June 14, 2019 – IDEC Corporation has released the HS1T interlock switch with solenoid with 5,000N of locking force for machine and equipment guarding applications.

June 13, 2019 – Endress+Hauser has released a new generation of ISFET sensors made with unbreakable PEEK for glass-free pH measurement and liquid analysis.

June 12, 2019 – Festo has developed new advanced solenoid valves and coils for the petroleum and chemical sectors that the company says increase process safety.

June 3, 2019 – Moxa has released a major upgrade for its MXview industrial network management software, allowing for customers to integrate MXview into both IT and OT systems.

May 31, 2019 – Pixus Technologies, an Ontario-based provider of embedded computing and enclosure solutions, now offers a 6U OpenVPX chassis platform with a mix of VITA 66.4 optical connectors and VITA 67.3 RF connectors.

May 29, 2019 – Antaira Technologies has expanded its industrial networking infrastructure family with the introduction of the FCU-6001-SFP+ media converter.

May 22, 2019 – Pepperl+Fuchs has debuted the F199 sensor for high-accuracy inclination measurement.

May 21, 2019 – Balluff has released point-of-use, touch screen digital displays to visualize four different types of signals — analog signals, incremental counter signals, start/stop pulse signals, and synchronous serial SSI signals.

May 17, 2019 – Leine Linde has launched ADS Uptime, a new generation of condition monitoring system for encoders.

May 16, 2019 – Rockwell Automation has released the new ThinManager version 11.0 software, which delivers production information from any FactoryTalk application to operators wherever they are in a facility.

May 15, 2019 – B&K Precision has expanded its portable data recorder line with the DAS220-BAT.

June 17, 2019 – Honda of Canada Mfg. (HCM) and the Honda Canada Foundation have donated more than $1.8 million to Barrie, Ontario's Georgian College for new equipment and research.

June 14, 2019 – Skills Canada recently held its 25th national competition (SCNC) in Halifax, awarding medals in several manufacturing and automation skills areas.

June 14, 2019 – HEIDENHAIN recently opened the TNC-CNC Academy, an expanded CNC controls training centre in the Chicago area.

June 12, 2019 – Autopro Automation Consultants has established a new scholarship partnership with the Fort McMurray Public School Division.

June 3, 2019 – The skills gap is one of the biggest issues facing Canadian manufacturers today, whether from loss of knowledge due to retiring employees or automation shifting the types of roles that are available to human workers.

May 21, 2019 – The government of British Columbia has awarded a one-time, $250,000 grant to FIRST Robotics BC, to help students with a passion for robotics to develop their science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills and explore career opportunities.

May 21, 2019 – The Ontario government has allocated more than $1.4 million to help create a career exploration tool for jobs in the steel and aluminum manufacturing industries.

May 21, 2019 – Rockwell Automation is now offering e-learning training courses designed to equip workers with the skills they need to support modern industrial operations.

May 10, 2019 – Swiss-based technology group Schleuniger has partnered with global electronics industry association IPC to offer IPC members online wire processing training from Schleuniger’s S.University.

April 10, 2019 – The Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium (EMC), an organization that promotes knowledge sharing and resources to 13,000 Canadian manufacturers, is hosting the Advantage through Excellence Conference October 8 – 10, 2019 in Vaughan, Ont. 

April 9, 2019 – Beginning in May, Matrox Imaging will offer its next series of classroom training on the Matrox Imaging Library (MIL) software development kit (SDK) and the Matrox Design Assistant integrated development environment (IDE).

April 8, 2019 – Universal Robots (UR) has launched a worldwide network of authorized training centres that expand on the company’s Universal Robots Academy online training modules.

May 31, 2019 – An Ontario manufacturer of concrete products including paving stones and patio slabs was fined $55,000 in Ontario provincial court after pleading guilty a charge involving a critical worker injury.

May 27, 2019 – Ontario's manufacturing workplaces are 1.6 per cent less safe over last year, according to the 2019 results of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB)'s Health and Safety Index.

May 14, 2019 – ABB has opened its first CO2-neutral and energy self-sufficient production site in the world, with the commissioning of a solar power plant at a factory in Lüdenscheid, Germany.

May 9, 2019 – A manufacturer of chemical products has been fined $100,000 by the Ontario Ministry of Labour after a worker was critically and permanently injured at its plant.

May 6, 2019 – In early 2016, JTEKT Automotive, a Tennessee-based automotive supplier, had a simple goal: Upgrade certain machining capabilities for a new project with a global automotive company.

April 29, 2019 – Kaizen, a Japanese term meaning improvement, is more than a Lean strategy; it is a philosophy that affects the entirety of an organization.

April 24, 2019 – The industrialization of our economies around the world owes a debt to forging and the men and women who operate forging equipment. 

April 24, 2019 – "Pressure has been building on workplaces to provide physically as well as psychologically healthy and safe workplaces," says Krista Schmid, Workplace Safety & Prevention Services consultant. "Many employers are talking about it and wondering what to do."

April 4, 2019 – If you are someone who wants to improve your workday, then Lean manufacturing can empower you to make lasting impact.

March 27, 2019 – In the highly competitive world of custom machine design, being open to change is a key to sustaining success.

March 27, 2019 – Ontario's Workplace Safety & Prevention Services (WSPS) will focus on the individual – the ‘safety superhero’ who advocates for health and safety in their workplace – at its annual Partners in Prevention conference. 

March 22, 2019 – CS Wind Canada Inc., a manufacturer and supplier of wind towers that is currently in a state of shutdown, has been fined $60,000 by the Ontario Ministry of Labour after a worker suffered permanent injury at its facility in Windsor, Ontario. 

June 18, 2019 – The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the University of Waterloo have launched a research hub on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, machine vision and the Internet of Things.

June 18, 2019 – Automation and digitalization can be used to make manufacturing processes more efficient.

June 4, 2019 – Are multiple sources of data testing the limits of your systems?

June 3, 2019 – Despite the growth of the internet and the tremendous advancements in digital technologies, the productivity growth in manufacturing during the last four decades has not kept pace.

May 30, 2019 – ABB has received a gold at the German Innovation Awards in the category “Excellence in Business to Business – Electronic Technologies” for its new non-invasive temperature sensor solution.

May 24, 2019 – As the Internet of Things comes of age, edge computing is taking some of the essential data processing and analytics work from the cloud and bringing it to the intelligent edge.

May 27, 2019 – We often hear the common misconception that many enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations end in failure.

May 24, 2019 – I sit down for discussions all the time with managers and executives who question how Industry 4.0 is relevant to their operations.

May 21, 2019 – Rogers Communications Inc. says it will launch a new wireless service that's optimized for connecting stationary sensors and similar data-collection devices to the internet.

May 21, 2019 – Ontario has cut funding for artificial intelligence research, eliminating $24 million to two institutes.

May 21, 2019 – For the past decade, system integrators have been promised that the USB3 and GigE Vision interfaces they relied upon would gracefully evolve, delivering faster and faster throughput speeds to keep up with increasing camera resolution and frame rates.

May 31, 2019 – Let me start by saying I’m a computer analyst/programmer, an electronics engineer, and a Microsoft partner.

May 31, 2019 – The first step when starting any Industry 4.0 initiative or digital transformation within a manufacturing environment is to define the common goals and consistent use of terms.

May 30, 2019 – Robot density in Canada has been on the rise for more than a decade and reached 145 units per 10,000 employees last year.

May 15, 2019 – Manufacturing data is growing at an exponential level, and unless you find a way to move, compute and analyze it, it’s going to be a huge burden on your IT team.

May 13, 2019 – Ever since the German government introduced the concept of Industry 4.0 at the Hannover Messe trade show eight years ago, connected manufacturing has been the main topic of conversation at the annual fair.

May 6, 2019 – Hardly a day goes by without a political headline, and unfortunately, most of those headlines have little to do with anything that makes a difference to manufacturers, but the significant policies that lawmakers put in place do.

April 30, 2019 – Radio-frequency identification – RFID – is coming in from the cold.

April 17, 2019 – According to the Association of Workers Compensation Boards of Canada, over 29,000 manufacturing workers suffer a job-related injury each year, accounting for nearly 12 per cent of all workplace lost-time claims. How can automation help to reduce this figure?

April 11, 2019 – I spent this past weekend volunteering as a timer at a swim meet hosted by my granddaughter’s club. There were 800 swimmers and 1,500 race heats. At eight lanes per heat, it meant about 12,000 individual races had to be timed, each lane manned by three qualified timers and a strokes-and-turn judge in order for the time to be “official.”

March 29, 2019 – In my last letter, I asked you about how artificial intelligence (AI) factors into your operations. We’ve published one comment in our March/April 2019 issue (p. 4) from a reader who notes that unless a manufacturer solves pre-existing production inefficiencies, a costly AI system won’t provide much ROI.

March 25, 2019 – Industry 4.0 – or the fourth industrial revolution – refers to a cyber-physical environment that self-optimizes.

May 17, 2019 – The TASI Group, a provider of test and measurement technology for manufacturers, has acquired Sierra Instruments, a global company specializing in the manufacture of flow measurement instrumentation. 

May 14, 2019 – KP Tissue Inc. and Kruger Products L.P. dedicated the construction site of their future Sherbrooke TAD tissue plant on May 13.

April 10, 2019 – At the Hannover Messe industrial technology fair last week, Tetra Pak launched a connected packaging platform, which it says will transform milk and juice cartons into interactive information channels, full-scale data carriers and digital tools.

April 9, 2019 – Endress+Hauser is now the exclusive sales and service source for SpectraSensors in Canada, whose gas analyzing technology is used to measure contaminant levels in natural gas and gas processing operations, refineries and chemical plants.

March 22, 2019 – A massive explosion at a chemical plant in eastern China with a long record of safety violations has killed at least 47 people and injured hundreds of others, 90 of them seriously.

March 14, 2019 – Seeq Corporation is adding more than 50 system integration partners for process manufacturing customers in North America, the Middle East, Europe, South America, and Asia—along with new offices in Malaysia and Europe.

February 28, 2019 – Cascades Inc. has announced it will cease operations of two tissue paper machines located in Ontario, affecting 68 positions at the plants.

February 22, 2019 – Saputo Inc. has signed a friendly deal to buy United Kingdom-based company Dairy Crest Group plc in an agreement valued at about $1.7 billion.

February 22, 2019 – Endress+Hauser, a specialist in process measurement and instrumentation, and electrical distributor Westburne have expanded their partnership to service Manitoba with automation solutions.

February 21, 2019 – Rockwell Automation and Schlumberger have partnered to create a new joint venture, which they are calling the first fully integrated digital oilfield automation solutions provider.

February 21, 2019 – Steel producer Stelco Holdings Inc. says federal protections for the industry have helped prop up earnings as it focuses more on the domestic market.

February 20, 2019 – Alberta is giving $80 million in future royalty credits for construction of a new methanol plant in the province's northwest.

June 11, 2019 – A Ford engine plant in Wales that employs 1,700 people is "economically unsustainable" and will close next year, the carmaker announced last week.

May 29, 2019 – The world's largest steel maker, ArcelorMittal, has announced further cuts to production at several plants in Europe due to weak demand and high imports to the bloc.

May 24, 2019 – Georgia-Pacific is investing US$100 million in its Bowling Green, Kentucky facility, which produces paper products for its Dixie business.

May 14, 2019 – Automaker Volkswagen AG says it is investing 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) to set up a battery production plant in Germany.

May 5, 2019 – Search and recovery personnel found the body of another worker Sunday in the rubble of a northern Illinois silicone factory that exploded and burst into flames two days earlier, bringing the death toll to three employees with one more body believed to be in the debris, a fire official said.

May 2, 2019 – Bombardier Inc. says it is looking to sell its aerostructures businesses in Belfast and Morocco as part of a consolidation of its aerospace business into a single unit.

April 26, 2019 – Ford is sinking a half-billion dollars into electric vehicle startup Rivian in a deal that has the companies working together on a new Ford electric vehicle based on Rivian underpinnings.

April 23, 2019 – Google's self-driving car spinoff Waymo says it will reopen an axle plant in Detroit to convert conventional vehicles so they can drive autonomously.

April 22, 2019 – Honda is slowing production of Accord and Civic cars as U.S. buyers continue to favour SUVs and trucks.

April 17, 2019 – Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday it's "unrealistic" to think that Foxconn Technology Group will employ 13,000 people in Wisconsin as originally promised and that he wants to renegotiate the contract with the global electronics leader.

April 8, 2019 – Ford workers in Russia have started industrial action over plans to close a plant including stopping work if there are any equipment problems.

April 1, 2019 – Volkswagen said last Wednesday it is partnering with Amazon to develop cloud computing capacity aimed at improving efficiency and co-ordination across the automaker's vast global factory network.