The study explores the current state of test automation in software testing organizations by focusing on the views and observations of managers, testers and developers in each organization. The case study was conducted in selected organizational units that develop and test technical software for industrial automation or telecommunication domains. The data was collected with 41 theme-based inter...

K. Zhu1; Z. Lou2; J. Zhou3; N. Ballester4; N. Kong5; P. Parikh4 1Purdue University, Statistics, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA; 2Purdue University, Industrial Engineering, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA; 3Tsinghua University, Automation, Beijing, China; 4Wright State University, Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering, Dayton, Ohio, USA; 5Purdue University, Biomedical Engineering, West...

Ethernet for industrial communications Unlike office communications, industrial and process automation are based on a multitude of different fieldbus systems (e.g. ASI, CAN, DeviceNet, Interbus, LON, PROFIBUS). Particular versions with additional performance features have established themselves in parallel for specific applications such as drive technology or safety technology. Generally, these...

The degree of automation at U.S. manufacturing plants differs widely across metropolitan areas. This paper examines the effect skill mix in a metropolitan area has on the degree of automation at plants in the area. In markets with a higher relative availability of lessskilled labor, comparable plants – even plants in the same narrow (4-digit SIC) industries – use less automation. The results ho...

Coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) are widely used to check dimensions of manufactured parts, especially in the automotive industry. The major obstacles in automation of these measurements are fixturing and clamping assemblies, which are required in order to position the measured object within the CMM. This paper describes how an industrial robot can be used to manipulate the measured object ...

Over the past three decades, tactile sensing has developed into a sophisticated technology. There has been a longstanding and widely held expectation that tactile sensors would have a major impact on industrial robotics and automation. However, this promise has not been realized, and few, if any, tactile sensors can be found in factorybased applications. Has this technology failed to deliver it...

There was a time when industrial PCs, rigorously tested for high reliability, were a step behind the consumer PC market with respect to implementing the latest processors and advanced technologies. However, this definitely isn’t the case for B&R*, who works closely with Intel to carefully align its automation PC roadmap with Intel® processor launches. For instance, B&R, the world’s largest priv...

To achieve productivity improvements in manufacturing companies, application of new technology or adoption of mass production may not always be possible.The most practical approach is to attack the work process itself—that is, review and redesign the operations and apply automation and mechanization.In such cases,a productivity audit employing industrial engineering (IE) techniques is used for ...

The commercial and industrial applications, namely, business form reading, bank cheque reading, and full postal address reading, have constituted the majority of the market for handwriting recognition technology. Devanagari is the most popular script in India and is used to write texts in Hindi, Marathi and Nepali languages. Significant amount of work has been done on Devanagari isolated charac...