Specialty chemicals company Lanxess is taking on a mammoth task and digitalizing all its process engineering, electrical engineering and automation documentation — including lifecycle management. Uniform plant and project documentation and comprehensive data management will increase quality and efficiency in production and maintenance operations going forward.

The new term prescriptive maintenance (RxM) is a mashup of prescriptive analytics and predictive maintenance. Both have been around for a long time. So is RxM new, or is it just a clever name? And whichever the case, how is it done? And what’s the difference between prescriptive and descriptive analytics, and anomaly detection?

Rico Sicherheitstechnik will be exhibiting its Redisc pressure relief valve and gas-tight butterfly valves at a trade fair for powder & bulk solids processing and analytics in Germany. The latest product addition to the firm’s portfolio is the pressure relief valve which is used in isolators to ensure pressure equalization in the event of increased overpressure.

At the trade show, Steriline is showcasing a Robotic Vial Filling and Capping Machine under isolator (RVFCM50) along with a Robotic Nest Filling Machine under double-wall isolator (RNFM5) which are key features of its nest and bulk filling solutions.

Pumps are the workhorses of every process plant, not to mention plenty of auxiliary equipment and even portable test gear too. This run-round of recent developments takes in centrifugals, vacuum pumps, positive-displacement pumps and gas sampling units.

Tirelli Robosorter is the result of the cross-industry expertise of Arol Group R&D team.

No-one who deals with highly active substances in OSD development can avoid the issue of containment. However, the smaller scale places different demands on equipment compared to the equivalent steps in production. What do developers need to look out for, and what practical solutions are available? We look for clues between the laboratory and the plant.

Everyone focuses first and foremost on purchase price when estimating pump life-cycle costs, but there are other optimisable costs that will help moderate pump-related expenses.

Challenges for manufacturers of explosion protection solutions – LNG, hydrogen, and digitalization of process plants with Ethernet-APL are focal points for manufacturers of explosion protection solutions. We talked to Dr Andreas Kaufmann, Head of Marketing and Innovation at R. Stahl, about how the Ex specialist is dealing with these future challenges.

Is it time to dispel outdated notions surrounding the term “digitization?” —  Speakers at the Smart Process Manufacturing Conference, a virtual event organized by PROCESS, described a whole series of reservations or myths. The fact remains: Digitization is not a sprint, but a marathon — and sometimes even combined with a hurdle race. But it is also a fact that the benefits can be immense if tackled correctly.