Of Safety, Sustainability and Integrated Architecture
Machine builders know what they need to do. Build machines that improve productivity and, while they’re at it, find the means to reduce the total cost to design, develop and deliver this high-performance equipment.

At Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair 2009 event this week in Anaheim, Calif., a range of panel discussions and presentations with global machine builders, users and system builders discussed these issues and how an integrated approach can affect future successes.

Even defining "machine performance" has its nuances. "You have to look at machine performance as holding market value," said Andy Pringle, engineering director at converting machine–maker PCMC. "Customers come to you asking for a machine that gives them a fair return based on the investment they make."

Roman Kaiser, president, Grenzebach Automation GmbH, put it simply: "Automation performance is giving the customer exactly what he needs and wants."

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"There’s no walking away from the machine for an OEM." PCMC’s Andy Pringle was among the machine builders who discussed how Rockwell Automation’s Integrated Architecture helps to meet end–users’ expectations over the life of their machines.

Safety Starring in Efficiency and Sustainability Roles
Protecting people and assets has been safety’s longstanding supporting role, so it may be surprising to many folks that safety is taking center stage in more efficiency and sustainability projects and programs.

"Safety is no longer just about the safety of individual machines. It’s also becoming about improving overall functional safety, efficiency, reducing scrap and improving sustainability," says Tim Roback, safety systems marketing manager in Rockwell Automation’s control and visualization division. "This means that safety is becoming an integral part of many machine–building efforts earlier in the concept or design stages, and then also throughout the whole life cycle of those machines."

Roback conducted tours of Rockwell Automation’s established and emerging safety solutions on the exhibition floor at its Automation Fair 2009 event this week at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.

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"Safety is no longer just about individual machines." Rockwell Automation’s Tim Roback explained how individual machine safety has become intertwined with issues of overall functional safety, as well as efforts to improve efficiency, reduce scrap and improve sustainability.

Business Metrics Driving Plant–Wide Control and Optimization
"We are extremely pleased with the response of the market to the introduction of PlantPAx–it has really stuck," said Ken Deken, Rockwell Automation vice president for portfolio management. "We struggled with how to explain it for a while, but we’ve now made it clear that it is a plant–wide control and optimization system that is characterized specifically for the process industries–batch, continuous and hybrid."

Walt Boyes, editor–in–chief of Control, caught up with Deken at this week’s Automation Fair 2009 to see how market acceptance of the PlantPAx vision has progressed since the company announced it at last year’s Automation Fair. Steve Pulsifer, director of process market development, and Scott Anthony, global commercial program manager for process automation, also joined the conversation.

Pulsifer pointed out that he believes that it is the tremendous growth in computing power that today allows PlantPAx to be a truly distributed system.

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"Plant–wide control is a concept whose time has come." Rockwell Automation’s Ken Deken on the growing acceptance of the company’s Integrated Architecture and PlantPAx vision.

Life Sciences Face New Challenges with New Solutions
The challenges of global competition, higher production costs and increasingly stringent environmental standards need to be met by companies in the life–sciences industry. That means streamlining manufacturing processes while minimizing water, energy and material costs.

Challenges for life–sciences companies include managing patent expiration, reducing time–to–market, managing the high level of attrition in the R&D pipeline, reducing cost and productivity within the constraints of compliance, creating sustainable manufacturing processes and addressing the issues created by consolidations driven by mergers and acquisitions.

"Very often a product can fail after $900 million has been spent on it, so there’s a huge risk," warned Paul Greene, business manager, global solutions, at Rockwell Automation. "From a cost and pipeline perspective, you’re seeing a lot of consolidation. It’s creating an enormously diverse manufacturing network. In the pharmaceutical industry, there are potentially harmful byproducts, so we’re also seeing a lot more focus on end–of–line treatment."

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"Just looking at a product doesn’t tell you if it’s an original or it’s a counterfeit." Sandro Gisler of Bosch Packaging Solutions discussed his company’s implementation of a track-and-trace system developed for life–sciences industry clients.

City of Oxnard Turns Wastewater Fresh
Fresh water is a precious commodity, and we can’t take it for granted just because it’s been so inexpensive for so long. Ways to stretch our global fresh water resources include conservation, using it more efficiently, desalting it and even directly recycling wastewater into very high–quality drinkable water.

This was the main message delivered by the presenters at the Water Wastewater Industry Forum at Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair 2009 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.

First up, Dr. Val Klump, director of the Great Lakes Water Institute at the University of Wisconsin Madison, reported that population growth, climate change, overdrawing of underground aquifers, pollution and other factors are quickly depleting the 0.34% of the planet’s water that’s available as fresh.

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"Rockwell Automation and its products have really measured up to the test." Ken Ortega, of the city of Oxnard, Calif., related the municipality’s success in converting wastewater to drinking–water quality levels.

Theater Showcases Benefits of Plant–Wide Optimization
Four theater presentations on the theme of plant–wide optimization provided a dramatic explanation of just what is possible in manufacturing today. The series of presentations was given in the exhibit–floor theater at Automation Fair 2009 this week in Anaheim, Calif.

Mike Burrows, Rockwell Automation marketing director, Integrated Architecture, first gave an overview of plant–wide optimization and its impact on time to market, productivity and supply chain, asset optimization, life–cycle cost and reliability.

He emphasized how smart, safe sustainable growth initiatives in process, information and safety can be enhanced by Integrated Architecture.

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Rockwell Automation’s vision of plant-wide optimization encompasses all plant assets throughout their life cycle.

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