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Modern drive systems with integrated motors, gears, inverters and communications make distributed motion a must-have for bottling plants.

Energy audits revealed replacing aging lighting with energy-saving fluorescent lamps would pay off in three facilities.

New Hampshire bacon producer creates cleaning and sanitizing solutions onsite from salt, water and electricity.

New X-ray inspection system provides precision detection in quality control.

Software manages 1,500 pieces of equipment in four plants and cuts budgetary spending by 33 percent.

As manufacturers increase connectivity between plant floor and enterprise systems to boost productivity and reduce time to market, this interconnectivity can also bring undesirable security risks. ODVA (Open Device-Net Vendors Association) released a document that provides guidelines on how to minimize these risks.

Hormel’s Progressive Processing plant is built for the long haul. A quarter century had passed since Hormel Foods had commissioned a new production facility. In designing its Dubuque plant, engineers aimed to create a facility that would be contemporary for the next 25 years.

Mastery of the supply chain can yield tremendous cost savings for food companies, but only if production is aligned with what will sell in the months ahead.

Teaching packaging machines to communicate. Thanks to open standards, packaging machine controls communicate up and down the line and with MES and ERP systems to provide key performance data.

With a large cadre of American workers ready to retire, training and educating the next generation of technicians and engineers is a critical need in manufacturing.