FLIR Systems, Honeywell, Industrial Devices, PC Soft, Robotic Workspace, SST, Visio, Wonderware

Recent major mergers, acquisitions, agreements, and contracts in the control and automation fields include the following:FLIR Systems Inc. (Portland, Ore.) acquired AGEMA Infrared Systems (Stockholm, Sweden) for about $80 million to create one of the world's largest infrared imaging companies.Honeywell Inc.

By Staff January 1, 1998

Recent major mergers, acquisitions, agreements, and contracts in the control and automation fields include the following:

FLIR Systems Inc. (Portland, Ore.) acquired AGEMA Infrared Systems (Stockholm, Sweden) for about $80 million to create one of the world’s largest infrared imaging companies.

Honeywell Inc. (Phoenix, Ariz.) sold its North American control valve business, located in Montgomeryville, Pa., to DeZurik, a unit of General Signal Inc.

Eight North American sales and engineering firms and Industrial Devices Corp. (Novato, Calif.) merged to form a new engineering company—AutomationSolutions International (ASI). Industrial Devices currently makes linear actuators and motion controls. Its former ceo, Scott Johnson, was appointed as ASI’s ceo.

PC Soft International (Braintree, Mass.) introduced Wizcon for Internet, a Java-based supervisory control and data acquisition solution, which extends the performance of the company’s other Wizcon products to the web’s flexible access methods. This gives users direct access to data without installing custom software or specific components.

Robotic Workspace Technologies (Fort Myers Beach, Fla.) and Foresight Engineering (Shelby Township, Mich.) formed a strategic alliance to support the automotive and automotive supplier industries’ effort to redeploy existing robots by retrofitting them with RWT’s Universal Robot Controller.

S-S Technologies Inc. (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) changed its name to SST as part of a repositioning of the company’s identity and its product categories.

Visio Corp. (Seattle, Wa.) appointed four vice presidents to its expanded operating committee, opened an office in Japan, expanded its Singapore operations hub, and planned the upcoming release of its Visior software in multiple localized-language versions.

Wonderware Corp. (Irvine, Calif.) signed an enterprise-wide license agreement allowing Gates Rubber Co. to use FactorySuite automation software components to implement plant floor automation applications within its strategic information systems plan.