Join us for our first episode of The Plant for season 3. We kick off a new podcast season by taking a look back at early automation technology and how the PLC has influenced countless industries since its creation.
“…the the intuitiveness of people and how we work will always be challenged and we’ll always be able to do better because tools allow us to do better.”
— Kris Dornan
Listen in as we speak with Kris Dornan, Commercial Marketing Manager, at Rockwell Automation.
The proliferation of the Internet has created the largest interconnected network of machines the world has ever known. Our connected world is so complex that no one person or group understands everything that is needed to maintain the network and keep it in a healthy state.
The effort to maintain the network as “up” is constant. No matter where you live, someone near you is working right now to prevent something or stop something from losing its connected state. They may work just as tirelessly to get something back online that has lost its connection to everything else.
Of course, most of us never concern ourselves with these issues until we lose our connection to everything else. This scenario recently happened when many woke up to the CrowdStrike outage that caused major business disruptions over the last few weeks, especially for airlines and healthcare agencies.
This is a Big Deal
This issue is a big deal because it demonstrates the real dangers, and highlights the fragility, of a connected world of computers. Almost all these computers have an operating system. If you are unfamiliar, the operating system, or OS, is the intelligence behind every computer.
Even though operating systems are all around us now (PCs, phones, cars, etc.) most of them get updated automatically. The average person does not, and will not, take the time to manage this task manually. Many businesses cannot manage this job any better than individuals. This fact is why businesses like CrowdStrike exist. These datacenters oversee computer systems used by third parties. These third parties rely on their providers to take care of managing and distributing these updates in a planned, secure manner. Good news – this system works most of the time!
The problem is, when it fails, the failure can be wide and catastrophic. The recent CrowdStrike issue is being called the largest outage in IT history.
So if we know that any device connected to a network is exposed to the possibility of being compromised, what steps can organizations take to mitigate the risks associated with a fully connected enterprise? Since making everything less connected is not an option for most businesses, other solutions must be sought.
Discover new ways to deliver content, interact with your system and automatically respond to events on the plant floor. ThinManager Application Engineer, Nick Neppach, will demonstrate some of the newest capabilities from the platform including Containers, API, ThinManager Events and the all new ThinManager Logix PinPoint during this live presentation!
Click the link below to download a PDF of the presentation.
ThinManager What’s New 13.1 PresentationDownloadFor more information on ThinManager, please contact customersuccess@thinmanager.com
System updates go hand in hand with computers, even server computers. But some updates can change functionally, how machines communicate or interact with third party software.
Longtime Rockwell Automation partner, Stratus Technologies’ own Frank Hill, joins Bryan and Tom to talk edge computing in industrial automation
Bryan Harned and Todd Garmon discuss challenges faced from the System Integrator down to the end-user when using and learning ThinManager.
Bryan Harned and Nick Neppach talk ThinManager 12.1, the expansion of integrated application container technology, and why it’s a real game changer.
Bryan Harned and Amy Carter discuss some ThinManager stories and customer successes and why ThinManager’s robust feature set is needed for your automation install.
Growth, for any business, is always a good thing. But even good things have challenges. When a growing food and beverage customer found that too many new machines combined with their existing controls system were making work harder, they called on Everworks, Inc. to streamline their facility.
The customer had acquired multiple machines and new automation equipment as part of their growth strategy. Each new machine came with an OEM solution that is typically a stand-alone FactoryTalk View ME PanelView or SE Local Station. The SE instances ran on industrial computers that required continuous updates and expensive maintenance. What the customer needed was a strategy to integrate 4 OEM systems with their existing native controls to create one modern, fully automated, large food processing line.
Bryan Harned and Nick Putman discussing the all new ThinManager Version 12