability of relatively low-cost shale gas, challenges remain to make this type of electric generation commercially viable.

Sensors are at the front line of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In the process industries, intelligent field devices are now the norm, even if end users don’t always use the diagnostic information provided by these devices. In the discrete industries, smart sensors with self-diagnostic and digital network capabilities are addressing key end user requirements for reduced maintenance, increased overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and the need to digitally capture the knowledge of a rapidly shrinking skilled workforce.

Distributed analytics extends data processing and computing close to or at the data source. In many instances, data for distributed analytics comes from IIoT devices located at the edge of the operational network. These devices can be located near, or embedded in, a wide variety of edge machines and equipment, such as robots, fleet vehicles, and distributed microgrids.