Control Engineering hot topics, September 2021
Control Engineering's most clicked articles in September 2021 included stories on the 2021 Engineering Leaders Under 40, APC and control system improvements, COVID-19 testing, digital transformation ROI and more. Miss something? You can catch up here.
Hot topics in Control Engineering, for September 2021, for stories posted in the last three months, included the 2021 Engineering Leaders Under 40, APC and control system improvements, COVID-19 testing, digital transformation ROI and more. Links to each article below.
1. Engineering Leaders Under 40, Class of 2021
Meet the engineers who are exceeding expectations and improving operations as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
2. Understanding the matrix for APC improvements
More agile tools are helping multivariable control become more effective for advanced process control and other applications than traditional model-based control (MPC) and real-time optimization. Process engineers, operations personnel, DCS and APC engineers, and other process operation and optimization stakeholders benefit from understanding the matrix.
3. Control system improvements: Feed-forward, adaptive, fuzzy control
Control methods that can be more effective than proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers, include feed-forward control, disturbance compensation, adaptive control, optimal PID control and fuzzy control.
4. Engineers develop COVID-19 saliva test
Engineers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a small tabletop device that can detect COVID-19 from a saliva sample in about an hour.
5. How to calculate digital transformation ROI
Simplify and prioritize the digital vision for smart factory upgrades and consider hard and soft savings in the return calculations.
6. Factory of the future: How to vitalize digital transformation
See five attributes of the factory of the future. Information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) organizations, hardware and software synergy should be part of the roadmap.
7. Scaling machine learning for the manufacturing masses
Enabling access to machine learning algorithms in easy-to-use advanced analytics applications accelerates insights in process data. A specialty chemical manufacturer used ML tools to predict over 90% of quality deviations and save more than $500,000 per year in quality downgrades.
8. Rethinking the way industrial products are purchased
Greater operational efficiency is required in manufacturing today and it requires a comprehensive look at everything, starting with how things are purchased. See four clarifications on consolidated industrial purchasing advantages.
9. New hydraulic actuator designs offer zero emission options
Compressor stations often employ automated valves activated using pressurized natural gas, requiring improved actuator designs to eliminate emissions.
10. Five steps for jumpstarting a successful IIoT program
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and condition-based maintenance (CBM) alter the way we identify, assign and complete work.
On Mondays, see the top 5 articles of the prior week.
Chris Vavra, web content manager, Control Engineering, CFE Media and Technology, cvavra@cfemedia.com.
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