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.

| November 15, 2022

E Tech Group Welcomes New Business Director

E Tech Group would like to announce the addition of a new member to our team, Kurt Wakeman! Kurt will be reporting to Alan Maxwell, who had some kind words he wanted to share. “I’d like to welcome Kurt Wakeman to the E Tech Group Process Industries team! Kurt joins us in the role of Business Director, Material Handling. We look forward to utilizing Kurt’s depth and breadth of experience in the Material Handling industry to diversify and grow our established presence in the market by expanding our capabilities, developing additional offerings and solutions, and forming new vendor & client partnerships.” Kurt comes to us with over ten years of engineering and project management experience across program, software, mechanical, electrical and controls. We’re elated Kurt has joined us and thrilled to know he feels the same after sharing, “I am excited for the opportunity to drive growth and take E Tech Group’s Material Handling business to the next level!” Welcome to the team!

| September 19, 2022

A Life Sciences East Project is Coming to a SMASHING End!

One of E Tech Group’s- Life Sciences East customer is the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. The lab supplies space craft programs to NASA for scientific research. Life Sciences East supports one of their test facilities maintaining the industrial control systems of the Thermal Vacuum chambers. One of the missions John Hopkins University tested in the facility LSE supports is getting ready to come to a SMASHING conclusion later this month. JHU tested the DART spacecraft in their lab. The DART mission is NASA’s demonstration of kinetic impactor technology, impacting an asteroid to adjust its speed and path. The Dart spacecraft is scheduled to crash into the asteroid on September 26, 2022. Several people from LSE have worked on projects supporting JHU during the 6 years they have been a customer to maintain and upgrade the systems at JHU. To learn more about DART and its program and mission click here.

| September 13, 2022

What’s the Process of an IT/OT Risk Assessment like for a Facility Team?

When it’s Time to Consider a Control Systems Upgrade: IT/OT Risk Assessment When you’re working in a facility that has equipment reaching end of life or components that are on the verge of obsolescence, it would be nice to simply wave a wand and everything be instantly updated. Unfortunately, because multiple installations and upgrades have been done over a period of decades, this process tends to be a bit more involved. To better understand what’s wrong and what it will take to provide a fix, it really is imperative that the client is as involved in this process as are our engineers. Because of the sheer number of issues and temporary band-aids placed on them, our clients often don’t know where to start. Compounded fixes over time make it difficult to identify the main issue or issues. That’s where we come in and can help add some rigor to this process. If we can have an open line of communication with the client’s decision makers and maintenance team, we can help them better understand what we’re assessing and what it will take to correct it. The goal is to take a large amount of material and truncate it into digestible pieces that will allow all parties to evaluate potential solutions. Custom Automation Solutions Don’t Have to Start from Scratch In many cases, maintenance technicians or employees may just think we’re there to redo the building. They see an engineer walking the floor and may assume they’re only there to complete a particular task, when in actuality we’re there to perform an in-depth assessment and present options to give them control over what optimizations are implemented. Building automation and control systems integration is a specialized field; the client may not always aware of the extent of what could be, but are sometimes excited at the prospect of … Continued

| August 17, 2022

Case study: Redesign the process, then the control system

Author: Kevin Tom, E Tech Group lead automation engineer Pharmaceutical control system integration: Fixing a blind spot in the process design helped user requirements for a heat exchanger control system. A control system may not be able to fix a faulty process. Learning Objectives A system integrator was tasked with fixing a control system flaw for a pilot plant at a large pharmaceutical company. The integrator had to make several changes to the temperature control unit (TCU) to compensate for different variables with the liquid nitrogen flow. Thorough initial design and investigation helps prevent a scramble at the end of a project end to patch design holes. System Integration Insights System integrators are often the last people involved in an automation project, which gives them a unique perspective on operations. That perspective is a double-edged sword, though, and can be problematic if there are design flaws in the system. In this case study, the system integrator had to make several changes to the temperature control unit (TCU) to compensate for the liquid nitrogen flow, which resulted in a few challenges that had to be addressed. The adage of automation always coming last may well be true, but the system integrator can avoid some pitfalls if the initial design and investigation is thorough. A workable process design is the foundation for successful control system design. That can conflict with the timing of the old system integrator adage about new plant construction: “Automation always comes last.” It’s only after everything else is put in place that the system integrator can step in to install and test the control system, so they’re often the last member of the construction team. However, what happens when the system integrator encounters a conflict between the process design left to them and the practical operation of the … Continued