News & Knowledge

We’re your source for automation news. Keep up with the latest industry updates and E Tech employee spotlights, as well as tips and guidance from our manufacturing experts.  

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E Tech Group Announces Promotion of Gary Powell to Senior VP of Operations

West Chester, Ohio – February 11 – E Tech Group, one of the largest industrial automation firms in the United States, announced today the promotion of Gary Powell to Senior Vice President of Operations. Powell has over 20 years of experience with E Tech Group, where he served in various roles including Director of Operations for Banks Integration, an E Tech Group Company. Gary currently serves as Vice President of Life Sciences. Under his leadership, E Tech’s west coast team expanded engineering staff headcount and grew its client base to include alternative protein and cell-cultured meat manufacturers. Powell will replace Brad Hendrickson, Executive Vice President of Operations, who announced his retirement on February 7, 2022. Said Matt Wise, E Tech Group CEO of the promotion: “We are grateful to Brad for the leadership and wisdom he imparted on his team and E Tech Group as a whole. At the same time that we say farewell to our colleague Brad, we’re excited to have Gary in his new role as Senior Vice President of Operations. The operational best practices developed by Gary and his team are essential as we continue to scale. Gary’s experienced, thoughtful and collaborative approach will serve him well in his new role.” Gary is equally excited about his new position: “I’m excited to work at the corporate level, influencing and driving the direction of the company,” said Powell. “My move to Senior Vice President of Operations is a great example of what’s happening at E Tech right now. We’re growing and there are a lot of opportunities. I have big shoes to fill and want to continue the great work that Brad began with the Operations team.” Powell will remain in his role as Vice President of Life Sciences through the end of March and is working … Continued

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Making Cybersecurity Approachable

Providing cybersecurity context, encouragement, protection and detection for users in multiple process industries There’s no way to go it alone on cybersecurity. Because no one knows everything, even the most informed and competent end user is going to need help from someone more know-how and information about a certain device, software, best practice or other protection their process or facility requires. Mere mortals usually need cybersecurity help just to get started. Fortunately, there are many well-informed and generous sources, who can provide history, education, encouragement and solutions to make cybersecurity projects workable, efficient, thorough, cost-effective and reliable over the long term.  We spoke to an E Tech Group executive about cybersecurity: how do they handle securing a facility’s network and operations, and how IT and OT must be managed to minimize malfunctions and associated downtime. E Tech Group is an Ohio-headquartered integration and automation firm with 18 locations covering all of North America. IT vs OT to Ethernet & IIoT  Laurie Cavanaugh, Business Development Director at E Tech Group, reports that cybersecurity’s recent evolution is a natural outgrowth of operations technology (OT) and information technology (IT) learning to work together and speak each other’s languages. Cavanaugh explains that OT and IT must cooperate on their organization’s overall cybersecurity assessment, which will give a true reading of its OT assets, PLCs and unmanaged devices, as well as its network topology, managed switches, firewall protections and IT-related components. IT/OT assessments don’t only identify weak points in the network and prioritize the fixes they need; they help modernize automation platforms, which eliminates the risks that obsolete hardware poses. Moving to a plant-wide IIoT-driven control system offers an easier-to-understand IT-OT dialect. Un-flatten Your Network To beginning addressing some of the IT-based tasks that cybersecurity requires, individual process and site characteristics can show what gaps need to … Continued

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Cybersecurity Approachable
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E Tech Group Promotes Several Associates

E Tech Group would like to congratulate several team members on recent promotion and new roles.
Virginia Bergman has been promoted to the newly created position of Director of Quality Operations. Andy Corsini, Tag McCormick, and Chris Treat have been promoted to the newly created position of Director of Operations.

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How Our Automation Training Boot Camp Transforms Our Engineers 

While the Marines require 13 weeks of rigorous basic training in Paris Island, and the Army and Navy demand 10 and 8 weeks respectively, E Tech Group offers 4 weeks of Automation Boot Camp to prepare our recruits to become the best of the best in automation engineering.  We like to think our Automation Boot Camp is just as transformative for our recruits, but without the screaming in their face and the exhaustive overnight hikes through the desert. It also produces a more competent and more confident automation engineer or project manager ready to take on the Life Science Industry.  A Control Systems Integrator Focused on Continued Education For over 30 years now, we have refined and improved our automation training program into 26 online modules within the company portal. These modules are followed by both recent engineering graduates and experienced engineers learning the peculiarities of the Life Science Industry, and contain embedded quizzes that help them soak in the information. The self-paced program includes topics like: The technical modules our new recruits will complete throughout the course of Automation Bootcamp include: This provides our new automation engineers and future project managers with well-rounded background information and template starting points that will ease life considerably once assigned to a project. Soft skills also include customer relations, team work communication, appropriate documentation of meetings, and the proper follow up of customer needs.  Applied Life Sciences Automation Training: Bringing it Into the Real World With the same urgency that the Marines require 3 weeks of intensive, real life target practice with an M16 rifle and live ammunition, E Tech Group provides each recruit with a real batching project with a live PLC (ControlLogix or Siemens S7) and Operator Interface (Wonderware, Factory Talk, WINCC, or Ignition).  As a final hurdle, each recruit demonstrates the functionality of their … Continued

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Data Center Automation: Zero Room for Errors or Downtime

When it comes to building automation for mission critical facilities, control system solutions must be impenetrable and infallible. This requires detailed reconnaissance, cooperative project design, and redundancies that protect the integrity of the system’s operations and network security. E Tech Group’s Zero Defect methodology for data center automation is the best way to ensure your critical materials are safe and your systems run smoothly. This brand of automation service focuses on making sure things are done right the first time, with no punch list items or issues left on the table when the system is implemented. Testing, safety and training are key, and so is completing the project in a way that minimizes downtime and risk.