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Three current trends in industrial robotics, says Dale Arndt, an engineering manager with Fanuc Robotics Canada, are a) smaller robots, b) larger robots and c) robots that work in close collaboration with humans.

The Dow Chemical Co. is an early adopter of a “manufacturing intelligence” solution just introduced for general availability by Portland, Ore.-based Northwest Analytics. The system, already used in 14 Dow Chemical plants, makes it easier to accomplish data-source integration and real-time process analytics and visibility.

“I love all of it, to tell you the truth. Stainless just catches the eye,” said Craig Bell Jr., a representative with Alloy Products Corp. of Waukesha, Wis. That’s the kind of feeling for the utility and beauty of the materials sciences that was on location at Interphex, held in New York City’s Jacob Javits Center.

In the last 12 years, says a recently published survey,“water rates have at least doubled in more than a quarter of the locations and even tripled in a few.” Continuing rate increases are expected of 5% to 15% every few years.

SCADA systems are today the most common means for establishing computer-based production monitoring and control. While the SCADA security challenge is widely recognized, just how bad it is can be hard to say, since, for most companies, little is to be gained by talking publicly about the problem.It took only 18 hours to find the first signs of attack on one of the honeypots.