Schneider Electric has released new features in its EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS, the company's flagship distributed control system.

EcoStruxure is Schneider Electric's IoT-enabled, open and interoperable system architecture and platform used across connected products, edge control, apps, analytics and services. The EcoStruxure architecture helps enable scalable design and operation of connected systems with cybersecurity built in at each layer.

Rockwell Automation announced new power ranges and motor control capabilities for its Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 6000 medium-voltage AC drives. This latest release provides a wider voltage range (2.4 to 11 kV) and provides 100 percent starting torque, leveraging sensorless vector control. The drives are designed for both variable and constant torque applications in heavy industries, providing new motor control options for compressors, pumps and fans.

Infor announced that Infor Government Software as a Service (SaaS) (IGS) featuring Infor Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) has received FedRAMP Ready status by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). FedRAMP is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.

In 2016, many machine tool manufacturers in Europe were concerned about the significant slowdown of the Chinese manufacturing market.  This also led to declining exports to the Emerging Asia market.  Starting in the 4^th quarter of 2016 and continuing in 2017 it seemed this trend has taken another direction.  For many machine tool companies, exports to China and the Asian region are moving in just one direction - Up.