Pace - September 2016

SEPTEMBER 2016 | VOL.69 NO.8 | Est. 1953

INSIDE PACE

Zenith Awards Review

The SCADA market

Water management

All the winners & grinners from the 2016 PACE Zenith Awards

Where the global SCADA market is heading

How to prevent the cost of leaking water pipes

L’Ethernet haute vitesse universel Universal Contrôle/commande Beckhoff sur base PC et EtherCAT

high-speed Ethernet.

SEPTEMBER 2016 | VOL.69 NO.8 | Est. 1953

Post Print Approved PP100008186

INSIDE PACE

Zenith Awards Review

The SCADA market

Water management

All the winners & grinners from the 2016 PACE Zenith Awards

Where the global SCADA market is heading

How to prevent the cost of leaking water pipes

The amazing world of sensors EXCLUSIVE: How machines destroy and create jobs

CONTENTS

Managing Director: John Murphy Managing Editor: Branko Miletic Ph: (02) 8484 0976 branko.miletic@primecreative.com.au

Journalist: Stephanie Stefanovic Ph: (02) 8484 0769 stephanie.stefanovic@primecreative.com.au

IN THIS ISSUE

Sales/Advertising: David Dodd Ph: (02) 8484 0805 david.dodd@primecreative.com.au

14

Production Coordinator: Kristina Peric Ph: (02) 8484 0998 kristina.peric@primecreative.com.au Art Director: Michelle Weston Designer: James Finlay, Blake Storey, Sarah Doyle SUBSCRIPTIONS: $99 pa incl GST NZ: $A109 pa & OS: $A119 pa Subscriptions: Gordon Watson Ph: (03) 9690 8766

18 News 8

Quality Assurance 34

Sensors 10

Industry 4.0 36

Utilities 18

Cybersecurity 41

A breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence Copyright PACE is owned by Prime Creative Media and published by John Murphy. All material in PACE is copyright and no part may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic or mechanical including information and retrieval systems) without written permission of the publisher. The Editor welcomes contributions but reserves the right to accept or reject any material. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information, Prime Creative Media will not accept responsibility for errors or omissions or for any consequences arising from reliance on information published.

The opinions expressed in PACE are not necessarily the opinions of, or endorsed by the publisher unless otherwise stated.

The latest stories form the exciting world of sensors IoT transforming the utilities sector SCADA 20

The global trends in the SCADA market Automation 22

© Copyright Prime Creative Media, 2016

How machines create and destroy jobs

Articles All articles submitted for publication become the property of the publisher. The Editor reserves the right to adjust any article to conform with the magazine format.

Power Management 24

Is Tesla the best choice for home energy solutions?

Head Office 11-15 Buckhurst St South Melbourne VIC 3205 P: +61 3 9690 8766 enquiries@primecreative.com.au http://www.australianmining.com.au

2016 Zenith Awards Review 26

The complete round up from this year’s Zenith Awards

Sydney Office Tower 1, Level 13, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067, Australia

34

Either make it properly or not at all The latest trends in Industry 4.0 What to do with your network when a Trojan comes along?

Water Management 43

How to detect leaky pipes early Level Management 45

Vega’s new radar level sensor close up IT Networks 46

Securing your corporate network New Products 49

The latest new products for the process and control industry

Average Net Distribution

ON THE COVER

Period ending Sept ’15 5,521

Post Print Approved PP100008186

INSIDE PACE

PRINTED BY: MANARK PRINTING 28 Dingley Ave Dandenong VIC 3175 Ph: (03) 9794 8337

Zenith Awards Review

The SCADA market

Water management

All the winners & grinners from the 2016 PACE Zenith Awards

Where the global SCADA market is heading

How to prevent the cost of leaking water pipes

The amazing world of sensors EXCLUSIVE: How machines destroy and create jobs

4 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

The wonder of neural sensors

SEPTEMBER 2016 | VOL.69 NO.8 | Est. 1953

Therapeutic modulation of the activity of the body’s peripheral nervous system (PNS) holds a world of potential for mitigating and treating disease and other health conditions—if researchers can figure out a feasible longterm mechanism for communicating with the nerves and pathways that make up the body’s information superhighway between the spinal cord and other organs. What does “feasible” look like? Small is the best start—small

enough to someday perhaps be injected or ingested—but also precise, wireless, stable, and comfortable for the user. Modern electrodebased recording technologies feature some, but not all of these qualities. Hardwired solutions present challenges for chronic use, while existing wireless solutions cannot be adequately scaled down to the sizes needed to record activity from small-diameter nerves and record independently from many discrete sites within a nerve bundle.

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COMMENT

EDITOR’S MESSAGE

Branko Miletic Editor

There goes another Zenith Awards night to be proud of

The 2016 PACE Zenith Awards have come and gone, and the general consensus by most of the guests revolved around how successful the night was.

Held in the hallowed grounds of the MCG, and being the 13th awards that PACE magazine has organised in itself shows both a high degree of commitment by us as a publisher, as well as an ongoing resilience and support by an industry that is in the throes of what many commentators are calling an era of disruption.

This should be an indicator to both supporters and detractors of the Zenith Awards as to how much PACE magazine is valued as the voice of the process and control industry as well as how much the industry is growing and changing.

The fact is that with the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and a host of other industry mini revolutions now happening concurrently across the world, we will eventually see process and control technology expand to just about every part of our lives.

Maybe ‘process and control’ is also a moniker that needs updating, however to what exactly won’t be apparent until this sensor and data-led metamorphosis we are now witnessing is almost over.

6 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

Regardless to what this industry gets renamed, it is true that its most exciting years are yet to come.

Which brings me back the recent Zenith Awards. As one of the guests said to me at the end of the night: “Thank God you guys still do these awards - our industry needs more awards like this.”

Moving forward, for next years’ Zenith Awards, which will be held in Sydney, I think we will be seeing a number of new categories along with (hopefully) many new entrants.

As for this years winning companies, Yokogawa,

Sage Automation, Enerpac, Scott Automation, SMC, Alliance Automation, Bestech, Successful Endeavours, Alliance Automation, Robotic Automation, and of course the outstanding individual winners Kayla Saggers and Peter Maasepp, I offer both hearty congratulations and my utmost in commendations.

To the entire Zenith Awards events team and my editorial and support staff, I would like to give you a huge thank you for all the help you have given me to ensure that these awards went off smoothly.

And for those who are thinking about nominating for next years Zenith Awards, well now is the time to start at least mentally preparing yourselves in deciding what product, project and category you are looking to enter.

As one of our recent Rio-bound Olympians said, “there is no such thing as an overnight success.” The same can be said of the PACE Zenith Awards. branko.miletic@ primecreative.com.au Like us on Facebook and join the conversation facebook.com/PACEtoday

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NEWS

IBM reaches breakthrough in artificial intelligence Phase-change neurons: A chip with large arrays of phase-change devices that store the state of artificial neuronal populations in their atomic configuration. Image: IBM

I

BM has brought artificial intelligence (AI) one step closer to reality by creating technology that imitates the brain’s neurons.

The company’s scientists have created randomly spiking neurons using phasechange materials to store and process data, which is a “significant step forward in the development of energy-efficient, ultra-dense integrated neuromorphic technologies for applications in cognitive computing,” according to the company.

These artificial neurons are able to mimic the human brain in the way that they store and process data, and like an actual brain, they use little energy. Until now, achieving this has been a significant challenge for scientists.

“We have been researching phasechange materials for memory applications for over a decade, and our progress in the last 24 months has been remarkable,” said IBM Fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou.

“In this period, we have discovered and published new memory techniques, including projected memory, stored three bits per cell in phase-change memory for the first 8 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

time, and now are demonstrating the powerful capabilities of phasechange-based artificial neurons, which can perform various computational primitives such as data-correlation detection and unsurpervised learning at high speeds using very little energy.”

According to the scientists, the artificial neurons consist of phase-change materials, including geranium antimony telluride, which exhibit two stable states, an amorphous one (without a clearly defined structure) and a crystalline one (with structure). These materials

From left to right, Abu Sebastian, Evangelos Eleftheriou Tomas Tuma, Angeliki Pantai and Manuel Le Gallo co-authored a paper in Nature Nanotechnology entitled Stochastic Phase-change Neurons. Image: IBM

are the basis of re-writable Blu-ray discs, however the artificial neurons do not store digital information; they are analog, just like the synapses and neurons in our biological brain.

In a published demonstration, the scientists applied a series of electrical pulses to the artificial neurons, which led to the progressive crystallisation of the phase-change material, causing the neuron to fire. In neuroscience, this function is known as the integrateand-fire property of biological neurons.

This is the foundation for event-based computation and is similar to how our brain triggers a response when we touch something hot.

Exploiting this integrate-and-fire property, even a single neuron can be used to detect patterns and discover correlations in real-time streams of event-based data, according to the scientists. For example, the artificial neurons could be used to detect patterns in financial transactions to find discrepancies or use data from social media to discover new cultural trends in real time. Large populations of these high-speed, low-energy nanoscale neurons could also be used in neuromorphic coprocessors with co-located memory and processing units.

The scientists have organised hundreds of artificial neurons into populations and used them to represent fast and complex signals.

Moreover, the artificial neurons have been shown to sustain billions of switching cycles, which would correspond to multiple years of operation at an update frequency of 100Hz. The energy required for each neuron update was less than five picojoules and the average power less than 120 microwatts – for comparison, 60 million microwatts are needed to power a 60 watt lightbulb. PACE

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SENSORS

Integrated networked sensors at the heart of industry 4.0 Advanced manufacturing systems, featuring state-of-the-art sensors and intelligent networking, are at the heart of the collection of big data and setting the pace for the achievements of Industry 4.0, writes Hartley Henderson.

M

ore information is being demanded from every level of the manufacturing process and the latest sensor technology as control devices enable this detailed level of information to be gathered.

This data is being provided in realtime for analysis and quick action to ensure that production facilities are working efficiently to capacity, quality assurance is maintained, and that production quantities are manufactured according to schedule. Significant potential savings include lower throughput times, fewer rejects, faster setup times and timely maintenance.

Based in the Melbourne suburb of Bayswater, Balluff specialises in industrial automation and the supply of advanced industrial sensing and networking devices.

The company’s marketing manager, Jim Wallace, said there continues to be enormous developments in distributed modular I/O technology. “Distributed I/O systems connected to an industrial network allow for I/O data to be spread across a machine and outside the cabinet, thus reducing the total component and hardware costs of the

system,” he told PACE. “The demand in the market for industrial networks is being driven by the need for more data from the factory floor with a view to increased productivity of equipment. Businesses are turning to distributed modular I/O solutions for improving their throughput and increasing their flexibility, while cutting costs in controls design and implementation.”

Wallace pointed out that with a centralised control cabinet strategy, while sensors, valves, and other electromechanical devices are out on the machine, the wires controlling their actions are routed back to the controls cabinet, which can be a long distance away, where the PLC or controller of the system resides.

“Alternatively, a distributed or machine-mount control strategy simplifies the overall machine design and build process. Central to the distributed architecture is the network or fieldbus system that allows for exchange of I/O amongst networked nodes. Today’s distributed modular systems eliminate wiring and enable a simplified control cabinet,” he said.

The IO-Link master is control system independent and can support standard IO, intelligent IO and analogue signals.

Benefits of IO-Link

Wallace added that distributed architecture becomes even more attractive when combined with IO-Link technology, which is a vendor-neutral and fieldbusneutral communications protocol for point-to-point communication.

“Specific benefits offered by IO-Link with a distributed controls strategy include modular machine design with increased I/O count and reduced cost per network node. Built-in flexibility for the future is offered plus the ability to handle any last minute change requirements more easily compared to the traditional cabinet-mount approach,” he said.

“Significant labour savings can also be achieved by simplifying complex connections. For example, with the traditional cabinet mount strategy, installing a single pneumatic valve bank could take 3-4 hours of labour, whereas with IO-Link valve connectors can be installed in a few minutes.

“IO-Link is the next generation of continuous improvement with flexible control architectures, easy and fast integration, diverse inspection options, visibility and traceability, and importantly, it can easily utilise your existing industrial network infrastructure.

“The plug and play nature of IO-Link means that devices can be used in one application, modified for another application, or moved to a better inspection location.

“The flexibility to plug any device, including standard discrete sensors, into an IO-Link master gives you virtually unlimited possibilities for control of error proofing applications like colour detection, linear measurement with lasers, ultrasonic and position transducers.”

Smart sensors

Engineering design time can also be reduced with easy smart sensor integration utilising IO-Link. Wallace said that smart measurement sensors 10 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

such as for pressure, temperature, distance of inclination measurement, vision or colour sensors, and even RFID read-write heads, are increasingly being used in today’s automation.

“No matter which vendor supplies these devices, as long as they are IO-Link capable they can be easily integrated into the distributed controls architecture,” he said.

“Industrial image processing using vision solutions meets the increasing demand in modern production facilities for maximum quality and greater flexibility. Vision sensors, for example, offer extremely efficient functions that can be flexibly combined for reliable defect detection, precision quality inspection, or for reliable reading and verification of codes.”

According to Wallace, intelligent, comprehensive networking of sensors, systems and bus technology is the way forward in automation technology.

Ever faster, more flexible, efficient, and variable production demands seamless communication from the sensor to the internet.

Balluff offers a wide range of sensors and systems for linear positioning and identification, object detection and fluid sensing, as well as network and connection technology. In relation to safety and reliability, the company provides high pressure rated, temperature resistant, explosion protected, magnetic field resistant, and weld-immune sensors.

Integrated systems

Automation and Robotic Technologies (A&RT) in Bayswater specialises in high speed robotic picking and packing with a primary focus on the food and beverage sector, as well as servicing the pharmaceutical, plastics, printing, and general manufacturing industries.

The company offers standard solutions for robotic carton erecting, palletising and case packing, together

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with custom turnkey systems, from stand alone machines to full end-to-end production systems.

Controls Engineer at A&RT, Ben Maxwell, advises that many suppliers are now including IO-Link communication in base model sensors, enabling A&RT to provide systems with better diagnostic, troubleshooting, and performance indicators with their machines.

“Where analogue output sensors were previously used, A&RT is using the latest sensors with IO-Link to get direct digital measurements from the sensors without the need for scaling and calibration,” he told PACE. “Although there have been many fieldbus capable sensors on the market for several years, IO-Link provides much of the basic functionality of these devices, without the additional cost that is normally associated.

“For example, our robotic carton erectors utilise laser distance measurement sensors to automatically control carton fill heights and check carton alignment. Previously, a sensor 2 0 1 4 - 0 1 - 1 4 T1 1 : 4 9 : 0 8 + 1 1 : 0 0 needed to be manually adjusted by an Wiring for IO on conveyor. operator for each product range.”

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Maxwell also emphasised that it is very important to choose the right sensor for the application. “As sensor manufacturers target Industry 4.0 in their own production, the ability to have sensors made to suit an application, without significant increase in cost, will allow sensor integrators such as A&RT to provide machines with unprecedented accuracy and reliability,” he said. PACE [Hartley Henderson is a regular contributing writer to PACE, covering industry developments in Victoria and South Australia. Prior to that, he held senior positions in government, semi-government and business enterprises and was National Program Director with the Productivity Promotion Council of Australia] A&RT 03 9761 1117 www.a-rt.com.au Balluff 1300 225 833 www.balluff.com.au

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SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 11

SENSORS

A miniaturised sensor that can measure chemistry on a chip

B

y combining expertise in photonics – manipulating light beams in nanoscale waveguides on a chip – and materials science, Cornell researchers have laid the groundwork for a chemical sensor on a chip that could be used in small portable devices to analyse samples in a lab, monitor air and water quality in the field and perhaps even detect explosives.

The researchers use a phenomenon called “Raman scattering”: When a laser strikes a molecule it kicks back the energy as photons of light at a variety of wavelengths that depend on the structure and composition of the molecule.

To enable this to occur on a chip, researchers fire a laser into a waveguide – a strip of transparent material made of titanium dioxide, where the light bounces off the inside surfaces and becomes confined to the waveguide. As a waveguide is only a few nanometres high (much smaller than the light waves), the light waves spread out beyond the waveguide, creating a so-called “evanescent field” above the surface of the chip. The laser beam can induce Raman scattering in the air above the chip, or in a drop of liquid placed on its surface for analysis.

Light emitted by the excited molecules also follows the waveguide; a prism at the end of the waveguide can spread that light into a spectrum that is a “fingerprint” identifying the molecule that produced it.

“If you need a chemical sensor in the lab, that is not a problem,” said Jin Suntivich, assistant professor of materials science and engineering. “But finding a chemical sensor that you can take with you outside is a challenge.

We want to develop a technology that is small enough to attach to a phone, so that your personal electronics can constantly monitor the world around you, and the moment you see 12 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

something out of the ordinary, the sensor can tell you what it is.”

Sensors based on Raman scattering have been made before, using silicon nitride waveguides. However, the Cornell researchers have now come up with a design that could make a sensor more sensitive and small enough to be used in the field.

“We’re not the first but we’re the best,” said Christopher Evans, a Kavli Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics and the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science. Evans is first author of a paper describing the new approach published in the July 14 online edition of the American Chemical Society journal ACS Photonics.

One of the key differences between past Raman scattering sensors the one developed by the researchers, is the use of waveguides of titanium dioxide instead of silicon nitride. In silicon nitride, visible light generates an interfering luminescence. However, titanium oxide has a much higher

“We have shown that we can increase the amount of peak signal from our sensors by an order of magnitude or more, while simultaneously reducing the device footprint down to the cross-section of a human hair.” refractive index, which makes a greater contrast with the space above the chip and creates a stronger evanescent field.

The material is also transparent to light at visible wavelengths where Raman

Light travelling through a nanoscale waveguide on a chip spreads beyond the waveguide and can interact with molecules above the surface of the chip. Image: Cornell University scattering is more pronounced. In early experiments, the researchers used a green laser pointer as a light source.

According to the researchers, a future device could be made with a tiny laser built into a chip, or a prism or some other mechanism to spread out the wavelengths of the Raman spectrum, along with a photosensitive device to read it. One possibility is to read the spectrum with the camera in a phone.

Interaction between the pumping laser and the material above the chip increases with the length of the waveguide. To increase the interaction without making the chip unacceptably large, the researchers incorporated a “ring resonator.” Essentially, when a circular waveguide is set tangent to a straight guide, some of the light will enter the ring and continue to circle around it, letting the light interact continually with the material above the chip. The circumference of the ring can be adjusted to resonate with the wavelength of the light, intensifying the effect.

A circular waveguide tangent to a straight guide causes light to circulate around and around, giving it more time to interact with the material above the chip. Image: Cornell University “We have shown that we can increase the amount of peak signal from our sensors by an order of magnitude or more, while simultaneously reducing the device footprint down to the cross-section of a human hair,” said Evans.

Potential applications include portable sensors to monitor air and water quality or conduct laboratory tests in the field.

Chemists could also observe chemical reactions while they occur. PACE

SENSORS

Development of sensors for improved moisture control

R

esearchers have designed a low-cost, stable and responsive sensor with the ability to provide moisture control for manufacturing and storage.

Fuke Wang and colleagues from the Singapore Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR have developed an optical humidity sensor that exploits the unique properties of ultrathin layers of graphene oxide (GO) films.

The humidity levels of ambient air can have a significant effect on human comfort and health. It can also impact many manufacturing processes and is detrimental to the quality of stored goods.

“Our research shows for the first time that atomic-scale GO can be used for colorimetric humidity sensors,” said Wang.

“Due to the atomic properties of GO and their hygroscopic nature, the sensor is highly efficient and fasterresponding compared with current sensor technologies.”

Unlike most humidity sensors, which are electronic and require a power supply, GO-based colorimetric sensors respond to humidity levels by changing to a colour that can be easily observed.

For greater accuracy, the change in colour can be quantitatively measured by analysing the reflection spectra of the sensor. As the GO sensor operates at the atomic level, it can rapidly respond to moisture changes.

However, exploiting the atomic properties of GOs can only occur if films of uniform thickness can be

fabricated; thickness influences the response time and uniformity determines the quality of the sensor.

The research team overcame this challenge by using a process in which a substrate is dipped in and out of a solution at a constant speed.

“We focused on optimising the solution viscosity, the substratesurface treatment and the dip-coating conditions,” said Wang.

“This showed that we can now easily control the thickness of uniform films of GO with a process that is scalable and also generates zero waste.”

The low-cost, non-toxicity and rapid response of GO sensors makes them desirable as disposable sensors.

They can be incorporated into food

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“Our research shows for the first time that atomicscale GO can be used for colorimetric humidity sensors.” packaging, where humidity levels need to be strictly controlled for storage, for medical instrumentation and semiconducting device manufacturing and storage, as well as environmental monitoring. Their disposal aslso has no environmental impact.

“We are now exploring further increases in efficiency and sensitivity, and the application to other vapours and gases,” said Wang. PACE

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SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 13

SENSORS

Focus on biosensors

A

biosensor is a device capable of detecting a certain substance or analyte with high specificity. Examples of such analytes are glucose, lactate, glutamine and glutamate. Most biosensors measure the concentration of an analyte in an aqueous solution, usually producing an electrical signal, which is proportional to the analyte’s concentration in its measuring range.

Biosensors allow the analysis of complex biological media. The detection of a large number of compounds is of great relevance not only for scientific research but also for process control in the chemical and food industry. It is also indispensable in the health care field for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and monitoring of illnesses.

The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries greatly desire frequent to continuous analysis of biological media.

Such analyses are conducted with the aid of analytical instruments like HPLC systems, which, although robust and reliable, are expensive and have a limited suitability for online operation.

For this reason, the acquisition of Jobst Technologies GmbH positions IST AG as a key provider of high-performance and reliable online biosensors.

Enzymatic biosensors for metabolic parameters

Back in the early 1960s Clark and Lyons introduced the first glucose sensor using an enzyme (glucose oxidase, GOx) as receptor, with this enzyme being specific for glucose. Enzymes enable the highly specific measurement of their corresponding analyte even in complex mixtures like fermentation broth and blood, which is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Analytes such as glucose, lactate, glutamine and glutamate play an important role in the metabolism of living organisms. Glucose and glutamine support the cell function and growth; lactate is produced by cells and allows judging of the efficiency of the cell’s metabolism; and glutamate is an amino acid consumed by cells. Each of these analytes requires a specific set of enzymes for its detection.

The continuous (online) monitoring 14 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

of the concentration of such parameters enables among numerous others: • The generation, optimisation and control of feeding strategies in cell cultures • The minimisation of patients’ risks during surgery and intensive care • On-site analysis of food processes

Elevated lactate levels (hyperlactatemia) are an indicator of increased morbidity and mortality.

Monitoring of lactate enables an early and continuous risk assessment, diagnosis and therapy minimising patients’ risks.

A new landmark product for biomedical applications

Nowadays cell cultures aid in the development of new drugs and medication. Animal cells are engineered to express proteins and antibodies used in the treatment of several illnesses and conditions. In order to maximise yield and product quality, conditions of cell cultures must meet optimal values.

Monitoring of nutrients, like glucose, plays a vital role in the feeding strategy of a cell culture.

One type of glucose sensor used in biotechnology requires a fluidic-dilution stage that has to be outside the culture vessel. Such systems show problems like large latency due to the transit time through the dilution stage; a larger footprint since an external analyser is required; contamination risk because it is necessary to invasively take samples inside the bioreactor; and dealing with the dead volume in the tubes.

Other sensors cannot survive prolonged shelf storage after sterilisation by

Optimal treatment of critically ill patients requires the continuous surveillance of their blood values. Recently, a worldleading provider of medical systems for hospitals, Maquet Critical Care, has been setting a new standard by introducing the EIRUS platform specifically developed to provide continuous monitoring of both glucose and lactate in critically ill patients. In addition to optimising patient care quality, it reduces nurses’ workload compared to frequent intermittent blood analysis. This system relies on micro-dialysis technology that feeds a flow-through sensor developed and manufactured in Freiburg (Germany)

by Jobst Technologies GmbH. During several days of continuous operation, EIRUS reports glucose and lactate blood levels every minute and raises alerts whenever the values fall outside the preset ranges. This enables the rapid assessment of the patient’s glycemic condition, which in turn ensures prompt and swift glucose management with insulin. Tighter glycemic control benefits not only diabetic patients but has also been shown to improve outcome in non-diabetic critical care patients who frequently display a condition called ‘stress diabetes’.

Application of biosensors in biotechnology

irradiation. The technology developed by IST AG and Jobst Technologies allows for continuous glucose monitoring either inside the culturing vessel or by means of a probing system.

A Chinese-hamster-ovary (CHO) cell line was used for a batch1 culture in a conventional glass bioreactor. The glucose concentration was continuously monitored for several days. For the control measurements a Nova Bioprofile Analyser and a HPLC system were used.

Due to their robustness, sensors can be gamma irradiated and stored before utilisation. Sensors are pre-calibrated, however a single calibration at the start provides increased accuracy throughout the entire cultivation, lasting days.

During this time, a measurement point is acquired every second without requiring any manual work as the used reference systems do. PACE Innovative Biosensor Technology USA Division www.ist-usadivision.com

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SENSORS

Implantable sensors for wireless recording of nerve activity The first in vivo tests demonstrate ultrasound can be used to wirelessly power and communicate with millimetre-scale devices surgically placed in muscles and nerves.

T

herapeutic modulation of the activity of the body’s peripheral nervous system (PNS) holds a world of potential for mitigating and treating diseases and other health conditions - if researchers can figure out a feasible long-term mechanism for communicating with the nerves and pathways that make up the body’s information superhighway between the spinal cord and other organs.

What does “feasible” look like?

Small is the best start—small enough to someday perhaps be injected or 16 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

ingested—but also precise, wireless, stable, and comfortable for the user.

Modern electrode-based recording technologies feature some, but not all of these qualities.

Hardwired solutions present challenges for chronic use, while existing wireless solutions cannot be adequately scaled down to the sizes needed to record activity from small-diameter nerves and record independently from many discrete sites within a nerve bundle.

DARPA’s Electrical Prescriptions (ElectRx) program is focused in part

on overcoming these constraints and delivering interface technologies that are suitable for chronic use for biosensing and neuromodulation of peripheral nerve targets.

Now, a DARPA-funded research team led by the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences has developed a safe, millimetre-scale wireless device small enough to be implanted in individual nerves, capable of detecting electrical activity of nerves and muscles deep within the body, and that uses

ultrasound for power coupling and communication. They call these devices “neural dust.” The team completed the first in vivo tests of this technology in rodents.

“Neural dust represents a radical departure from the traditional approach of using radio waves for wireless communication with implanted devices,” said Doug Weber, the DARPA program manager for ElectRx. “The soft tissues of our body consist mostly of saltwater. Sound waves pass freely through these tissues and can be focused with pinpoint accuracy at

SENSORS

nerve targets deep inside our body, while radio waves cannot. Indeed, this is why sonar is used to image objects in the ocean, while radar is used to detect objects in the air. By using ultrasound to communicate with the neural dust, the sensors can be made smaller and placed deeper inside the body, by needle injection or other non-surgical approaches.”

The prototype neural dust “motes” currently measure 0.8mm x 3mm x 1mm as assembled with commercially available components. The researchers estimate that by using custom parts and processes, they could manufacture individual motes of 1 cubic millimetre or less in size—possibly as small as 100 microns per side. The small size means multiple sensors could be placed near each other to make more precise recordings of nerve activity from many sites within a nerve or group of nerves.

Though their miniscule size is an achievement in itself, the dust motes are as impressive for the elegant simplicity of their engineering. Each sensor

consists of only three main parts: a pair of electrodes to measure nerve signals, a custom transistor to amplify the signal, and a piezoelectric crystal that serves the dual purpose of converting the mechanical power of externally generated ultrasound waves into electrical power and communicating the recorded nerve activity.

The neural dust system also includes an external transceiver board that uses ultrasound to power and communicate with the motes by emitting pulses of ultrasonic energy and listening for reflected pulses. During testing, the transceiver board was positioned approximately 9mm away from the implant.

The piezoelectric crystal is key to the design of neural dust. Pulses of ultrasonic energy emitted by the external board affect the crystal. While some of the pulses are reflected back to the board, others cause the crystal to vibrate. This vibration converts the mechanical power of the ultrasound wave into electrical power, which is

supplied to the dust mote’s transistor.

Meanwhile, any extracellular voltage change across the mote’s two recording electrodes—generated by nerve activity modulates the transistor’s gate, which changes the current flowing between the terminals of the crystal. These changes in current alter the vibration of the crystal and the intensity of its reflected ultrasonic energy.

In this way, the shape of the reflected ultrasonic pulses encodes the electrophysiological voltage signal recorded by the implanted electrodes.

This signal can be reconstructed externally by electronics attached to the transceiver board to interpret nerve activity. “One of the most appealing features of the neural dust sensors is that they are completely passive. Because there are no batteries to be changed, there is no need for further surgeries after the initial implant,” said Weber.

Another benefit of the system is that ultrasound is safe in the human body; ultrasound technologies have long been

used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Most existing wireless PNS sensors use electromagnetic energy in the form of radio waves for coupling and communication, but these systems become inefficient for sensors smaller than 5mm. To work at smaller scales, these systems must increase their energy output, and much of that energy gets absorbed by surrounding tissue. Ultrasound has the advantage of penetrating deeper into tissue at lower power levels, reducing the risk of adverse effects while yielding excellent spatial resolution.

This proof of concept was developed under the first phase of the ElectRx program. The research team will continue to work on further miniaturising the sensors, ensuring biocompatibility, increasing the portability of the transceiver board, and achieving clarity in signals processing when multiple sensors are placed near each other. PACE Courtesy: http://www.darpa.mil/

SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 17

UTILITIES

Transforming the utilities industry T

he smart grid is no longer a myth. Utilities are transforming to become smarter and more efficient and those that succeed will be able to offer new and advanced services to their customers. The next step in this transformation will begin with learning how to leverage today’s exponential growth of data. This is intricately tied to the convergence of IT and Operations Technology (OT) which is improving asset management and operations within the utilities space.

For many years, traditional IT, managing information for humans, and OT, managing data for machines, remained distinct domains managed by different corporate resources.

However, this paradigm is undergoing a radical change as OT systems and IT systems are now interconnected.

This convergence of IT and OT is one of the key drivers of The Internet of Things (IoT) and the proliferation of ‘Big Data’. It is also

18 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

the cornerstone of asset management in the digital age. This free-flowing yet structured management of data allows utilities to improve real-time energy tracking in order to lower the amount of energy spent. It also helps grid operators across the globe meet accelerating and decelerating energy demands in inventive ways.

Weather and forecasting services that exist today are an important example of this, with advanced technologies also helping to enhance safety. One of the services currently being developed by Schneider Electric is a storm damage assessment solution that will merge forecasted storm parameters such as high winds and lightning with utility asset data to identify areas most likely to be damaged from an incoming storm.

This helps utilities prepare for severe weather events by locating field teams and inventory exactly where they will be required and speeding up restoration efforts after a storm.

Routine maintenance programmes

are a major part of the asset management process, and are another area where large cost-saving opportunities exist. As updated hardware and software applications are integrated into the network, equipment performance out in the field can be measured remotely. By using these new predictive analytic models, where weakened assets can be both discovered and proactively replaced, utilities can save hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars or more per year.

Advanced metering and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms are delivering a new level of clarity to customer service representatives, who can use local data to help customers solve common problems. For example, should a customer call to report an outage, the customer service representative can ping the meter to check its status and check other consumers’ meters in the same vicinity to confirm the kind of outage the caller is experiencing.

He or she may then troubleshoot by acting on the smart meter. This two-way communication between the utility and the customer can also open the door to energy incentive programs, where the customer is rewarded for shifting energy use to off-peak times.

As the smart grid era advances, the integration of IT-OT will be critical to the development of these efficient asset management services.

Taking advantage of IT-OT convergence Already, best practices are emerging to help utilities achieve operational excellence based on the convergence of IT-OT. Three key aspects that should be considered are architecture, modelling and secure communication.

Architecture

By nature, the grid is an integrated system. Therefore, IT-OT systems designed to represent the grid to operators, planners and engineers

UTILITIES

must be integrated. Utilities must follow a well-thought-out architecture blueprint ahead of starting the implementation.

The architecture must focus on: • Mapping business processes to data and user workflows — flexibility • Data monitoring and collection — scalability • Visual situation awareness — usability The mapping of business processes is important in the utilities space where most operate in a vertical, or silo, configuration. Business processes within those verticals tend to be very strong but lose that strength when crossing boundaries from one vertical area to the other. By bringing these verticals together through workflow management software, utilities will benefit from more robust and successful cross-vertical business processes.

Modelling

Accurate network models are required for a better comprehension of operations, improved performance, safety of

switching operations and crew works, and optimisation of the overall grid.

When an outage occurs or an emergency switching operation is imminent, grid operators need the network model to be in its most accurate, current state.

Most utilities today use a geographic information system (GIS) to maintain network models. The architecture must therefore include a design where a central master network model (hosted by the GIS) is shared and updated across all operational systems, including the SCADA, DMS, and OMS. The advantage of this data modelling is that it provides a way to uniquely associate a physical component to the data, which helps to avoid ambiguity when exchanging information between applications.

Also, all IT and OT systems can share and make sense of the data if they are based on this unique network model. That is the best way a business process spanning multiple IT-OT systems can be implemented efficiently for utilities.

Utilities should also consider using the same GIS-based asset

management software used for power equipment to manage additional assets — the smart devices, communications equipment, and the equipment at the edge of the grid (meters, chargers, gateways, etc.).

Reducing the number of systems involved in managing assets of any kind will greatly simplify the IT environment.

“For many years, traditional IT and OT remained distinct domains managed by different corporate resources. This paradigm is undergoing a radical change.”

Secure communication

An integrated IT-OT world consists of a federation of networks that combine private

and public infrastructure, and integrate standards-based, open technologies such as IP with existing proprietary, legacy solutions. This integrated group of interdependent communications systems will continue to grow and evolve and security will remain a significant topic, made even more critical by the convergence of IT-OT. A comprehensive approach that considers the entire network, targeting security, patch management and compliance is needed to succeed in this evolving and mixed environment.

Focusing on these three aspects, utilities can move towards a single tool that presents an integrated flow of information in a unified, straightforward user experience.

Asset management and operations are improved and high-speed, high-quality decisions are enabled.

Utilities will also start to maximise the benefits of the smart grid. PACE Schneider Electric 1300 369 233 www.schneider-electric.com.au

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SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 19

SCADA

The Global SCADA market: Trends and forecasts 2014 – 2020 The supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Market was valued at USD $23.20 billion in 2013, which is expected to reach USD $32.70 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 5.0 per cent from 2014 to 2020.

A

ccording to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research “Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014-2020,” the market was valued at USD$23.20 billion in 2013, which is expected to reach USD $32.70 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 5.0 per cent from 2014 to 2020.

Increasing demand for process automation in different energy verticals is the major factor driving the SCADA market.

SCADA systems are used to control various complex systems and processes in industrial plants, such as power plants, oil and gas, water and waste water, manufacturing, telecommunication, and pharmaceuticals among others.

20 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

Moreover, demand for reliable power distribution and transmission among different industries, rising demand for SCADA systems in the oil and gas industry and increase in infrastructure investments in emerging markets of Asia Pacific for efficient oil extraction are likely to accelerate the growth of the SCADA market during the forecast period, i.e., from 2014 to 2020.

The SCADA market, by application, is divided into ten

the largest contributor to the SCADA market in 2013, accounting for a market share of 17.7 per cent. The growth is attributed to an increase in extent of application of SCADA in total grid automation projects in the power sector.

Countries like India and China are improving their infrastructure to curb power distribution and transmission losses. SCADA systems can store historical data for trend analysis and reduce manual labour by remotely

“The growth is attributed to an increase in extent of application of SCADA in total grid automation projects in the power sector.” application segments: electrical power, oil and gas, water and wastewater, manufacturing, transportation, telecommunication, chemicals, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and others.

By revenue, electrical power was

locating affected sections.

Considering these factors, the electrical power sector is anticipated to remain the top application sector for SCADA systems during the forecast period.

The global SCADA market has been segmented into four broad regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Rest of the World.

By revenue, North America contributed the largest market share in 2013, accounting for 33.80 per cent of the overall market. Rapid advancement in process automation and large investments in energy verticals such as oil and gas and power among others, are primarily driving the growth of American market for SCADA systems.

Some of the leading players in the market are ABB Ltd (Switzerland), Honeywell International, Inc. (U.S.), Emerson

Electric Co.(U.S.), Alstom SA (France), Rockwell Automation, Inc.(U.S.), Siemens AG(Germany), Omron Corp (Japan), General Electric Co (U.S.), Yokogawa Electric Corporation (Japan) and Schneider Electric SE (France) among others.

The SCADA market, by application: • • • • • • • • • • •

Electrical power Oil and gas Water and wastewater Manufacturing Transportation Telecommunication Chemicals Food and beverage Pharmaceuticals Others

The SCADA market, by components:

• Human Machine Interface (HMI) • Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) • Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) • SCADA Communication Systems • Others

The SCADA market, by architecture: • Hardware • Software • Services

The SCADA market, by geography: • • • •

North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World (Latin America, Middle East and Africa)

You can browse the full SCADA Market press release report at http:// www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ pressrelease/scada-market.htm PACE

SCADA

SCADA continues to evolve

T

oday’s SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems offer a new generation of technology components that are easier to integrate, and provide improved capabilities and functionalities. End users are utilising SCADA technology to help improve operations and link operations to business processes for a variety of purposes, including business performance management and leveraging investments in existing assets and systems to optimise capital expenditures, writes Mark Sen Gupta, Principal Consultant, ARC Advisory Group.

A number of significant factors are driving the global SCADA market in the oil an gas and other industries with remote operations. Although the worldwide demand for additional energy from carbon-based fuels has leveled off and the reduced price of hydrocarbons have stymied upstream development, the shifting of exploration and production locations to more remote and hostile environments, aging midstream systems, and changes in end user requirements to link SCADA to business systems continue to drive the SCADA market.

The reduced commodity pricing has led to a rise in optimisation investment that is facilitated by SCADA platforms.

Operating companies are emphasising vendor services across the entire value chain and asset lifecycle, and seeking additional functionalities in application software. Other factors include advances in network, wireless, and cloud-based technologies, which make it easier to connect more for less. These factors present new opportunities for additional players to enter the market and for the formation of new vendor alliances.

Trends in SCADA

SCADA suppliers continue to offer more flexible hardware with added intelligence and are emphasising total solutions by coupling hardware and software with service packages. These smarter “edge” devices are able to host applications that traditionally ran in a central location due to the computing power that is required.

Traditional SCADA suppliers are introducing new and innovative product features and helping clients develop

migration planning programs. Although hardware revenues are down, the revenues associated with smart flexible devices grew significantly.

Additionally, suppliers are offering a wider range of web-enabled advanced applications and packaged solutions, particularly for users seeking to integrate SCADA with business and enterpriselevel applications and supply chains.

Beyond the traditional data gathering and control functions, the addition of business intelligence-enabled applications has enhanced the value of SCADA systems.

These new applications give users better insight into the economics of their operations, the easier ability to validate nominations and pipeline allocations, and tools to track carbon emissions, which aids them in regulatory compliance.

SCADA systems, together with these advanced applications, improve visibility and the performance of geographically dispersed assets and form the basis for real-time performance management of production and pipeline assets. New SCADA technologies allow global energy companies to manage their operations remotely even in distant and extreme environments, from the Arctic tundra to deep subsea installations. Exploration activities and new production fields are being developed, monitored, controlled, and optimised globally using advanced SCADA technologies. This is reflected in the strong revenue growth in software applications.

Many of the top SCADA suppliers offer a full suite of products and services, including remote terminal units (RTUs), networking technologies and associated controllers. Service offerings cover hardware support, software applications, communications and systems integration.

Increasingly, suppliers are also moving toward open, industry standardised technology, including standards-based RTUs, general-purpose PLCs and thirdparty network infrastructures based on commercial information technology.

The business (IT) and automation (OT) spheres continue to meld; in fact, this merger has happened faster in this solution space than in most others.

SCADA systems can gather every piece of field data, making it indispensable

for operations of all sizes. Across the industry, SCADA technology is critical for accounting data collection, wastewater management, compressor/ pump management and environmental management. The upstream industry is beginning to leverage automation in ways most of the downstream industry has done for decades because the price of hydrocarbons has forced the industry to optimise its processes like never before.

Shift from traditional SCADA to remote operations management

While traditional SCADA architectures are both hierarchical in nature (with a master station and remote terminal units) and data-centric, we’re now seeing a shift toward flatter architectures that take advantage of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to enable more effective overall remote operations management. While traditional SCADA solutions tend to be databased, today’s IIoT-based remote operations management solutions are object-based. With no master station per se, users have the flexibility to allocate functionality as required, data management is truly distributed, and the data or information are held at the source, eliminating the need for path writing between data sources and users.

Ubiquitous use of TCP/IP networks provides transparency

between local and remote resources.

Databases are used strictly as sources for trending, record keeping, analysis, etc. This promotes individual initiative in dynamic organisational structures in which everyone with a need to know can share the same information. From a functional view, it also eliminates distance and time barriers.

Technology is not the issue; it is available and proven. Culture, organisation, and securing the right people continue to be the real challenges.

However, enterprises with remote, “outside the fence” operations need to explore today’s newer IIoT-enabled technologies and solutions and evaluate the potential value they can provide in their own remote operations by improving asset management, asset performance, safety performance, and environmental performance. PACE Mark Sen Gupta, Principal Consultant at ARC Advisory Group, has over 26 years of expertise in process control, SCADA, and IT applications. He began his career as a Process Control Engineer with Mobay Corporation working with instrumentation, PLCs, and DCSs. He subsequently served in a number of senior engineering, technical, marketing, and sales support roles at Honeywell, Plant Automation Services (PAS), CygNet Software, and Invensys.

SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 21

AUTOMATION

How machines destroy and create jobs

T

here just doesn’t seem to be many blacksmith jobs these days.”

At first glance, this would be a ridiculous thing to say. Of course there aren’t many blacksmiths around. We live in a modern society and machines do a way better job of making things from metal anyway. This, says Jeff Desjardins from Visual Capitalist, also raises an important point.

What if machines are better at

driving long-haul trucks? What if machines are better servers at McDonald’s? What if robots did your taxes for you?

While some of these ideas are contentious today, in the future we may look back thinking that our fears were ill-placed. The truth is that the job landscape is constantly in flux as technology changes.

Some of today’s jobs with high automation potential may be the future

The evolution of jobs over time in the United States

22 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

“blacksmiths”, and we should not be surprised if they go away. The best thing that we can do is to understand these trends and build a set of skills that will be in demand in any market.

The following graphics show the evolution of jobs over time in the US. The first divides jobs into four main categories: white collar, blue collar, farming, and services. It shows how the composition of the overall job market has changed over the last 165 years.

This second graph shows the same information, but plotted by the total number of jobs.

There were 10 million farmers in America in the early 20th century.

Now there’s closer to one million, and yet those farmers produce way more food. Technology may have “killed off” the majority of farm jobs, but at the same time new technology created jobs in the service, blue collar, and white collar industries.

AUTOMATION

Helping to put you in Control

Dual Axis Inclinometer

We may now be at a similar inflection point for other careers – this interactive graphic shows some of the jobs that have been on the decline in recent years.

In 1960, some 11 per cent of the workforce was employed in factories. Today only 4 per cent are employed in factories.

In the late 1970s, almost 5 per cent of the workforce was secretaries. Today, we’re at about half that, but professionals can be just as productive without a secretary thanks to better computer software.

Yes, there are globalisation issues at play here as well, but even a modern domestic factory such as the Tesla

The job market for Professors:

Gigafactory (which has the largest building by footprint in the world) will only employ about 6,000 people.

The majority of the work will be done by robots.

While it seems scary to think about the rise of machines and a faster pace of technological advancement, it’s important to recognise that these types of sweeping changes to the job market have happened throughout history.

The point is, try not to be the 21st century version of a “blacksmith”. PACE This story first appeared at http://www.visualcapitalist.com/

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The job market for Blacksmiths:

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SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 23

POWER MANAGEMENT

Are Tesla batteries the best for residential use?

T

esla is a company active in clean energy applications – not only electric cars, but also home battery systems.

With the launch of its Powerwall on April 30, 2015, Tesla has continued to fuel interest in home battery systems.

Residential batteries, together with battery applications in commercial, industrial and utilities, are considered to be the next big opportunity in batteries besides electric vehicles.

Indeed, this will become a US$6 billion market by 2026 as predicted by the new IDTechEx Research report “Batteries for Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Utility Applications 2016-2026: Technologies, Markets, Players and Opportunities”.

Tesla brought global attention to the market

On April 30, 2015, Tesla officially launched its residential and commercial/utility-scale energy system products “Powerwall” and “Powerpack” in Los Angeles, with the price well below earlier expectations (the production of the 10kWh Powerwall was stopped due to the relatively low priceperformance ratio).

This kind of battery system was not the first of its kind. As early as 2013, SolarCity had already launched an energy storage system called DemandLogic, which was used to reduce businesses’ peak demand, provide backup power during outages and potentially save energy costs.

This system also utilised Tesla battery technology – the same lithium-ion battery packs used in Tesla cars. However, the price of the DemandLogic battery system at that time was expensive and was mainly for medium-scale applications.

Tesla always wanted to launch a battery storage system that could be adopted by households. The launch of Powerwall could incorporate SolarCity’s plan in residential energy storage, with the merge between Tesla and SolarCity further proving this.

24 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

Tesla the follower?

In a typical fashion Tesla managed to attract tremendous attention, yet Tesla Energy is neither the first nor the best product of its kind. In fact, in many ways, Tesla is a follower. For example, the German startup Sonnen started to sell residential batteries as early as 2011, whilst in the same year in Japan, Sony and Sharp launched their products after the Tohoku earthquake with attention focused on the critical importance of back-up residential energy storage in emergency situations.

Current market status

Today the residential battery sector is not only being chased by battery makers. Instead, a cross-industry business is taking shape as evidenced by the large number of recent acquisitions, joint ventures and investment.

Battery business for consumer electronics has gradually reached a plateau and automotive companies are moving into residential/grid battery areas to de-risk their investment and further reduce battery costs with the help of economies of scale.

can generate both economic values that can be monetised and values that are not directly monetised in households and electricity networks.

An important consideration is whether they can demonstrate positive economic return based on current

“Tesla managed to attract tremendous attention, yet Tesla Energy is neither the first nor the best product of its kind.”

The market is therefore fragmented with companies in various areas jumping in, including solar cells integrators, automotive players, cell makers, battery manufacturers, chemical suppliers, trading companies, power utilities, and many more.

It is clear that residential batteries

A comparison of current and future residential battery products in the market.

price range and value streams, which is a significant factor when predicting future deployment. Technology is not the major driver, as analysed in this report. PACE This article was written by Xiaoxi He, Technology Analyst at IDTechEx

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2016 ZENITH AWARDS REVIEW

PACE Zenith Awards showed once again why they are industry favourites

N

ow in their 13th year, the 2016 PACE Zenith Awards were held recently at the hallowed grounds of Melbourne’s magnificent MCG, and by all accounts, were a raging success.

The nearly 200 attendees on the night all complimented not only the salubrious ambience of the venue, but also the technical quality of the finalists, and of course of the eventual category winners.

According to Yokogawa Australia, the Project of the Year (Sponsored by Honeywell) winner for their Julimar Development Project, the win was not only well deserved, but also quite unexpected.

“This award is a wonderful surprise, thank you to PACE and Honeywell. We have had a lot of work go into the project, with some young graduates involved at the heart of the project. We are very pleased with how it all came together,” said Rob Bush, Industry Manager Oil & Gas, Yokogawa.

SAGE Automation, another winner for their Integrated Process Control in the Manufacturing Control category (Sponsored by NORD Drivesystems) were filled with pride when accepting their win.

“There are some great projects out there so it is certainly a privilege to receive this award. We have

spent a good two years developing the project and we’re very proud of what we’ve done. There were a large number of SAGE engineers involved, who all did a fantastic job. SAGE holds these awards in very high regard, and to be able to stand up in front of industry peers and suppliers to showcase our capabilities is powerful and a privilege,” said Steve Lloyd, Senior Project Manager, SAGE Automation.

One of the highlights of the night was the speech by bionics experts Dr. David Nayagam who enthralled the crowd with the latest advances in bionics and medical technology.

With Australian Cricket legend Merv Hughes providing the entertainment and the aptlynamed ‘Unusualist’ showing all the guests that there really is such a thing as magic, this year’s PACE Zenith Awards was another reminder of the diversity and innovation that we find in Australia’s process and control industry.

As editor of PACE magazine, I would also like to thank our esteemed judges - Kevin Gomez, Ian Swift, Don Wilkey and Don Sands.

Along with all entrants, I would also like to personally thank the Zenith Award sponsors for their continued and unwavering support: NORD Drivesystems, Phoenix Contact, B&R Automation, Beckhoff, SICK and Honeywell.

Branko Miletic

Dr. David Nayagam

26 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

Merv Hughes

2016 ZENITH AWARDS REVIEW

2016 PACE Zenith Awards category winners wrap up

(words by Bianca Dohnt and photography by Blake Storey)

1. Category: Safety System Innovation

(Supported by Safe to Work)

2. Category: Manufacturing Control

(Sponsored by Nord Drivesystems)

Winner: SAGE Automation Integrated Process Control “There are some great projects out there so it is certainly a privilege to receive this award. We have spent a good two years developing the project and we’re very proud of what we’ve done. There were a large number of SAGE engineers involved, who all did a fantastic job.

SAGE holds these awards in very high regard, and to be able to stand up in front of industry peers and suppliers to showcase our capabilities is powerful and a privilege,” said Steve Lloyd, Senior Project Manager, SAGE Automation.

Winner: Robotic Automation: Multi Product Robotic Carpentry “What we all do is important, we’re all pioneers.

It’s nice to see some recognition for the team, engineers and staff with this award. We are very proud of what we do, and hope to see more entries going forward,” said Mark Krnjaic, National Service Manager, Robotic Automation.

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SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 27

2016 ZENITH AWARDS REVIEW

3. Category: Automation Innovation (Supported by Manufacturers’ Monthly)

Winner: Robotic Automation: Multi Product Robotic Carpentry “It’s nice to put our heads together and come up with a solution.

People fear automation for reasons unbeknown to us, but realistically what we do is create interest, create jobs, and create stimulation and challenges for everyone. What we do is collaborate with the customer, and at the end of the day, the customer is the winner. If the customer wins, we all win,” said Mark Krnjaic, National Service Manager, Robotic Automation.

4. Category: Transport Control

(Supported by ferret.com.au)

Winner: Enerpac: Pow’R Lock “The Enerpac Pow’R Lock changes tyres on big haul trucks in the mining industry that can be 100 tonnes. It is a great innovation in the difficult climate that is the mining industry, but it has played a big part in our business and we have been very successful in that space, so we appreciate the recognition that comes from this award,” said Denis Matulin, Regional Manager Australia & New Zealand at Enerpac.

5.Category: Mining and Minerals Process Control (Supported by Australian Mining)

Winner: Scott Automation and Robotics: Robofuel “I have to thank everyone involved in the project in the company. We are proud that we have developed the project entirely in Australia, and very proud to be receiving this award,” said Andrew Moussa, Marketing Manager at Scott Automation and Robotics.

28 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

6. Category: Water and Wastewater Control (Sponsored by Phoenix Contact)

Winner: SMC: EtherCat network for treatment of wastewater “I’m very proud to be accepting this award on behalf of SMC. Our staff ensures we meet customer needs on a daily basis and provide our customers with the opportunity to succeed. A lot of efforts go unrecognised so I’m proud to be recognised,” said Jozef Ceh, Business Development Manager at SMC ANZ.

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2016 ZENITH AWARDS REVIEW

7. Category: Machine Builder (Sponsored by B&R Automation) Winner: Automation Innovation: Lid and spoon in mould labelling and assembly “I feel very privileged to be among these companies recognised at this event, it is a special group of people in Australia. What we do is a difficult job, but what allows us to succeed is the faith of customers and them having trust in us bringing machines to life. Without customers and suppliers, none of this would be possible, as well as the team of great engineers,” said Walter Meyler, Director, Automation Innovation.

30 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

8. Category: Oil and Gas Innovation

(Supported by Oil & Gas)

Winner: Yokogawa Australia: Julimar Development Project “Thanks to PACE for putting on these awards, which really goes to a couple of young graduates that we took on three or four years ago. They took on the project with Chevron for subsea control systems in a new way and did a good job of it,” said Rob Bush, Industry Manager Oil & Gas, Yokogawa.

2016 ZENITH AWARDS REVIEW

9. Category: Power and Energy Management (Sponsored by Phoenix Contact)

Winner: Alliance Automation: Queensland Urban utilities – Oxley creek rehabilitation project “Thanks to the team that put the project together.

These awards are more about the people than the company, so this is for the guys on the project, with thanks to the sponsors,” said Matt Griffiths, Director, Alliance Automation.

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SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 31

2016 ZENITH AWARDS REVIEW

10. Category: Best PLC, HMI & Sensor Product

(Supported by Electronics News)

11. Category: Best Network Implementation (Sponsored by Beckhoff)

Winner: Bestech Australia: Benair wireless sensor network “It’s good to be associated with the products we produce, and it’s great to be recognised with the award,” said Arend Wieringa, National Applications Manager Sensors and Teaching Equipment, Bestech Australia.

12. Category: Young Achiever of the Year (Sponsored by SICK)

Winner: Kayla Saggers, Graduate Engineer at ABB “Thanks to SICK for the award, also to ABB for giving me the opportunity to join its graduate program in 2013,” said Kayla Saggers, Graduate Engineer, ABB.

Winner: Successful Endeavours: IND Technology early fault detection system “Changing the planet is hard, and we all need help, so thanks to IND Technology for having faith in us delivering. The rest of the world thinks what we do is magic and happens in the background, but what we do is hard and requires a lot of work so I’m proud of all of you,” said Ray Keefe, Managing Director, Successful Endeavours.

13. Category: Lifetime Achievement

(Supported by PACE)

Winner: Peter Maasepp: Principal Engineer Sage Automation “I am very proud to be a part of Sage. As it is a Lifetime Award it implies the receiver is old, and during my time I’ve seen the automation industry grow from drum and pipe controllers to what we have today, with billions of devices connected and automated.

That’s the point, automation gets our world going. It is a fine thing to see the end of the project, when everything works, but the best bit is to see the young engineers grow, and see how they innovate with their young minds.

It’s a privilege to receive this award, and I am very touched,” said Peter Maasepp, Principal Engineer SAGE Automation.

14.Category: Project of the Year Award (Sponsored by Honeywell)

Winner: Yokogawa Australia: Julimar Development Project “This award is a wonderful surprise, thank you to PACE and Honeywell. We have had a lot of work go into the project, with some young graduates involved at the heart of the project. We are very pleased with how it all came together,” said Rob Bush, Industry Manager Oil & Gas, Yokogawa.

32 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

With the night over and with many of the attendees lining up to get an autograph and photo with the MC for the night, Australian Cricket legend Merv Hughes, another successful PACE Zenith Awards wrapped up for the year.

Now that the bar has been set so

high for the 2016 awards, it remains to be seen what new and innovative technologies await our judging panel in 2017.

If this year was anything to go by, then next year we will certainly be in for a treat.

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QUALITY ASSURANCE

Make it right or do not make it at all

A

s manufacturers gear up for the next generation of performance standards, quality assurance is gaining renewed emphasis. Between heightened consumer expectations and stricter regulations, today’s pressures for tight variation control are forcing manufacturers to take a closer look at their operational processes. The bar has been raised, and manufacturers must adapt in order to remain competitive.

Now more than ever, IT infrastructure which supports end-to-end quality control is critical.

The entire company culture must have product quality as its core foundation.

34 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

This type of bottom-up focus starts at order entry and does not end until the product is received and the customer is satisfied. Underlying every process is a highly integrated real-time system for collaboration, collective innovation, proactive problem solving and continuous improvement. Modern ERP solutions not only support the quality mindset, they go a step further, actually motivating and fueling the quest for better products.

Research firms have tried to tackle the quality issues in manufacturing and provide guidance to companies who know quality is important. Using customer case studies as their reference

point, Deloitte developed a three-part approach, the 3V Challenge, which used variability, visibility and velocity as its three core principles.

In one example, Deloitte said they worked with a company to identify potential causes of product failure and ways to make significant quality improvements. They uncovered that variability in manufacturing practices and processes among its many contractors and component suppliers led to inconsistent production, product reliability issues and high levels of product returns. They also found that a lack of visibility resulted in an inability to effectively monitor its geographically-

dispersed supply chain, which was inconsistently adhering to the company’s production requirements. Poor velocity of information exchange, given the lack of data-driven insights, was found to have left the company unable to drive corrective action among its many manufacturers in a timely manner.

Analytics was used to remedy these issues with variability, visibility, and velocity and improve consistency reporting and the timeliness of communication. Although the solution seems simple in hindsight, many manufacturers have trouble pinpointing where to start and how to focus on the overriding issues.

QUALITY ASSURANCE

Monitoring warranty claims

Although experts may disagree on whether the product or process should be the first focus of attention (similar to the classic chicken-egg debate), most do seem to agree that warranty claims offer one of the best indicators of how well a product is performing. Reducing the rate of warranty claims is also one of the key financial incentives for improving product quality, and sits at the top of a CFO’s list when they are looking to reduce costs associated with in-warranty service calls, depot repair and parts replacement.

Advanced analytics

If the company has use of today’s advanced data management solutions, warranty claims can help pinpoint the exact nature of the issue. This can help identify whether it is a supplier’s faulty component, equipment on the shop floor performing below standards, operators who need additional training, or communication gaps concerning the necessary

specifications. Analytics can also be used to define the correlation between cost-saving measures, such as reducing steps or speeding processes – and the rate of warranty claims. This assists manufacturers in finding the right balance between saving money and providing the quality that customers expect and demand.

Collaborative tools

Collaborative tools provide another front-line technology tactic that users throughout the organisation can leverage to boost compliance and help ensure customer priorities are met. Integrated into the ERP system, a business collaboration tool allows for comments, questions and updates to be addressed in real-time and then captured and tracked along with relevant data in the system. This ability to tie conversations to order and product data in the ERP means valuable information can be referenced later and accessed by the companywide team who is working on the same

project or customer order. This allows for fast sharing of updates, last minute specification changes and critical operational issues (such as unexpected equipment downtime) that require immediate attention. Collaborative tools in manufacturing have gone from being “nice to have” to an absolute necessity to meet today’s fast pace of change.

made to stock. This high degree of customisation helps create customer loyalty, but it also complicates the quality control process. No longer can a manufacturer wait to perform a quality check at the end of the production workflow - that is too late. With far too many valuable resources (including time) being

“The bar has been raised, and manufacturers must adapt in order to remain competitive.”

Product customisations

In addition to speed of delivery and product consistency, customers are also expecting more and more product customisation from manufacturers. From laptops and shoes to cars and recreational vehicles, consumers expect to specify particular styles, colours, components and features in many products that were once strictly

wasted if the end product does not meet specifications, manufacturers therefore need to build in multiple checkpoints in their MTO and ETO manufacturing processes. The goal is to catch errors as early in the process as possible. PACE This article was written by Helen Masters, vice president and managing director of Infor South Asia

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2016/08/18 08:13:41 AM SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 35

INDUSTRY 4.0

Solutions for Industry 4.0 and IoT

A

s information technology and automation technology continue to converge, cloudbased communication and data services are increasingly used in industrial automation projects. Beyond the scope of conventional control tasks, applications such as big data, data mining and condition or power monitoring enable the implementation of superior, forward-looking automation solutions. New Beckoff hardware and software products for Industry 4.0 and IoT offer simple implementation of such advanced solutions.

Definition of business objectives

Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things (IoT) applications do not start with just the underlying technology. In reality, the work begins much earlier than this. It is critically important when implementing IoT projects to first examine the corporate business objectives, establishing the benefits to be 36 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

gained as a company from these projects.

From an automation provider perspective, there are two distinct categories of customers that can be defined: machine manufacturers and their end customers – in other words, the end users of the automated machines. In the manufacturing sector in particular, there is an obvious interest in reducing in-house production costs, both through efficient and reliable production control and also by reducing the number of rejects produced. The traditional machine manufacturer pursues very similar objectives, and above all is interested in reducing the cost of the machine while maintaining or even increasing production quality.

Optimising the machine’s energy consumption and production cycles, as well as enabling predictive maintenance and fault diagnostics, can also be rewarding goals. The last two points in particular offer the machine manufacturer a solid basis to establish

services that can be offered to end customers as an additional revenue stream. Of course, what both customer categories ultimately want is for the machine or product to be designed more attractively and to increase competitiveness in the marketplace.

Collecting, aggregating and analysing process data

The process data used during production provides a foundation for creating added value and for achieving the above-mentioned business objectives.

This includes the machine values that are recorded by a sensor and transmitted via a fieldbus to the PLC. This data can be analysed directly on the controller for monitoring the status of a system using the TwinCAT condition monitoring libraries integrated in the TwinCAT 3 automation software, thereby reducing downtime and maintenance costs.

However, where there are several distributed controllers in production areas, it may not be sufficient to analyse

data from a single controller. The aggregated data from multiple or even all controllers in a production system or a specific machine type is often needed to perform sufficient data analysis and make an accurate analytical statement about the overall system. However, the corresponding IT infrastructure is required for this purpose. Previous implementations focused on the use of a central server system within the machine or corporate network that was equipped with data memory, often in the form of a database system. This allowed analysis software to access the aggregated data directly in the database to perform corresponding evaluations.

Although such an approach to realise data aggregation and analysis in production facilities worked well, it also presented a number of problems, since the required IT infrastructure had to be made available first. The fact that this gives rise to high hardware and software costs for the corresponding server system can be seen clearly. However, the costs

INDUSTRY 4.0

with respect to personnel should not be overlooked either. Due to the increasing complexity involved in networking production systems, especially with large numbers of distributed production locations, skilled personnel are necessary to successfully perform the implementation in the first place.

To complicate matters, the scalability of such a solution is very low. Ultimately the physical limits of the server system are reached at some point, be it the amount of memory available or the CPU power, or the performance and memory size required for analyses.

This often resulted in more extensive, manual conversion work if systems had to be supplemented by new machines or controllers. At the end of the day, the central server system had to grow alongside in order to capably handle and process the additional data volume.

The path to the public cloud

Cloud-based communication and data services now avoid the aforementioned disadvantages by providing the user with an abstract view of the underlying hardware and software systems.

“Abstract” in this context means that a user does not have to give any thought to the respective server system when using a service. Rather, only the use of the respective services has to be considered. All maintenance and update work on the IT infrastructure is performed on the part of the provider of a cloud system, whether it be a public or private cloud.

Public cloud service providers, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, provide users with a range of services from their own data centres. This starts with virtual machines, where the actual user has control of the operating system and the applications installed on it, and stretches to abstracted communication and data services, which can be integrated by the user in an application. The latter also includes access to machine learning algorithms, which can make predictions and perform classifications regarding specific data states on the basis of certain machine and production information. The algorithms obtain the necessary contents with the aid of the communication services.

Such communication services are usually based on communication protocols, which in turn are based on the publish/subscribe principle. This offers definite advantages from the

resulting decoupling of all applications that communicate with one another. On one hand, the various communication participants no longer need to know each other – in other words, any time-consuming disclosure of address information is reduced. All applications communicate via the central cloud service. On the other hand, data communication with the cloud service, via the message broker, involves a purely outgoing communication connection from the perspective of the terminal device – regardless of whether data is sent (publish) or received (subscribe).

The advantages this offers for configuring the IT infrastructure are immediately clear: no incoming communication connections have to be configured, for example in firewalls or other network terminals. This significantly reduces IT infrastructure set-up time and maintenance costs.

Transport protocols used for data communication are exceptionally lean and standardised, such as MQTT and AMQP. In addition, various security mechanisms can be also anchored here, such as encryption of data communication and authentication with respect to the message broker. The standardised communication protocol, OPC UA has likewise recognised the added value of a publish/subscribebased communication scenario and has taken appropriate steps to integrate this communication principle in the specification. This means that an additional standard besides MQTT and AMQP is consequently available as a transport mechanism to the cloud.

The private cloud

However, such publish/subscribe mechanisms are not only used in public cloud systems; they can also be used in the company or machine network. In the case of MQTT and AMQP, the infrastructure required for this purpose can be installed and made available easily on any PC in the form of a message broker. This means that both M2M scenarios can be implemented and any terminal devices, such as smartphones, can be connected to the controller. Moreover, access to these devices is further secured by means of firewall systems. The extensions of the OPC UA specification with regard to publish/subscribe will also simplify the configuration and use of 1:N communication scenarios within a machine network in the future.

Products for Industry 4.0 and IoT

Beckhoff provides users with a wide variety of components for simple and standardised integration into cloudbased communication and data services.

The IoT products within the TwinCAT 3 automation software platform offer varied functionalities for exchanging process data by means of standardised publish/subscribe-based communication protocols and for accessing special data and communication services of public cloud service providers. Corresponding services can be hosted in public cloud systems, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS), but can be used just as effectively in private cloud systems.

These IoT functions can be accessed alternatively via special function modules directly from the control program or can be configured via an application called the “TwinCAT IoT Data Agent” outside of the control program. The data to be transmitted can be selected easily via a graphical configurator and configured for transfer to a specific service. A major advantage here is that the data agent also allows integration of cloud-based services in older, existing TwinCAT systems. The process data can also continue to be exported here using the standardised communication protocol OPC UA, with the result that data can likewise be sent from non-Beckhoff systems. An additionally available smartphone app enables mobile display of a machine‘s alarm and status messages.

If I/O signals are to be forwarded directly without a control program, then Beckhoff‘s newly-announced EK9160 IoT Bus Coupler allows I/O data to be parameterised via an easy-to-configure website on the device for sending to a cloud service. The bus coupler then independently carries out the sending of the digital or analogue I/O values to the cloud service. An IoT coupling station consists of an EK9160 and a virtually limitless number of powerful and ultrafast EtherCAT Terminals. The data is sent in a user-friendly, standardised JSON format to the cloud service and can also be transmitted in encrypted form if required. Extended mechanisms, such as local buffering of I/O data in the case of an interrupted Internet connection, are provided here in the same way as a monitoring function for connected fieldbuses. The I/O signals can therefore not only be collected

by means of EtherCAT, but also via other fieldbuses, such as CANopen or PROFIBUS.

Analytics and machine learning

Once the data has been sent to a public or private cloud service, the next question is how the data can continue to be processed. As previously mentioned, many public cloud providers offer various analytics and machine learning services that can be used for further examination of process data. Moreover, Beckhoff also has its own analytics platform for users to take advantage of, namely TwinCAT Analytics. This platform provides relevant mechanisms for data analysis, with all process-related machine data being recorded in a precise and cyclical manner.

All machine processes can therefore be fully recorded as a result.

Depending on its requirements, this data can either be stored for evaluation locally on the machine processor, or within a public or private cloud solution. TwinCAT Analytics uses TwinCAT IoT to connect to cloud solutions, ensuring seamless data communication. Generally-speaking, this provides the power to create new business ideas and models for the machine manufacturer and respective end customers to capitalise on.

Conclusion

Industry 4.0 and IoT are on everyone’s minds. Likewise, these concepts are important when the realisation of innovative new business models is a requirement for the underlying infrastructure. This also drives the increased convergence of IT and automation technologies. Cloud-based data services can help implement such automation projects, as they save the machine manufacturer or end customer from having to provide the corresponding IT expertise. With TwinCAT IoT and the EK9160 cloud bus coupler, Beckhoff provides customers with two new product series for integrating such cloud-based data services quickly and easily into the control project. Additionally, TwinCAT Analytics enables the support of such projects using a powerful analytics platform, which facilitates comprehensive analysis of the recorded process data. PACE Beckoff Automation 02 8069 2333 www.beckhoff.com.au/ SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 37

INDUSTRY 4.0

Hooking your factory into an Industry 4.0 world

The Industry 4.0 concept has slowly been gaining traction over the last four years, and despite aspects of it in use, it still hasn’t properly been realised. Michael Freyny, Executive General Manager, Digital Factory, Siemens Australia, told Brent Balinski about where things are heading and what it means for Australian companies.

Manufacturers’ Monthly: I saw an interesting recent survey of German and US firms, which showed they had some concerns around having the right skills to capitalise on Industry 4.0. What roles can you see becoming more important for manufacturers?

Michael Freyny: Digitalisation skills are critical. The younger people coming through are digital natives but we have generations of existing workers who will need to rapidly reskill and retool.

Industry 4.0 sees the blurring of many lines because traditional and discrete stages from design through to manufacture are now being merged through digitalisation and modern technology. The greatest challenge will be the rapid adoption of new skills and digital tools. Then this needs to be combined with industrial knowhow.

The old definition of manufacturing makes way for a new definition. This brings with it a new composition

38 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

of workers and skills where you will see the person with the monkey wrench also using a computer tablet and more people being competent with computer diagnostic and other digitalisation tools.

By the year 2000, some two billion gigabytes of data had been accumulated worldwide. Today, the same volume of information is generated in a single day. Big data is only useful if you can turn it into smart data. That requires people with incredible analytical abilities, with skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The future also requires cross disciplinary collaboration to solve problems. Philanthropists Graham and Louise Tuckwell recognised this recently with Australia’s largest ever donation of $200 million to the ANU, specifically for this purpose.

The solution will come through new ways of teaching at schools which are solution-based and multidisciplinary with a focus on STEM.

We will also need new university programs that recognise the needs of future workforces and on the job learning that provides an engaging and practical approach to adopting new technologies and tools for employees needing to transition to this future.

Manufacturers’ Monthly: Australia recently joined the global conversation around standardisation.

What are some things that need to be addressed globally in terms of standardisation? How should our policymakers approach this?

Michael Freyny: Firstly, as a nation Australia needs to recognise that globalisation fundamentally changes our approach and we are no longer isolated. Essentially if we want Australian companies to be successful then they must be able to participate in global supply chains. A German study of SMEs asked the question ‘What are the greatest challenges connected with implementing Industry 4.0?’ The highest response was ‘standardisation’.

On a global level, adopting global standards is simply a ticket to the game. Unless you do this then you won’t exist.

Siemens Australia and New Zealand CEO Jeff Connolly is the chair of the Prime Minister’s Industry 4.0 Taskforce and I’m pleased to say that Standards Australia is now also part. The first working group is around standards and reference architectures. It’s great to see that Standards Australia are connected to the German-led Plattform Industrie 4.0, which means we have an opportunity to not only align and adopt Australia’s approach, but also to make a valuable an active contribution to the future of digital networking standards globally.

Manufacturers’ Monthly: If manufacturers are curious but wary, what are some places you’d advise them to examine and dip their toe in?

Michael Freyny: As a result of Industry 4.0, in the future billions of machines, systems, and sensors worldwide will communicate with each other and share information. This enables companies to make production considerably more efficient, with greater flexibility.

With Industry 4.0 the physical world is merging with the virtual world. Siemens PLM Software is used to virtually develop and test products before even a single screw is turned.

Products reach the market as much as 50 per cent faster. Simulation makes this possible – often referred to as a digital twin – a virtual image of the product into which different designs of its individual components can be inserted and tested along the entire development chain.

This approach was used to simulate the landing of the Mars Curiosity Rover in 2012. The landing was tested 8,000 times using Siemens PLM software.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is such a broad array of digitalisation tools that everyone from a surfboard manufacturer, Firewire Surboards, which had humble beginnings in Australia and now distributes to 40 countries, through to a hi-tech automotive manufacturer such as Maserati, which built their latest Ghibli using a digital twin. You can start small or big.

PLM is helping facilitate many competitive advantages for companies. It allows things like rapid prototyping, system simulation, customer customisation, workforce collaboration and the ability for fully design, test and simulate not just the product but the entire production process and value chain.

INDUSTRY 4.0

Manufacturers’ Monthly: What is the role of PLM in meeting the increasing need for manufacturers to create connected products?

Michael Freyny: PLM is all about being able to connect globally, improve lead time, manage engineering and manufacturing process improvement.

This is the future of product efficiency and competition. Most companies are still managing product data and related manufacturing processes in an isolated manner. Over the last 10-15 years, the focus of PLM and related engineering and manufacturing software products was about how to control data. Global product engineering and manufacturing will demand a fresh look on how to manage manufacturing. This will require a global connected approach in managing information about product manufacturing and supply chain options based on market demand and factory environments.

Manufacturers’ Monthly: In a Projekt3 22.08.16 Seite 1 conversation recently14:17 an experienced

executive with a real enthusiasm for the concept he said he saw manufacturing being “turned on its head” and batches of one becoming more the norm. What do you have to say on this?

Michael Freyny: I know teenagers who customise their sports runners so they have something unique.

Consumer and business demand is moving towards making a “batch of one”. When I was at Hannover Messe last year the Siemens stand had mini perfume bottling line where you could instantaneously put a designer message via an iPad on your bottle without slowing the production line.

At our electronics and automation factory in Amberg, Germany, products already talk to the production line.

We’re already seeing this and living this at Amberg. Here we make electronics and automation equipment that other companies use to improve their own manufacturing processes.

Amberg showcases Siemens’ concept for a “digital enterprise.” The factory already employs production methods

that will be the standard in many manufacturing facilities in a number of years. Products in the plant control their own assembly by directly communicating specific requirements and their next production steps via a product code to the machines.

Cosmetics manufacturer Dr. Kurt Wolff manufacture different products on one single machine. BMW in Munich have several different models on the one production line in Munich – so you can see the trend.

Manufacturers’ Monthly: Do you see this accelerating current trends, such as the move towards manufacturers being more service oriented, and for a smaller and smaller proportion of the overall value being created at the point of production?

Michael Freyny: Let me give you an example of the machine tool builder company SW (Schwäbische Werkzeugmaschinen) in Germany. As a highly specialised medium-sized company with about 300 employees, they naturally

don’t have service engineers in every country who can support customers locally. But that’s not actually necessary.

Based on their Machine Tool Analytics Services, they can now provide assistance to their customers in China, the US, and elsewhere right from their base in Germany.

A deep understanding of customer needs and processes is essential in creating value. By focussing on smart data, instead of only big data, engineers can “smartly” combine product know-how and process expertise with data analytics to help customers reduce unplanned downtime and improve operational efficiency.

Siemens Digital Services provides connectivity, data integration and analytics, as well as cyber security. It can securely connect our devices and equipment anywhere in the world, thereby enabling remote monitoring and remote maintenance. By integrating the masses of data they produce with data from other sources, such as weather forecasts or field service data, and by performing advanced analytics, Sinalytics can create new insights.

SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 39

INDUSTRY 4.0

Manufacturers’ Monthly: What are some trends you see in terms of exploiting data from MES, manufacturing operations management and elsewhere?

Michael Freyny: There’s no doubt that people are looking for solutions here because data if used correctly gets you those percentage gains needed to have a competitive advantage. And the opportunities to improve are all around us if we only know where to look. And Siemens has been expanding and building a portfolio of solutions exactly in this area.

In March this year, Siemens announced that it is now bringing the “MindSphere – Siemens Cloud for Industry” onto the market.

MindSphere has been designed as an open ecosystem that industrial companies can use as the basis for their own digital services, such as in the fields of preventive maintenance, energy data management or resource optimisation. Machine manufacturers and plant constructors can use the platform to monitor machine fleets for service purposes throughout the world, reduce their downtimes and

40 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

consequently offer new business models. MindSphere also forms the basis for data-based services from Siemens, such as for the preventive maintenance of machine tools (Machine Tool Analytics) or integrated drive systems (Drive Train Analytics).

Manufacturers’ Monthly: Are there any standout examples of what such processes can offer manufacturers?

Are there any (preferably) local case studies worth considering?

Michael Freyny: One good example is how Dell leverages Omneo to explore billions of records and analyse millions of data combinations in under one minute with the help of data analytics.

At the launch of Dell XPS13, it was noticed that the LCD was flickering on 2 of 6 demo units. Dell was able to identify and isolate the problem in three hours vs three days.

Manufacturers’ Monthly: What opportunities do the above present to Australian manufacturers, and how should they be looking to approach them?

Michael Freyny: We should approach this fourth industrial revolution with optimism. For the first time ever, advancements in technology are allowing Australian manufacturers to be part of a much bigger global picture.

Through digitalisation technologies we can participate in global supply chains.

Also, the cost of labour becomes less of the equation because the real value will be in the design, engineering, process expertise and services. Many traditional roles will be automated – whether in China, Australia or anywhere else.

For a company looking at what they should do, it’s important to start at the top. Industry 4.0 transforms the entire business. The immense scope of change it brings, and the level of investment required, means that it belongs on the CEO’s agenda.

From now until 2020, German industry will invest 40 billion Euro annually in Industry 4.0 applications.

Industrial firms surveyed say they will invest, on average, 3.3 per cent of their revenues in Industry 4.0 solutions over the next five years. This corresponds to nearly 50 per cent of all planned capital investments.

This is really happening and

something you should be taking urgent action on. Within five years, in Germany, over 80 per cent of companies will have digitalised their value chains. The companies expect that by 2020, 86 per cent of horizontal and 80 per cent of vertical value chains will achieve a high level of digitalisation, and will thereby be closely interconnected.

I would also recommend you try to understand the benchmark – where do you sit next to your competitors?

What technologies are being used by your competitors? What can we do immediately and what do we need to plan for?

The potential for digitalisation is high. Another thing is to understand what data are you currently capturing or able to capture and what are you doing with it? Is it enough and is there something more you can do with the data?

And on a final note, look for a technology ‘partner’ rather than seeing technology companies as a typical “vendor” relationship. We’ve found that the companies where we are proactively and deeply connected are competitive – not just locally but often globally as well. PACE

CYBERSECURITY

Not Horsing Around: New Windows Trojan Saddles Up for Corporate Secrets With such a massive install base, it’s no surprise that the occasional Trojan makes its way through Windows defenses to target users. As noted by Softpedia, however, a new, info-stealing Windows Trojan has emerged, and this one is after enterprise data, writes Douglas Bonderud*. claiming to be from PeggleCrew said FossHub left a network service open and unauthenticated, allowing them access.

The boot Trojan isn’t hard to fix with a Windows recovery CD. Still, it’s clear that Windows Trojans remain a real problem.

Defender does double duty

T

argeting files specific to the corporate environment, the malware looks to grab everything from passwords to financial data and then send this data to a command-and-control (C&C) server. Even more worrisome, while 34 out of 55 antivirus programs could detect the new attack, none of them properly identified the threat.

Here’s a look at the latest malware to saddle up and chase corporate secrets.

Windows trojan swipes enterprise data

While there’s not much data on the distribution method of these attacks, it looks like at least some cybercriminals are using a file named Aug_1st_jave.exe to

spread their new code. According to BleepingComputer, which first identified the new Windows Trojan, once installed, the malware injects itself into the registry to run on startup and then compromises an active process, such as Google Chrome.

Next, it starts scanning victim PCs and sends back data including the computer name, username, Windows version, installed service pack details and the list of programs found in specific registry keys. Once a solid C&C connection is established, the Trojan looks for certain file extensions.

Data is then sent back to the C&C server. In many cases, companies aren’t aware any intellectual property has gone missing, let alone being sold

on the Dark Web for cash. While the BleepingComputer team tracked down a compromised website hosting a hidden iframe and prompted it to clean up its domain, the original C&C server is still up and running.

Trojan triple threat

This isn’t the only Trojan threat to hit Windows users in recent weeks.

As noted by The Next Web, a piece of malware supposedly created by cybercriminals calling themselves PeggleCrew has been making the rounds. Surprisingly, the source is app download site FossHub, which prides itself on “no adware, no spyware, no bundles, no malware”.

The new code acts like a circa1990 virus by overwriting the victim PC’s master boot record. An attacker

The problem is so real, in fact, that the Windows Defender tool has been busy detecting Trojan threats other antivirus programs apparently can’t see, according to Windows Report.

A number of users have reported up to 10 Trojan warnings per day.

These users said that Defender isn’t actually removing the threats and occasionally asks them to reboot their computers, even after a full clean starts the warning cycle again.

There’s no word from Microsoft on the issue, but a clean install is recommended. The behavior seems suspiciously like a legitimate service that’s been compromised by an outside actor.

Minor threats are par for the course, but more sophisticated attack vectors are on the rise as cybercriminals recognise the value of infiltrating corporate networks and exfiltrating critical data. They’re no longer horsing around with personal PC compromise; expect a run on enterprise entries and data disruptions. PACE A freelance writer for three years, Doug Bonderud is a Canadian with expertise in the fields of technology and innovation. This article was originally printed in IBM’s cybersecurity magazine securityIntelligence.com.

SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 41

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WATER MANAGEMENT

ing in on leaky pipes saves a flood of problems A pipeline assessment tool capable of pinpointing leaks and imperfections in water networks is helping to locate weak spots before they become costly pipe bursts.

P

-CAT is a condition assessment technology that allows pipeline owners and operators to accurately identify defects and develop cost effective solutions. It was developed by researchers from the University of Adelaide in South Australia and commercialised by water management company Detection Services.

P-CAT co-developer Martin Lambert said the technology was able to detect leaks, pipeline weak spots and blockages.

“What we are doing is using little pressure waves in a pipe and essentially we look at the reflection,” he said.

“The wave travels down the pipe and when it hits a change in the pipe – a leak, a change in the wall thickness or a deteriorated section of the wall – it sends a reflection back to the sensors and you can tell where the defect is.

“It works a bit like a radar system at an airport where a radar pulse hits a plane and then comes back with a reflection. Then it’s a matter of determining or understanding what you are getting back.”

The technology creates a controlled water hammer event where a small pressure transient is directed into the pipeline and is able to run for up to 2km. Sensor fittings are placed along the pipeline about every kilometre, which records the reflection of the wave as it passes each fitting. The wave speed slows down when sections of the pipeline are corroded or the wall thickness is reduced – it is able to determine and analyse the change in thickness down to about 0.2mm.

P-CAT breaks up the data collection phase into multiple short stages to retrieve highly accurate

“The wave travels down the pipe and when it hits a change in the pipe – a leak, a change in the wall thickness or a deteriorated section of the wall – it sends a reflection back to the sensors and you can tell where the defect is.” information and collates a total of about 3-5km of data per day. The results are then analysed and the identity of faulty sections of pipeline are determined.

Business Development Manager Kevin Jamie said P-CAT could save clients millions in replacement costs.

“The primary benefit of P-CAT is determining pipe wall thickness,” he said.

“It is a very common practice worldwide for water utilities that pipes have an internal cement lining – an erosion prevention lining – we will determine if there are any air or gas pockets in the internal lining.

“That’s important because an air pocket is not only a partial blockage or restriction, but you will find air or gas pockets will increase the corrosion rates.

“We could save clients replacing the whole pipeline, when they actually only need to replace a small section of it.”

Detection services have successfully tested more than 600km of pipeline around Australia and New Zealand using P-CAT. Jamie said the company was also in talks to export the technology to the United States, China, India, Singapore and Europe in 2017.

Last month Detection Services was awarded the TRILITY Planning & Delivery Award for its pipeline condition assessment technology at the 2016 Smart Water Awards in South Australia’s capital Adelaide. PACE This story was reprinted with permission from The Lead.

SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 43

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LEVEL MEASUREMENT

When it comes to level measurement, size matters The latest radar level sensor from Vega is the first such product that operates at a frequency of 80 GHz. And, according to its makers, it is just what food and beverage makers have been asking for. Matthew McDonald writes.

F

ood and beverage processing, like the rest of the manufacturing sector, continues to demand ever improving efficiency. Any product that speeds things up, decreases downtime, or makes life simpler on the factory floor is always welcome.

For example, food makers who need to do processing and mixing in vessels and need to be able to measure tank levels, want devices that are simple to use, versatile, intuitive, easy to clean, safe and reliable.

In particular these days, businesses want sensors that can work well with small vessels. Vega has released such a product, the VEGAPULS 64.

“About two years ago we released our solids radar development [the VEGAPULS 69] which is a radar level transmitter used predominantly for measuring solids material, so your grains, your flours, your mixtures like that,” John Leadbetter, Managing Director of Vega Australia told Food & Beverage Industry News.

“And then with the success of that particular unit, we brought forward by three years the development of the VEGAPULS 64 which is the liquid version of that particular development.”

Leadbetter explained that the unit is the first of its kind to use an ultra-high frequency of 80Hz. “This gives us some refined improvements such as narrower beam angles, faster updates and more resilience to things such as build up sprays - things like that which are normally present in the food industry,” he said.

In other words, it provides accurate level measurement even in poorly reflective liquids and in in vessels with internal installations such as heating coils and agitators.

In addition, the sensor has the smallest antenna of any such product and can function accurately with small storage vessels.

Small vessels

Leadbetter explained the use of small vessels is very much an industry trend.

“We develop due to industry feedback and the industry was telling us that they need smaller devices, they need smaller fittings. They need to adapt to narrower vessels.”

Pet foods, dairies, biscuit makers, and so forth are making vessels in smaller sizes these days and know that, when it comes to fittings, bigger equals more expensive.

industry procedures should be followed.

“Most applications in the food industry using cleaning in place with caustics, so we’ll all fully approved, we have temperature ratings and everything for that. Realistically in the food industry you’re going to have no little gaps or anything like that so it’s going to be a smooth finish.”

The level sensor is suitable for use in areas other than the food and beverage sector.

As such, the VEGAPULS 64 has a thread that measures just ¾ inch.

To demonstrate just how small a vessel it can be used with, the company connected the sensor to a 300ml bottle of water and successfully measured its contents.

“No other radar on the market can do that,” Leadbetter said.

“It’ll still work in larger vessels but it’s specifically been targeted at the smaller end of the market.”

Asked about cleaning procedures, Leadbetter explained that normal

“When developing a product, we look at all markets then make changes in options to adapt to the different markets,” said Leadbetter.

The product is suitable for use with any type of conductive fluid including water, bitumen, chemicals and so forth. Where the model for the food sector differs from models for other industries is that has received all relevant food approvals.

“We will change fittings or change approvals to adapt to the industry we are going into…it’s just the adaption

and the fitting that are changed,” said Leadbetter.

The future

According to Leadbetter, the market for level measurement sensors is changing.

“A lot of the technologies of the past which were traditionally used such as capacitance and ultrasonic pressure and things like that are going to become less and less effective (or used) and these more developed products like 80 GHz radar will start replacing those older technologies for size, for convenience and for adaptability,” he said.

Still, the business of level measurement is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Vega makes other devices such as tuning fork point level switches which are used where it is only necessary to know when a material has reached a particular point; and pressure transmitters which are suitable for applications where there are no fittings on top of the vessels to use things like radar level transmitters.

It is a horses-for-courses approach and Leadbetter often returns to the theme of responding to industry demand.

“It’s [about] helping the customer streamline and improve their processes and responses and things like that,” Leadbetter said.

“In most cases we’re able to. In some cases, it’s a little bit far-fetched.

We don’t believe we’ve reached the end of radar development and we think there’s a lot more to go yet but this is certainly along the path the food industry is taking us.”

“Other industries have different criteria so we adapt to their types of requirements for their industries - high temperatures, fumes, larger vessels, faster filling, things like that. We try to adapt to all things as much as possible.” PACE Vega Australia 02 9542 6662 www.vega.com SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 45

IT NETWORKS

Keeping modern manufacturing secure

I

n the classic factory of the 1950s, security was simple. Managers strolled from their offices on a floor that towered over plant activity, closely observing whether shift crews below were doing what they were supposed to do. Because employees knew the eyes of a supervisor may be upon them at any time, they were less inclined to cheat the system – such as slipping any of the company’s property or product into their pockets, or sabotaging a machine out of spite.

Motives were, on the whole, aligned; what was good for the business was good for everyone involved.

Fast-forward six decades and it’s a different story. With advancements in information and communications technology, the manufacturing industry has undergone significant transformation.

Today, manufacturing employees are more likely to operate advanced technology from their computers and mobile devices, rather than undertake physical work. They are empowered to connect remotely, set their own

46 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

hours and even self-determine how to effectively perform assigned duties. As opposed to their factory counterparts of prior generations, their tools aren’t welding machines, circular saws and drills; they’re tablets, smartphones and thumb drives. They don’t follow instructions from an assembly book stocked on a shelf; all best practices and guidance is stored on a server. But that’s also where an abundance of sensitive, proprietary data about customers is kept, as well as information about electronic payments to both suppliers and workers.

With the rapid rise of sophistication and autonomy, it’s clear that something important has been lost: the protective eyes on the floor. This has security implications for both the insider threat and external cyber security threats.

The insider threat

Years ago, those eyes made it more difficult for a disgruntled crew member to surreptitiously slip a blueprint into his lunchbox. Today, it’s much

easier for the same worker – perhaps unhappy after years of stagnant career progression – to abruptly quit, transfer the entire R&D library on to a thumb drive and deliver the stolen information to a competitor. Without proper monitoring and auditing controls in place, the current level of empowerment – which ultimately serves a positive, productive purpose for organisations – can be abused. That’s not good for the enterprise, and it’s not good for employees.

But it’s fairly unfeasible to “watch” over everything when there are so many employees now connecting to manufacturing systems both inside and outside a traditional factory environment. Toss in an expanding influx of contractors, partners and other non-staff enterprise users, and you invite additional risk. Especially since many of these parties aren’t vetted to the same degree of scrutiny as full-time personnel.

It’s worth noting here that not all security breaches are the result of a malicious insider. Personnel or

contractors may play the role of the unintentional insider where they can be ‘tricked’ into downloading malware and introducing this into the network. Or they can lapse into sloppy habits, such as sending corporate materials to their home computers on vulnerable, private email accounts. Of course, they can also outright lose things (devices, USB flash drives, etc.) which can end up in the wrong hands.

To combat the insider threat, manufacturers need to empower the organisation to better protect the information and data that helps make it profitable. Whilst it’s important to give employees the latitude they need to do their jobs, the business also needs to retain visibility into their actions.

A robust security measure that is able to do this includes three important pillars: 1. Data capture - Implementing a lightweight endpoint agent can capture data without disrupting user productivity. A system like this can monitor the data’s location and movement, as well as the actions of

IT NETWORKS

“Manufacturing was the second most targeted industry in the US for cyber-attacks in 2015.”

users who access, alter and transport the data. Collected user data can be viewed as a video replay that displays keys typed, mouse movements, documents opened or websites visited. This unique capability provides irrefutable and unambiguous attribution of end-user activity.

2. Behavioural audit – Understanding how employees act will help pinpoint unusual or suspect behaviour enabling closer monitoring for those deemed high risk.

3. Focused investigation – If a clear violation is detected it’s important to pinpoint specific events or users so you can assess the severity of the threat, remediate the problem and create new policies to stop it happening again.

The outside threat

With significant changes to the manufacturing landscape, businesses also face significant threats from outside criminals.

Over the last decade there has

been a huge uptake of technology and online systems to create new efficiencies and improve operational effectiveness through the sharing of information. However with every opportunity comes risk, and given the growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and big data it’s no surprise that cyber security has been elevated to one of manufacturers’ biggest risk factors. In fact, according to IBM, manufacturing was the second most targeted industry in the US for cyber-attacks in 2015.

So whilst networked products (known as IIoT in manufacturing) mean there are virtually endless opportunities and connections that can take place between devices, it also means there are a number of risks due to the growth in data and network entry points. In many cases, manufacturers have been quick to embrace the benefits of the IIoT but still have some catching up to do in order to adequately protect their data, customers, products and factory floors.

Australian manufacturers need

to consider multiple cyber security threats including factory threats, product threats and operational threats. For example, if equipment controllers are not adequately secured it is possible for an outsider to attach malware-ridden PCs to the OT network while performing routine maintenance. Similarly, manufacturers must take great care in preventing any products, like driverless cards or robotics, from being compromised as not all cyber-attacks are focused on the network - they can also affect how a computer processor or piece of technology operates.

For manufacturers to fully realise the benefits of the IIoT securely, it’s important they identify security weaknesses and put a process in place that can mitigate not just current but future risks. This means any security system should be: • Simple and flexible – Your security solution should be able to scale with your operations and be easy to use.

• Unified – In today’s environment you’re likely to split IT functions

between cloud and on-premise technologies to maximise the advantages of each approach. By implementing a unified solution, you can eliminate the extra cost and duplicated work of systems that have separate management to consolidate cloud services and on-premise solutions in a single console with one visibility, policy and reporting system.

• Fault tolerant - There’s no point in having a security system if it goes down when you need it most.

Prevent interruptions in network security by having traffic rerouted to a trusted partner in the event that a security appliance goes offline.

Ultimately, even though the threat of cyber-attacks in manufacturing is a reality, there are multiple ways Australian businesses can move forward without fear. PACE Forcepoint Level 6, 111 Pacific Highway North Sydney NSW, 2060 SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 47

IT NETWORKS

What causes sudden spikes in traffic?

The topic of bandwidth is at the forefront of many enterprise IT department conversations, thanks to the growing popularity of mobile technology and the switch from brick and mortar to e-commerce. With today’s online consumptions rates, many attribute network traffic spikes to external demands on infrastructure or the release of the next ’it’ product online, writes Andrew Timms, Sales Director for APAC at Paessler AG.

H

owever, hidden network traffic spikes are not as straightforward and have the potential to impact the everyday activities and efficiency of enterprise bottom-lines. As a result, bandwidth monitoring is key to any IT department’s day-to-day activities.

Traffic spikes that show up on bandwidth monitoring solutions

Something happens after IT teams implement a bandwidth monitoring solution: they get inquisitive. Many IT teams adopt bandwidth monitoring solutions to help identify alarming or sudden peaks in their network traffic, by communicating the data through graphical interfaces. The challenge, however, lies in being able to swiftly solve the mystery of what’s causing the peak in traffic.

The core job of a network bandwidth monitoring solution is to fundamentally to inform the IT team when major problems are developing on the network, as well as when further investigation is required. Nevertheless, getting inside your network’s head can be difficult at times.

Every network is different, but throughout the years industry feedback has helped identify the most common causes of bandwidth spikes.

Top 5 causes of sudden spikes in network traffic

1. Scheduled backups inside the LAN: Many backup products can be scheduled to run at a specified time, and they can cause enormous loads on any connection.

2. Remote backup tools: Many networks use cloud based solutions for their backups. Uploading huge backups can cause serious load and significantly slow down the internet connection.

3. Virus scanner or software updates that are distributed inside the LAN. 48 www.pacetoday.com.au SEPTEMBER 2016

4. Mail server problems: Situations where a remote mail server tried to deliver a 15 megabyte mail to a company’s mail server every five minutes – again and again – even though the target mail server denied acceptance and discarded the mail.

The two SMTP implementations were just a bit incompatible and – to solve the problem – the target mail server had to be set to deny access from the remote server’s IP. 5. Malware outbreaks and hacking attempts can cause spikes in network traffic. This can help to identify and take action against them.

The top five list indicates some of the most serious situations. There are many other causes of traffic spikes, including large downloads by users, video conferencing or hardware failures. However, it is important to identify the origin of a peak. IT teams can use the top five list as a first guide or point of reference when their bandwidth monitoring solution indicates a peak in traffic.

Yet, the best and essentially the only way for IT teams to know exactly

what’s causing traffic spikes is through manpower and traditional network troubleshooting.

Steps you can take to find out what’s causing the spikes 1. Try to find a pattern in the spikes.

For example, do they appear roughly at the same intervals or at the same time of each day? Do they show up during business hours (more likely that a user is causing the peak) or later (more likely a scheduled issue)?

2. When you find a pattern, try finding other monitoring points on the monitored system that match these patterns. Compare the pattern with processes on your network (i.e. a CPU load peak of one of your servers may be in-sync with the bandwidth load).

3. Try to analyse the traffic with a proprietary packet sniffer or a flow monitoring tool. For modern switched networks, this can sometimes be more challenging, but it is the best way to find out which computer system is causing the trouble.

Ultimately, there is always a chance that the peaks displayed by a bandwidth monitor simply aren’t real. Some peaks may be caused by a bug-riddled device or software. Often times, for SNMPbased monitoring, a false spike stems from “counter-overflows” or “counter rollovers.”

In other words, most SNMP devices use 32-bit counters to count the number of bytes transferred via a data line. Depending on the bandwidth usage, the values at some point in time can reach the 32-bit barrier. PACE Andrew Timms is responsible for Paessler’s channel development in APAC. His role includes driving partner revenue, as well as maintaining strategic business relationships with key partners.

Paessler AG www.paessler.com/ 0477 048 850

NEW PRODUCTS

Rotation laser to combat theft TO combat the rise in worksite tool theft, Bosch Blue has introduced the GRL 500 HV Professional Rotation Laser with anti-theft protection. The rotation laser’s inbuilt acceleration sensor detects when it is being

moved during operation (when not connected to the remote control receiver), and automatically activates an alarm and LED indicator to alert the user.

The product provides users with automatic calibration reminders for time, temperature and shock levels. Each rotation laser is also equipped with an integrated lithium-ion battery that allows simultaneous charging.

The rotation laser has a ±0.05mm/m level of accuracy horizontally and a ±0.10mm/m level of accuracy vertically.

It also has a high working range of 500m (diameter), a self-levelling range of 6° (10 per cent), and a rotation speed of 600rpm.

Bosch Australia 03 9541 5555 www.bosch.com.au

20-port industrial Ethernet switches ANTAIRA Technologies has announced its LNX-2012GN-SFP industrial gigabit managed Ethernet switch series, which has been designed to fulfil applications in harsh or outdoor environments. This unit has one of the highest density SFP fiber port counts in the market for a DIN-rail unit, according to the company.

The unit’s extensive SFP fiber connectivity makes it suitable for centralised connection of multiple devices, especially in environments with a lot of electrical noise where SFP fiber is immune to such issues.

Some suitable applications include power/utility, factory/process control automation, windmills, mining infrastructures and ITS – roadway traffic control/monitoring applications.

The product supports a 12~48VDC power input range and each unit is designed with eight 10/100/1000Tx Fast Ethernet RJ45 ports and twelve 100/1000 dual rate SFP slots for fiber.

With a 40 Gigabit backplane speed, the unit supports jumbo frames and

Rotary blowers

Antaira Technologies www.antaira.com

Differential strain gauge amplifier

Turbidity measurement solution HACH has introduced a new technology for the water industry, the TU5 Series Turbidity Platform.

This platform is comprised of both laboratory and online turbidimeters and has been designed to be the next standard in the evolution of turbidity. According to the company, the platform offers the only turbidimeters to employ 360° x 90° direction technology.

The product reduces the time needed to get a reliable turbidity

wide bandwidth for large Ethernet data packet transmissions.

Furthermore, the product provides high EFT, surge (2000VDC) and ESD (6000VDC) protection.

measurement, with 98 per cent less online sample surface area to clean, sealed vials for calibration and the elimination of the need for indexing and silicone oil in the lab, the company claims. A smaller online sample volume also means that turbidity events will be detected quickly.

FUTEK Advanced Sensor Technology has announced a new addition to its amplifier family, the IAA300. The product has a low noise output and is field configurable, with easy-to-adjust DIP switches. Furthermore, it is fast with up to 50Khz of bandwidth, and has IP50 protection.

Hach Australia 1300 887 735 au.hach.com

Futek Advanced Sensor Technology www.futek.com

KAESER has announced its BBC and FBC series of rotary blowers, which have been designed to incur minimal operating and maintenance costs and to ensure maximum reliability, according to the company. The blowers are suitable for applications such as conveying and water treatment, and come ‘ready-to-connect’. This means that the units are supplied complete with all sensors, controls and a choice of a star-delta starter or variable speed drive.

According to the company, operational reliability and uptime is significantly enhanced due to the inclusion of a blower block with Omega profile rotors, whilst adaptive compression reduces energy consumption and long bearing life minimises maintenance costs. A space-saving component layout also results in a compact footprint.

Kaeser Compressors Australia 1800 640 611 www.kaeser.com.au

SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 49

, D E E N U .

O T Y E R R E ER N. V E F O T N A O H IS H W D IT RC A N I E F ES TH

RELY ON AUSTRALIA’S MANUFACTURING, MINING AND INDUSTRIAL HUB 70,000 monthly users can’t be wrong. Find what you’re looking for with over 12,000 business listings and 8,000 specific product listings. Access relevant information and resources, empowering you to make a qualified purchase decision. You can always rely on your industry hub.

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NEW PRODUCTS

High-voltage power converter STMICROELECTRONICS has introduced a high-voltage power converter that allows designers to build a low-consumption, costeffective Switched-Mode Power Supply (SMPS) with a 5V output voltage.

The VIPER01 is suited for low-power applications in home appliances, building, lighting and motion control, as well as industrial and consumer applications. It operates directly from a rectified mains supply and integrates an 800V avalancherugged Power MOSFET with Pulse-

Width Modulation (PWM) currentmode control and multiple protection circuits. Furthermore, it is tailored to provide the auxiliary supply to microcontrollers in IoT devices that are permanently connected to the Internet or a local network.

According to the company, the converter enables designers to meet stringent energy-saving standards due to its low power consumption and its ability to switch automatically to pulse frequency modulation under light load conditions. It can be used in fly-back, buck-boost converter

topologies, while the integrated highvoltage start-up, sense-FET, error amplifier, and oscillator with jitter allow a complete application to be designed with the minimum number of external components.

STMicroelectronics 02 8338 1172 www.st.com

Intelligent panel meters

Miniature GNSS receiver U-BLOX has announced the EVA-M8Q GNSS series of receivers, which are TCXObased and optimised to provide high acquisition and tracking sensitivity, making them suitable for use with small antennas either in covert applications such as asset tracking and stolen vehicle recovery, or in portable devices. According to the company, the series features the smallest GNSS modules with GPS, BeiDou, Galileo and GLONASS reception.

U-blox 02 9550 6600 www.u-blox.com

THE Camille Bauer SINEAX, 4-quadrant, AM 1000, 2000 (both class 1) and 3000 (class 0.5S) intelligent panel meters are suitable for 3-wire, 4-wire, single and 3-phase balanced, unbalanced and open wye circuits. Neutral current is calculated, and for the SINEAX AM 3000, calculated or measured.

Communication options include Ethernet (Modbus/ TCP, web server, NTP), RS485 (Modbus/RTU), digital I/O and 20mA analogue with linear and segmented linear outputs. Internal data storage is via Micro SD card and monitoring functions include periodic, event and disturbance recording (with pretrigger) based on half-cycle rms.

The SINEAX AM series can be powered from 24 to 48VDC, 100VAC or DC to 230VAC or DC. The instruments are Cat III rated for all inputs.

Camille Bauer Metrawatt AG www.camillebauer.com

Hydraulic training system BESTECH Australia has introduced its Fluid Power Training Institute’s MF102H-TSE. Students will be able to learn about fixed displacement pump circuits, pressure-compensated

pump circuits, as well as loadsensing circuits in one training system. The system also contains six directional control valves – three parallel industrial types, one series industrial type, one cylindrical spool-centred mobile type and one motor spool-centred mobile type.

It was designed to fit through a standard doorway. Exclusive to the product is its Safe-T Bleed safety system, which de-energises and air-bleeds hydraulic systems and components. It is the same lockout system used in industry.

Bestech Australia 03 9540 5100 www.bestech.com.au

1.3MP industrial camera SCITECH has announced the release of the Pixelink PL-D721P Camera based on the Python1300 sensor.

The camera comes in both colour and monochrome versions and provides low noise images for use in a broad range of industrial applications including high performance security and surveillance applications, parts inspection, metrology and biometrics, welding inspection, PCB and flat panel display inspection.

The cameras feature a 1.3 megapixel (1280 x 1024) resolution sensor capable of 210fps at full resolution.

The cameras provide the user with a choice of 8-bit or 10-bit digitisation and a dynamic range of 60dB. The external hardware trigger and two

general-purpose outputs ensure users have the flexibility to synchronise the camera with their processes and illumination.

Scitech Imaging Specialists 1300 724 832 www.scitech.com.au

SEPTEMBER 2016 www.pacetoday.com.au 51

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