Control Engineering hot topics, February 2020

Control Engineering's most clicked articles in February 2020 included stories about the Engineers' Choice winners, intelligent cloud use, intuitive HMI screens, advanced process control and more. Miss something? You can catch up here.

By Chris Vavra March 3, 2020

Hot topics in Control Engineering, for February 2020, included the Engineers’ Choice winners, intelligent cloud use, intuitive HMI screens, advanced process control and more. These are based on the top 10 most read articles online in Control Engineering December. Links to each article below.

1. 2020 Engineers’ Choice Awards

Spotlight on innovation: Best automation, control and instrumentation products in 29 categories.

2. Intelligent use of cloud sharpens operational insight

Cloud-based wireless sensing enables safety, reliability and profits through widespread asset monitoring.

3. Configure intuitive HMI screens to simplify automation

Design standards and best practices for human-machine interfaces (HMIs) continue evolving, but simplicity and clarity never go out of style.

4. Advanced process control: More answers

After a webcast on “Advanced process control: Past, present and future,” more answers to audience questions are provided by the webcast speaker covering advanced process control (APC) to help with process optimization.

5. Deploying robots and drones in process plants and facilities

Robots have long been used in discrete manufacturing and machine automation applications, and their use is now spreading to address process industry applications.

6. Making process control valve choices

Today’s process control valves offer an ever wider range of features and benefits for industries that require precise control over fluids, steam and other gases. With so many control valves to choose from it is important to establish the features that will deliver the most cost-effective design for a particular application.

7. Cultivating robotics and AI for sustainable agriculture

Technology advances ranging from better autonomous vehicles to smarter machines will help relieve the effects of an aging agricultural workforce and a shrinking supply of workers.

8. Hot topics in Control Engineering for 2019

Think Again: Engineering salaries and career tips, object-oriented programming, rate-predictive control, Internet of Things (IoT) and career advice were among top articles posted on the Control Engineering website during 2019.

9. Continuous improvements help Alabama cotton gin increase yields

A cotton gin facility in Alabama upgraded its industrial network to better manage its increased production while running optimally for long periods of time.

10. Building a resilient safety system

While no safety system is perfect, it is imperative for users to understand the basics and define safety and risk to prevent accidents from happening that could have severe effects.

On Mondays, see the top 5 articles of the prior week.

Chris Vavra, associate editor, CFE Media, cvavra@cfemedia.com.


Author Bio: Chris Vavra is web content manager for CFE Media and Technology.