Insights
Field notes from the commissioning floor.
Short, practical articles on OEE, safety, retrofits, robotics and plant software, written by the engineers who do the work.
All articles
Safety
Designing safety zones people will not bypass
If a guard slows the job, someone will defeat it. Good safety design starts at the operator's workflow, not at the fence.
Retrofit
Retrofit or replace? A five-question test
Most old machines have good iron and tired brains. Five questions tell you whether new controls will give you another fifteen years.
Controls
Ladder logic still has a place
Structured text is powerful. But at three in the morning, the maintenance technician reads rungs, not functions.
Robotics
Simulate the cell before you cut steel
A digital twin of the cell finds reach problems, collisions and cycle-time surprises while they still cost nothing to fix.
Plant Software
Getting machine data to the MES without a science project
An edge gateway, a shared data model and three agreed signals per machine are enough to start. Everything else can wait.