Safer working supplies.

RS Components (RS) has announced its collaboration with the British Government’s Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and other suppliers, to return the public sector to work as safely and as efficiently as possible. Phase one of the initiative – ‘safer working supplies’ - has been launched, which concerns the supply of non-clinical PPE, social distancing products, hygiene and cleaning products and anything else essential to help the public sector get back to work.

Pete Malpas - RS Northern Europe

CCS is the biggest public procurement organisation in the country, handling the Government's business process outsourcing. They use their expertise to help buyers in the public sector with policy, advice or to purchase anything from a laptop to a fleet of vehicles, construction services or even legal advice.

They do this by providing 'frameworks' for the supply of goods and services to the public sector. Frameworks are details of services or products needed within a certain category, including the particulars of pre-assessed suppliers who can deliver against those requirements. Public sector buyers can use the frameworks to purchase goods and services compliantly, without having to go through the traditional rounds of quotations.

RS is currently listed as an approved supplier under framework RM3837, ‘construction products, consumables and materials’, which includes electrical, workshop, industrial tools and personal protective equipment (PPE). It is from this framework that the new ‘safer working supplies’ initiative has been developed.

Pete Malpas, Regional Vice President, RS Northern Europe commented on the collaboration: “When COVID-19 first emerged we, along with other suppliers in our market, held discussions with CCS about how best to service the public sector during this time in relation to building materials. This led to further conversations about returning to work safely where RS set out a proposal to CCS. Working with CCS and all suppliers on the building materials framework resulted in the 'safer working supplies' webpage  launched in May. We are immensely proud of the support we've given CCS during this challenging time.”

Buyers can access RS through a link from this site to reach a dedicated landing page, which shows all the relevant product details. Existing RS customers can click to go through and purchase in the normal way and new customers will be directed to a registration form which will take them through the onboarding process to become a customer.

@RSComponents; @designsparkRS @gov_procurement #TandM #Pauto #Britain

2019 President announced.

The International Society of Automation (ISA) has welcomed Paul Gruhn, PE, CFSE, and ISA Life Fellow, is its 2019 Society President.

Paul Gruhn

In his role as Society President, Gruhn will lead the ISA Board of Directors, which is responsible for governing, setting policy and establishing the strategic direction of the organization. ISA is a nonprofit professional association that provides technical resources and programs for those who apply engineering and technology to improve the management, safety and cybersecurity of modern automation and control systems used across industry and critical infrastructure.

“I’m honored to be the 2019 Society President,” said Gruhn, a globally recognized expert in process safety and safety instrumented systems who has played a pivotal role in developing ISA safety standards, training courses and publications. “Like any organization over the last 30 years, ISA has naturally had its ups and downs. To grow and remain relevant, we must adapt to both the changing times and the changing demographics of our industry.”

Gruhn is a Global Functional Safety Consultant with aeSolutions, a process safety, cybersecurity and automation consulting firm. He serves as a Co-Chair and long-time member of the ISA 84 standard committee (on safety instrumented systems), and continues to develop and teach ISA courses on safety systems. He also developed the first commercial safety system modeling program. Gruhn has written two ISA textbooks, numerous chapters in other books and dozens of published articles.

Gruhn earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in Texas, and both a Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE) and an ISA 84 Safety Instrumented Systems Expert.

He suceeds Brian Curtis the 2018 whose term ended at the end of 2018.

@ISA_Interchange  #Pauto #Automation

Assembly elects board!

The CAN in Automation (CiA) has 582 members. They develop jointly CAN-based higher-layer protocols and profiles. This includes in particular the CANopen specifications.

The association represents its members in international standardisation bodies and provides training and publication services. In addition, the organization performs CANopen conformance tests and CANopen interoperability tests. In this year, one of the main activities is the standardization of CAN FD – the improved CAN protocol. It allows bit-rates higher than 1 Mbit/s and payloads up to 64 byte per message.

The international users’ and manufacturers’ group has elected Harm-Peter Krause (esd) as business director.

Uwe Koppe (MicroControl) and Holger Zeltwanger have been confirmed as technical director respectively managing director. The business director is also the chairperson of the Business Committee (BC). Elected BC-members are Emtas, Janz Tec, Kaba, Micro Control, and Spansion. The Technical Committee (TC) is presided by the technical director and comprises the elected members Emtas, esd, Infineon, and Ixxat/HMS.

The CiA board of directors (LtoR): Holger Zeltwanger, Uwe Koppe, and Harm-Peter Krause.

Improving security of oil & gas infrastructure

The LOGIIC Consortium has announced its formal inception under the auspices of the Automation Federation.

The LOGIIC (Linking the Oil and Gas Industry to Improve Cybersecurity) program is an ongoing collaboration of oil and natural gas companies and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate. LOGIIC was formed to facilitate cooperative research, development, testing, and evaluation procedures to improve cybersecurity in petroleum industry digital control systems. The program undertakes collaborative research and development projects to improve the level of cybersecurity in critical systems of interest to the oil and natural gas sector. The program objective is to promote the interests of the sector while maintaining impartiality, the independence of the participants, and vendor neutrality.

The Automation Federation serves as the LOGIIC host organization and has entered into agreements with the LOGIIC member companies. Member companies contribute financially and technically, provide personnel who meet regularly to define projects of common interest, and provide staff to serve on the LOGIIC Executive Committee. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate has contracted with the scientific research organization SRI International to provide scientific and technical guidance as well as project management for LOGIIC.

“LOGIIC is a model example of how leading industry organizations can team with government in a public-private partnership to ensure the security and safety of the automation systems that are crucial to our critical infrastructures,” said Ted Angevaare of Shell and chair of the LOGIIC Executive Committee.

As its first project under the auspices of The Automation Federation, LOGIIC seeks to evaluate and improve the level of security of Safety Instrumented Systems as these are increasingly integrated with process control systems. These goals are to be achieved by an evaluation process conducted by subject matter experts working closely with system vendors. The results of this project will ultimately benefit not only the members of LOGIIC, but also the oil and gas industry as a whole.

Current members of LOGIIC include BP, Chevron, Shell, Total, and other large oil and gas companies that operate significant global energy infrastructure.