OK, perhaps I went a little crazy with the acronyms in the title but it is Wednesday afternoon and I couldn't come up with anything else.  The point of the post however is not that the title is loaded with strange acronyms, but that GE has a tangible, real IIOT application that you can begin reaping the benefits of today.

The Global Adjustment (GA) is a line item charge on your monthly electricity bill and is used to cover the difference between the market price and rates paid to regulated and contracted generators, and to pay for conservation and demand management programs. The GA was designed to assist the government in eliminating coal-based generation and greening the power system through conservation, demand response and cleaner generation sources.

Recently I came across a very interesting article talking about what most would consider an oxymoron:  Flammable Ice.  You heard that right, ice that contains enough trapped methane you can actually set it on fire.  Now this isn't just a new party trick to top off your rum and coke, but may be a very viable long term solution to the current energy crisis.

Check out the article Here

The AV7000 camera system delivers 360-degree high speed package intelligence for any material handling system having conveyors, tilt trays and cross belt sorters. With superior optic performance, the AV7000 is the cornerstone of any data array designed to manage package identification for distribution centers, parcel facilities, and warehouses worldwide.

Symantec recently reported on the resurgence of a group known as Dragonfly.  This group has been in operation for many years but primarily in Europe, this is their first foray that we know of into the North American market.  It is believed they are gathering intelligence on our systems which could give them the ability to cause large scale disruptions to operations.

SG4 Fieldbus

The Safety Light Curtain for Industry 4.0 ; with integrated openSAFETY protocol over POWERLINK

CMTS is back next week!  Teaming up with Automator, Datalogic, GE, TURCK and some of our other vendors, we will have some cool technology on display during the 4 day show from September 25th-28th 2017. 

Why should you go? From the CMTS website:

"For more than 30 years, the CMTS audience from within Canada’s leading industries including automotive and aerospace have come together to source solutions and knowledge from the global leaders in machine tools and tooling, metalworking, and advanced manufacturing.

As your fleet of assets grows, maintaining and monitoring those assets becomes not only more important, but more challenging.  What firmware version is the asset on?  Do we have any faults?  How is the asset running and performing?  These are but a few of the questions that plague operators every day.

For safety-related applications, Turck offers IP67 block I/O modules with safe digital inputs and safe universal digital channels that can be used as inputs or outputs. The modules also feature non-safe universal digital channels and IO-Link master ports. This allows connection of standard I/Os and IO-Link devices to an IP67 fieldbus module - in addition to the safety inputs and outputs. Via the IO-Link IO hubs, up to 32 more universal digital signals can be connected