Carlton & United Breweries (CUB), Australia’s largest brewer, operates five breweries in Australia as well as breweries in Fiji and Samoa. Its Yatala Brewery in Queensland is one of the most state-of-the-art breweries in the world, producing 450 million litres of beer each year. [ + ]

In Part 1 of this article we looked at standard methods of Layer 2 network redundancy that involve auto-reconfiguration of the network topology after a failure. This time we continue and look at redundancy methods that are fully redundant. [ + ]

The harmonisation deadline set by COAG in 2008 was 1 January 2012, but that deadline has well and truly passed with us seemingly no closer to the desired end state. [ + ]

Industrial computers need to be designed to withstand vibration and shock, which are a fact of life in many industrial applications. [ + ]

The costs of failure in today’s industrial networks can be very high, making network redundancy essential. [ + ]

Automation engineers have traditionally implemented and tested their control algorithms by running them on programmable logic controllers (PLCs) connected to actual machinery. A major drawback to this approach is that it can be expensive, difficult, or dangerous to test the control strategy for the first time on the machine. [ + ]

The high Australian dollar and relatively high labour costs make the need for an efficient process critical. Process automation can contribute significantly to this. [ + ]

Compared with parallel wiring, fieldbus systems have a negative impact on the availability of process-related plants and systems. This is because users have to isolate the entire bus segment from the network in order to, say, replace a defective component. [ + ]

Businesses must find a balance between strong financial outcomes and the responsibility for sustainable energy consumption and reduced carbon emissions. Changes made in processes to facilitate sustainability should be viewed as a long-term proposition that rewards with more than just regulatory compliance. [ + ]

National Manufacturing Week (NMW) 2012 returns to Sydney this May, and it’s going to be big: 10,000 anticipated visitors, over 300 local and international manufacturing industry suppliers and a record 12 Product Zones. [ + ]

Track-guided transport systems have been used in highly automated production environments for some time now. Whether in automobile production, automation of material flow or warehouse logistics, rail-based mobile units transport the required parts in all of these areas. Normally, communication to the mobile units is established using contact lines and mechanical contacts. [ + ]

A six-month project, completed by Ovivo Australia in just 12 weeks, has enabled two large beverage companies to increase their production capacity by 420%.

Converging plant and enterprise networks into an integrated architecture is rapidly gaining ground in industry as a means to providing a method of uniting multiple control disciplines into a single cohesive plant-wide system. However, the use of ethernet to facilitate integration may expose the company to an increased level of risk.

Reducing energy consumption is one of the most important requirements today when modernising machines and systems. Often, there is great potential for saving energy - which, in the end, means saving money.

A major Australian gold mine at Stawell in Central Victoria has far exceeded its own expectations following an upgraded flotation circuit developed in partnership with Outotec Services.