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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Understanding Automation Trends: From Buzzwords to Practical Solutions

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. Moving Beyond Automation Buzzwords As industrial automation continues to evolve, it’s easy for these terms to become overused buzzwords. What makes them more than empty hype is how they’re used. Companies that put real effort into training, strategy, and implementation can translate emerging technologies into everyday operations — and measurable improvements in efficiency, safety, and uptime. Key Automation Trends That Are Worth the Hype Several trends are driving meaningful change in industrial automation today: 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: Effective Automation & Visualization Go Hand-in-Hand When I asked integrators and system suppliers what are the key trends affecting … Continued

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E Tech Group Promotes Navid Radnia, PMP to Director of Project Management

We’re pleased to announce that Navid Radnia has been promoted to the role of Corporate Director of PMO (Project Management Office). In this new role, Navid’s mission will be to create and continually improve on processes and methodologies that positions E Tech to deliver exceptional service to our clients on every project. Navid’s initial main focus will be to help establish project management and execution standards for the company. He will lead this collaborative effort with internal teams, using E Tech Playbook as a starting point, and pulling in best practices from other areas of the company to formulate a standard set of operating procedures that work best for the company as a whole. Navid has been with E Tech Group since the end of 2021, quickly earning the respect of his colleagues. He was nominated for several ETG Group Awards, including Rookie of the Year.  Navid has a proven track record in project management excellence, delivering projects such as the world’s first compact proton therapy center – a highly targeted radiation treatment for cancer patients. His well-rounded expertise includes roles in Project Management and Production Control, as well as Field Service Engineer. Navid is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and has his Six Sigma Green Belt.  

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Delivering a 1.5 Year ROI on a $2M Line Automation Recontrol

A large steel service center client was seeing troubling trends in its temper mill cut-to-length line: increasing downtime, lower-than-desired yields, and higher scrap losses. The client needed the problem(s) identified and mitigated ASAP so as to avoid more productivity loss and material hemorrhaging. Obstacle: Hack a Standalone Black-Box Control System The client was hampered in its ability to troubleshoot and improve the processes because the OEM equipment and its controls and drives programs were a “black box” solution. This meant only the OEM and its technicians had the source code of the software used to run the equipment. Without expert eyes, there was no way for the client to access and properly reconfigure the equipment and its controls. Problem: Obsolete Equipment The facility was relying on decades-old equipment with discontinued PLCs and hard-to-replace components. Specific challenges included: As equipment aged, the risks to safety, productivity, and product consistency grew. A full-scale modernization was needed to restore reliability and prepare the plant for future automation. Solution: A Custom Modernization Strategy Enter E Tech Group.  With a 30-year Center of Excellence in the metals industry, electrical and mechanical engineering expertise, and deep knowledge of coordinated drive systems and automation modernization, E Tech Group consultants studied the client’s entire temper mill line. This included evaluating all of the upstream and downstream processes, the equipment and automation platforms, and the variety of alloys being cut to length. E Tech Group has held long-term partnerships with key automation manufacturers having executed thousands upgrades and recontrol projects over the past thirty years. As a Gold Partner with Rockwell and Solution Partner with Siemens, we confidently proposed the Rockwell PLC and Siemens Drives – a combination used often throughout many of E Tech Group’s previous projects that delivers the “best of breed” for both the PLC and Drives platforms. In addition, newly … Continued

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New Additions to E Tech Group’s Metals and Life Sciences Teams

We are beginning the New Year with additions to our executive team:    Carmelo Bottari is our new Director of Business for the Metals Division. Carmelo is from the Chicago area and joins us from Kay Manufacturing where he held roles such as Engineer, Engineering Manager, & Plant Manager over his 13 year career with them.  Carmelo has a BS in Engineering and a Master’s in Engineering Management from Northwestern University.  Patricio Gomez is our new Business Development Manager for the Southern California Area. Gomez is from Chile, and has a BS in Computer and Information Engineering and diploma in Telecommunications from Universidad de Santiago de Chile. For 13+ years, he worked for our automation partners at Rockwell, where he led their Latin America marketing divisions, and served as Account Manager for the Waste Water Industry. Welcome to the E Tech Group team!

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Control System Panel Design Can Make or Break the Usability of an Automation System

Just like each client requires a custom approach to automation system design, each then requires a custom approach to the layout and composition of control system panels. Think about it: the control panel is the interface that lets access and participate in the complex conversations between the equipment, sensors and software of your system. If you can only access some of the information the system produces, or you have trouble getting what you need in a salient form, even the best system won’t benefit you the way it should. Our control panel designs are made with you and your operators’ input, which means we can build panels that are user-friendly, responsive and intuitive, making those conversations clear and interactions effective.