The world today is witnessing a new age of digital transformation that will also require manufacturers to rethink their existing business models and corresponding industrial automation infrastructures. To remain relevant and competitive in the age of “Industry 4.0”, manufacturers need to do more than simply adopt digital technologies and deploy pre-defined processes in isolated islands of automation as they have done in the past.

Brea, California, March 26, 2019— Moxa Inc., a leader in industrial communications and networking, is delighted to announce its participation in the OPC Foundation Field Level Communications (FLC) initiative as part of its ongoing commitment to the development of timesensitive networking (TSN) technologies. For this reason, Moxa has also become one of the initial supporters of the FLC Steering Committee, featuring a lineup of leading industrial automation companies…

Smart manufacturing and digital transformation, coupled with edge intelligence, are enabling manufacturers to increase productivity, reduce downtime, and increase product quality. A key factor in the success of this transformation is the deployment of intelligent edge-computing solutions that can bridge the gap between the operation technology (OT) and the information technology (IT) worlds by providing a number of benefits.

Although the MQTT protocol has been around for nearly three decades, the design of the protocol makes it ideal for IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) applications, the latest trend in automation engineering. This is particularly true for applications that stress “active notification,” in which devices provide data only when needed, as opposed to “passive notification,” in which devices are polled at regular intervals.

Falling global oil prices continue to have a back-breaking effect on cost-intensive upstream oil operations and the economies that are heavily dependent on oil production. As prices fall below 50% of those experienced in 2014, oil companies are feeling the pressure to finally implement modern cost-cutting networking technologies throughout their operation.