Entrepreneurship and The Art of Pivoting
I am an entrepreneur. I have worked for myself for 22 of the last 28 years, and have had to dodge and pivot often along the way. Sometimes I try new ideas (like starting the Automation Academy site 4 years …
Tag: systems integration
Building Blocks of Industrial Automation
As with any field of study, industrial automation and system integration requires specific skills that need to be mastered to progress to the next stage of learning.
Is OEE Enough?
OEE, or Overall Equipment Effectiveness, is the percentage of manufacturing time that is productive. It is composed of three parts: Availability – The percentage of time the process is running during planned production time Performance – The percentage of production …
Random Thoughts Video
I recorded this video while driving from my home in Lebanon, Tennessee to visit a customer in Knoxville. It is the day before the one-year anniversary of the tornado, and I just kind of discussed the stuff that I have …
A Tale of Three Students
As I approach the one year anniversary of the tornado and the onset of Covid-19, I can’t help but think of how my training approach has changed. Automation Training classes have been few and much smaller, and of course they …
Mastering the Machine
In 2013, I created a document called Mastering the Machine, a 26 page e-book about planning and building a machine or production line with an emphasis on documentation. I had just started my business again after spending 6 years working …
What Is System Integration?
If someone asks me what I do and I answer “System Integration”, sometimes I get a blank stare. System Integration is defined in Engineering as bringing together the component subsystems into one system and ensuring that the subsystems function together …
A Different Kind of Training
After months of being out of the training environment due to the pandemic, September took me back on the road. In addition to standard training classes for Automation Training (Siemens and Omron), I was approached by a customer to do …
CIP Tetra Integration
Most of the people who follow this blog know me as an instructor or trainer, and that is certainly what I have focused most of my efforts on lately. I do however still do some programming and systems integration work, …
The Complexities of Systems Integration
Have you ever wondered why some seemingly simple systems integration jobs take so much time and money to complete? The picture above shows a section of a film wrapper build by a French company, Cermex. I would estimate that this …