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!

| November 1, 2022

Battling Obsolescence and Risk Begins with an IT/OT Assessment

This article originally appeared in Automation World and features Melissa Bruno, Group Engineering Manager at E Tech Group. Click here to read the full article. During any technology assessment to determine the need for an upgrade, a direct line of communication from integrators to decision makers and maintenance and engineering teams can help them better understand how to evaluate potential solutions. When you’re working in a facility that has equipment reaching end of life or components on the verge of obsolescence, it would be nice to simply wave a wand and have everything be instantly updated. Unfortunately, because multiple installations and upgrades have been done over decades, this process tends to be a bit more involved. Before you can address obsolescence, breakdown, and security issues, you need to have a full picture of where your facility stands. To do this, we perform what we call an IT/OT (operations technology) assessment. While companies like ours perform this work, the client’s presence and cooperation plays a crucial role. Here’s how to get the most out of your assessment. Engage and understand Compounded fixes over time make it difficult to identify the main issues or where to start resolving them. Having an open line of communication with the 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. In many cases, maintenance technicians or other employees may not understand what we’re doing. They see an engineer walking the floor and assume we’re there to complete a particular task. In reality we’re performing an in-depth assessment that will be used to give them control over the optimizations … Continued

| 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