NEWEC members, a cooperation structure formed of five European associations of end users of automation technologies, met in Pisa on 12 September 2019

Board Members and directors of European user associations of automation technology in process industries – NAMUR (D), EVALUATION INTERNATIONAL (UK), WIB (NL), EXERA (F), CLUI AS (I) – met in Pisa last September for the annual steering committee of NEWEC, a cooperation agreement formed in November 2014. NEWEC includes more than 300 companies, for which the adoption of advanced technologies for automation, instrumentation and monitoring is of paramount importance to manage plants in a safe, efficient and sustainable way.
After an update on the internal activities of the associations (boards, training courses, meeting with associates), different subjects of interest were discussed, with special focus on Industry4.0 matters. In particular, the following was discussed:
Cybersecurity: a comparison of different commercial products for defense from attacks and the progress of a project to give guidelines to users.
Maintenance in operational: criteria and guidelines to evaluate the status of different components of automation systems and guidelines for actions.
System architectures: NOA (Namur Open Architecture): general architecture which allows the integration of control and monitoring systems, with different communication standards.
Asset Life Cycle Data Management - Integrated Engineering: Large potential benefits come from the possibility of digitalization and full integration of the process from raw material to product; a reference standard was proposed.
Automation Security Management in the Process Industry: guidelines and standard proposed for the management of this important topic.
Cloud-Based Monitoring: large advantages (saving of resources and competence, increase of computational power) and open challenges (cyber-security, reliability of proposed technologies), with reference to a recent project.
Smart Instruments: guidelines to classify and standardize automation products containing commercial software.
To conclude, proposals have been studied to improve interaction with IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control), cooperation among companies of different associations on projects of common interest and to make the brand NEWEC organization better known by means of sponsoring and organizing events.

For further details contact:
- For EVALUATION INTERNATIONAL, Greg Ward (info[at]evaluation-international.com),
- For WIB, Harm Woortmeijer (harm.woortmeijer[at]wib.nl),
- For NAMUR, Heinrich Engelhard (office[at]namur.de),
- For EXERA, Philippe Genoux (philippe.genoux[at]exera.com),
- For CLUI AS, Claudio Scali (claudio.scali[at]cluias.it)

For further information on NEWEC members, please visit:
- www.evaluation-international.com
- www.exera.com
- www.cluias.it
- www.namur.net
- www.wib.nl