Automation World Gets Your Questions Answered Automation World

In this episode, we connect with Aaron Rothmeyer from Sick USA to learn about LiDAR sensors, how they differ from other sensors commonly used in the manufacturing industries, how the 2D and 3D images they produce are used, why they’re widely used on autonomous mobile robots and how they can be used in quality control operations.

Automation World connects with Heather Cykoski, senior vice president of industrial and process automation at Schneider Electric, to learn more about what constitutes a smart factory, how the concept is advancing at manufacturing facilities across the globe, its connection to digital transformation initiatives and the biggest challenges manufacturers face when seeking to become a smart factory.

How Nvidia’s graphics and artificial intelligence technologies are impacting industrial automation on a large scale via collaborations with Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric and Aveva, Siemens, and Teradyne Robotics via its Universal Robots and MiR businesses.

In this episode, we connect with Steve Biegacki of the FDT Group to get a better understanding of the FDT open standard industrial device communication technology, how it's used across industry, the FDT Group's work with OPC Foundation and what end users should know about the FDT technology in their automation devices.

In this episode we look at the growing use of cloud computing in industry and the surprising, but erroneous post from Microsoft that it was planning to discontinue a key component in its cloud platform. Feedback from industrial automation technology suppliers explains why deprecations of cloud applications by the cloud platform providers will likely not impact the cloud applications you use from them.

In this episode, we connect with Jim Toman of system integrator Grantek to explain the overall equipment effective (OEE) formula, how to calculate it for a typical manufacturing line, how to apply the results to improve production operations, and why the long-standing OEE metric continues to be relevant in the age of new and advancing industrial optimization technologies.