Orange County, California, United States
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I am passionate about manufacturing. Manufacturing is the engine that has delivered…

Articles by Niels Erik

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  • LNS Research

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Volunteer Experience

  • Coach

    VEX Robotics - Dana Point

    - 3 years 5 months

    Science and Technology

    Co-coached the Robotics teams at John Malcom Elementary School and Marco Forster Middle School. The teams qualified for the VEX Robotics world championship twice and won the STEM award both times.

  • Active member and contributor to PackML standard

    OMAC PackML working group

    - 4 years

    Science and Technology

    I have been an active member of the OMAC PackML working committee for many years and was a significant contributor to simplify the latest standard that was submitted to ISA as technical report ISA TR88.00.02.

Publications

  • Track-and-Trace Has Its Place in Asset Management

    AutomationWorld

    People talk about track and trace all the time, usually in the context of manufacturing execution systems. But Niels Andersen, vice president of manufacturing business consulting with Invensys Operations Management (www.iom.invensys.com), says it also has a place in asset management.
    By treating everything as a business process, and using ANSI/ISA-95 Enterprise Control System Integration as a guide, Andersen’s tool-of-choice is a modified track-and-trace system built on Invensys’ ArchestrA…

    People talk about track and trace all the time, usually in the context of manufacturing execution systems. But Niels Andersen, vice president of manufacturing business consulting with Invensys Operations Management (www.iom.invensys.com), says it also has a place in asset management.
    By treating everything as a business process, and using ANSI/ISA-95 Enterprise Control System Integration as a guide, Andersen’s tool-of-choice is a modified track-and-trace system built on Invensys’ ArchestrA software architecture and using the continuous-improvement Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. At the system’s center is a unit of work. Materials, energy, labor and maintenance all go into this unit. Products and by-products—good or bad—leave it. “We also track what happens in the unit of work,” Andersen notes.

    Other authors
    • Kenna Amos
    See publication
  • OEE in Packaging: Deceptively Simple

    AutomationWorld

    Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is being used with increasing frequency in the packaging industry. The reason for its popularity lies in the fact that the metric is easy to understand and relatively easy to apply. However, it is also easy to misuse. Here’s how to avoid doing so.

    Other authors
    • Greg Farnum
    See publication
  • Energy management: crunching the numbers

    Food Engineering Magazine

    Reducing energy usage is an ongoing practice, requiring education and continuing efforts by everyone in the organization.

    Other authors
    • Wayne Labs
    See publication
  • Inline monitoring aids in food safety and quality

    Food Engineering Magazine

    While it may be said that food safety and food quality are not necessarily interrelated, get lax about either, and you probably won’t have a brand for long. Various sensors and analytical tools can be used to continuously monitor parameters that affect food safety and quality. These sensors and analytical instrumentation can range from thermocouples for temperature monitoring to chromatographs and spectrophotometric devices for precise chemical measurements.

    Other authors
    • Wayne Labs
    See publication
  • Why Automate Food Safety Solutions

    Invensys Operations Management

    With the Food Safety Act in play, the question that Invensys now asks ourselves is "how do we bring value to our customers by automating food safety solutions?"
    A quick blog post about why food safety solutions should be automated, and what to think about when doing so.

    See publication
  • Food & Beverage Companies Doing Less With More

    Control Global

    Food and beverage company attendees at this week's Invensys Operations Management meeting for users of its Wonderware and Avantis software brands received tours of both a transformation in productivity at a bottling plant, and the path to compliance with new U.S. FDA food safety standards.

    Other authors
    • Chris Bacon
    • Paul Studebaker
    See publication
  • Changing Food Safety for a Digital World

    Global Food Safety Resource

    Using Automated Workflow to Achieve Policy and Procedural Compliance:

    Workflow software, sometimes called business process management (BPM) software, comprises advanced applications that enable producers to automate both manual and digital processes involving people, systems and equipment. Digitizing standard operating procedures (SOPs) allows for improved operational analysis and productivity and higher levels of team collaboration. Most important for food and beverage processors…

    Using Automated Workflow to Achieve Policy and Procedural Compliance:

    Workflow software, sometimes called business process management (BPM) software, comprises advanced applications that enable producers to automate both manual and digital processes involving people, systems and equipment. Digitizing standard operating procedures (SOPs) allows for improved operational analysis and productivity and higher levels of team collaboration. Most important for food and beverage processors, workflow software vastly improves documentation of processes, measurements, and results to help achieve industry and government regulatory compliance, replacing manual and paper-based procedures.

    Other authors
    See publication
  • Curing Enterprise Rigidity in Manufacturing Companies

    Invensys

    If you find that market uncertainties make it difficult to optimize operations of your manufacturing business, then an agile solution that gives you better control of your enterprise resources may be what you need.

    Manufacturing companies often struggle to optimize their business due to the rigidity of their internal systems and operating procedures. Rigidity is often designed into manufacturing organizations in order to create predictability. In a dynamically changing world like…

    If you find that market uncertainties make it difficult to optimize operations of your manufacturing business, then an agile solution that gives you better control of your enterprise resources may be what you need.

    Manufacturing companies often struggle to optimize their business due to the rigidity of their internal systems and operating procedures. Rigidity is often designed into manufacturing organizations in order to create predictability. In a dynamically changing world like today’s, organizations need to be both predictable and agile. Manufacturing companies must be able to produce repeatable quality at low cost while adapting to changing market conditions. The constant struggle between the needs for repeatability and agility is one of the biggest challenges for modern corporations.

    See publication

Patents

  • Aligning data of continuous material flow in digital manufacturing transformation

    Issued US20220326272A1

    A system and a method are disclosed for aligning process data to a flow of material in a manufacturing process. That is, the disclosed embodiments enable tracking of material as that material travels (e.g., via a transportation mechanism such as a conveyor belt) between various processing devices in the manufacturing process. Each processing device may include one or more sensors. For example, the disclosed system and method enable tracking the same material over different manufacturing steps.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • Traceability and analysis of materials without unique identifiers in manufacturing processes and digital manufacturing transformation

    Issued US 11610181

    This is the patent for the ThinkIQ Material Ledger for tracing and analyzing material flow.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • Monitoring application states for deployment during runtime operations

    Issued US 9703546

    Interaction between development environments and runtime environments to ensure that underlying process components are in an acceptable state before deploying application updates. A deploy state monitor in a development environment interacts with runtime values in executing applications to manage deployment requests and states of executing applications.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • Compactor device

    Issued US US6994023 B2

    A compactor device for the automatic compacting of empty containers (5), e.g. disposable bottles/cans of metal, plastic, glass or other suitable material, wherein the container (5) is essentially being pressed flat and possibly punctured, possibly crushed, and wherein the compacting area is formed by a cuneiform area between a conveyor belt (20) and a first jaw set (36 a) and a second jaw set (36 b), and wherein a plurality of jaws (32), which are provided with teeth on their active side, are…

    A compactor device for the automatic compacting of empty containers (5), e.g. disposable bottles/cans of metal, plastic, glass or other suitable material, wherein the container (5) is essentially being pressed flat and possibly punctured, possibly crushed, and wherein the compacting area is formed by a cuneiform area between a conveyor belt (20) and a first jaw set (36 a) and a second jaw set (36 b), and wherein a plurality of jaws (32), which are provided with teeth on their active side, are arranged in such a way that each alternate jaw (32), as seen transversally to the longitudinal direction of the conveyor belt (20), is connected to the jaw sets (36 a) and (36 b) respectively, the jaw sets (36 a) and (36 b) being rotatably connected to two common eccentric shafts (38, 38′), and the eccentric shafts (38, 38′) being formed in such a way that the eccentric motion of the jaw sets (36 a , 36 b) is out of phase, typically by 180 degrees.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • Device for automatically receiving, scanning and handling containers

    Issued US US6962291 B2

    A device in equipment for automatically receiving, scanning and handling containers (41) which are essentially rotationally symmetrical about their longitudinal axes, e.g. bottles or cans of any suitable type of material, the equipment being arranged in such a way that the containers are conveyed and/or rotated in a lying position, by means of a conveyor (30), through a recognizing chamber (10) past at least two detectors for scanning information on the properties of the container (41), from…

    A device in equipment for automatically receiving, scanning and handling containers (41) which are essentially rotationally symmetrical about their longitudinal axes, e.g. bottles or cans of any suitable type of material, the equipment being arranged in such a way that the containers are conveyed and/or rotated in a lying position, by means of a conveyor (30), through a recognizing chamber (10) past at least two detectors for scanning information on the properties of the container (41), from where the scanned information is transferred to a control unit, which decides the conveying path downstream and further handling of the container (41), the conveyor (30) being arranged in such a way that the container (41) is forced at an angle against a supporting device (40), whereby the container (41) is simultaneously carried along and rotated about its own longitudinal axis in a helical movement; the device being provided with an image processing system (60) comprising a camera which is arranged, in cooperation with backlighting from a light plate (50), to recognize the appearance of the container (41), a bar code reader (70) being arranged to scan essentially simultaneously a bar code located on the container (41), the helical motion of the container (41) being such that in one turn of the container a complete bar code will be readable to the bar code reader (70).

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • Device for a reverse vending machine for bottles and cans

    Issued US US7180026 B1

    In a reverse vending machine the feed opening (22) in the front cover (14), for bottles and cans, is without a fixed connection to pipework, etc. At the same time, an opening (26) for emptying remnants is formed in the front cover (14), in the form of a bowl, which merges at the back side of the front cover into a drain pipe socket (28) positioned above an upwards open drain channel (30) in the interior of the machine, without a fixed connection between the drain pipe socket (28) and the…

    In a reverse vending machine the feed opening (22) in the front cover (14), for bottles and cans, is without a fixed connection to pipework, etc. At the same time, an opening (26) for emptying remnants is formed in the front cover (14), in the form of a bowl, which merges at the back side of the front cover into a drain pipe socket (28) positioned above an upwards open drain channel (30) in the interior of the machine, without a fixed connection between the drain pipe socket (28) and the channel (30). The front cover is possibly lockable and can be opened to the side by means of hinges (24), whereby the interior of the reverse vending machine is uncovered for inspection, maintenance or repair.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • Traceability and analysis of materials without unique identifiers in manufacturing processes and digital manufacturing transformation

    WO2021226286A1

    A system tracks material flow during a production process. In particular, the system receives, from a materials container, a plurality of sensor readings. The materials container comprises a plurality of sensors at one or more intake locations and one or more outlet locations. The system generates an input data set and an output data set from the plurality of sensor readings. The system stores a first electronic ledger entry on an electronic ledger. The first electronic entry comprises the…

    A system tracks material flow during a production process. In particular, the system receives, from a materials container, a plurality of sensor readings. The materials container comprises a plurality of sensors at one or more intake locations and one or more outlet locations. The system generates an input data set and an output data set from the plurality of sensor readings. The system stores a first electronic ledger entry on an electronic ledger. The first electronic entry comprises the input data set and a time that sensor readings corresponding to the one or more intake locations were taken. The system stores a second electronic ledger entry on the electronic ledger. The second electronic entry comprises the output data set and a time that sensor readings corresponding to the one or more outlet locations were taken. The system generates display data associate with the first and second electronic ledger entries.

    Other inventors
    See patent

Languages

  • Bokmål, Norwegian

    Native or bilingual proficiency

  • Danish

    Professional working proficiency

  • English

    Native or bilingual proficiency

  • German

    Elementary proficiency

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