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.

| March 24, 2023

When Dealing with Obsolescence Becomes a Challenge

E Tech Group’s Group Engineering Manager, George Bruce, shares his insight in leading an extensive system upgrade over a weekend. A system integrator upgraded a decades-old obsolete system to a current high-speed system over a weekend. This article originally appeared in Control Engineering. Avoiding Obsolescence: Insights on E Tech Group’s Process: To upgrade and separate the equipment, five systems controlled by a central PLC needed to be migrated to either ControlLogix or CompactLogix and have all communication transitioned to Ethernet. The team needed to map the three decades of piecemeal undocumented upgrades that were currently keeping systems operational. The largest system consisted of a 17 slot PLC-5 rack and 12 hard wired drives, with a mix of 120V digital inputs/outputs and analog inputs. Automation & Control System Needs Upgraded, No Downtime Allowed E Tech Group automation engineers were contracted to update and replace obsolete hardware in a pickle plant. They knew that if the one centralized PLC-5 that controlled five systems responsible for over 50% of pickle production failed, they would be shutting down the entire plant to identify and fix the issue, leading the company to lose valuable time and revenue during peak production periods. To upgrade and separate the equipment, the five systems controlled by the central programmable logic controller (PLC) would need to be migrated and have all communication transitioned to Ethernet. A Piecemeal Automation System, Time Constraints & Michigan Weather Because there were a number of hurdles to take into consideration when beginning this upgrade, it took careful planning to ensure this project could be completed without disrupting production or extending the deadline. First, the team needed to map the three decades of piecemeal undocumented upgrades that were currently keeping systems operational. Second, understanding the facility used only fresh produce, and at certain times ran at … Continued

| March 19, 2023

Congratulations to Our Recently Promoted Team Members

Congratulations to some of our recently promoted team members: Christina Jumalon, Eric Zhang, Samantha Nadeau, Zac Beyer, Andreas Lang, Sahil Mehta, Ken Her, and Umar Karim for recent, well-deserved promotions. Christina Jumalon – Automation Engineer II Christina has had an incredible year of growth, supporting a fast-paced startup where she took an active role in PLC/HMI programming and troubleshooting, documentation, and Phase testing in close coordination with client process engineers. She’s also helped with documentation and testing for various projects throughout the year. Eric Zhang – Automation Engineer II Eric has developed his skills as an embedded engineer. Eric has also shown his hard work and ability to learn quickly while being on call and asked to troubleshoot and debug the live system when needed. He is asked to juggle multiple projects and priorities while maintaining his stellar quality of work. He has also helped us to expand our client role by helping to work with manufacturing, infrastructure, and other groups as needed. Eric has become a trusted resource to the PLC team and has expanded his documentation, coding, testing, and debugging skills. Samantha Nadeau – Automation Engineer III Sam is a very talented engineer who is technically capable, motivated, and committed to the quality of work she delivers. Sam has developed and maintained strong working relationships with engineers in the LSE unit as well as here on the west coast, where she is an active contributor to our company culture and social atmosphere. Sam juggled being a part of projects with the LSE and LSW teams. Zac Beyer – Lead Automation Engineer I Zac has seen an incredible variety of platforms and technologies in the past year. From specifying and procuring intrinsically safe hardware to quickly ramping up to support an OSI Pi project to programming Siemens PLCs … Continued

| March 19, 2023

E Tech Group Announces Promotion of Jennifer Palumbo to Vice President of Marketing

Congratulations to Jennifer Palumbo. Jen was recently promoted to Vice President of Marketing. Jen has been with E Tech Group since 2019, She played a major role in establishing E Tech Group as one company and creating our brand identity. She was an integral part of leading the brand migration, and communicating our mission and vision statement. “Jen has been a critical member of the E Tech Group executive team focusing and driving the efforts in establishing E Tech Group as one company as well as recruiting, developing a professional marketing team, and helping to drive our company to new heights,” said CEO Matt Wise. Congratulations to Jen Palumbo on a well-deserved promotion and thank you for the leadership and dedication you put into everything you do!

| March 15, 2023

Automation Trends: From Buzzwords to Real Needs

Automation will solve many problems—but not without people supporting it. Derrick Colyer, Business Development Manager at E Tech Group, shares his insights in this latest Food Engineering article on automation trends. Derrick discusses the role of AI in food manufacturing, and why digital transformation needs to come first. What’s Going on with Automation in the Food & Beverage Industry? The food and beverage industry has been one of the slowest to adopt new technologies—and maybe that’s a good thing. The auto, chemical and petroleum industries, for example, have served well as testbeds for new automation technologies. Meanwhile, food and beverage has benefitted from all the trialing and proving of “bleeding-edge” systems such that the buzzwords we’ve used for the last few years—e.g., “digital transformation,” AI/ML, “digital twin” and Industry 4.0—are becoming everyday terms that describe technology we now rely upon to be competitive in today’s changing world of consumer tastes. What Do the Automation Engineers & Integrators Have to Say? So, I asked system integrators, engineering houses and automation suppliers what their food processor clients perceive to be the three to five key trends/issues in automation today, and how processors are taking advantage of these automation trends. After tabulating the results, the top five trends cited were: Visualization (including enterprise, platform, machine and remote visibility) Data collection and analytics plus AI/ML Digital transformation Robotics and automated material handling (extending to warehouse automation) Security/cybersecurity Effective Automation & Visualization Go Hand-in-Hand When I asked integrators and system suppliers what are the key trends affecting food and beverage processors, their most-often cited responses were enterprise visualization/machine visibility/remote visibility—and tied with visibility were the tools that provide the instrumentation food processors use to achieve the visibility; that is, analytics/data collection/AI/ML, etc. As in IFR flying, without sensor data to power the visualization/instrumentation system, you … Continued

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