Company News

Tricentis acquires Tx3 digital validation platform for life sciences Tricentis, a leader in test automation for modern cloud and enterprise applications, announces the acquisition of Tx3 Services, a provider of automated quality and compliance software testing solutions for life sciences companies. Building upon Tricentis’ AI-powered continuous testing platform, the addition of Tx3 provides greater specialisation and increased capabilities to address the unique needs of the healthcare and life sciences industries. Ensuring compliance with the many regulatory requirements across the healthcare and life sciences landscape is a complex and critical task. Many organisations in this space, however, have not yet modernised their software testing and still rely on a manual, document-centric approach for validation. Tx3 enables life sciences companies to automate computer systems validation and assurance processes, helping IT teams improve consistency, add efficiencies, and modernise regulatory compliance while lowering risk. Digital validation with Tx3 is based on agile principles and designed to help organisations accelerate compliance processes and certification by tightly integrating with software quality, testing, and DevOps tools. “Tricentis is already helping thousands of organisations produce high-quality software more quickly and efficiently,” said Kevin Thompson, Chairman and CEO of Tricentis. “And by combining our robust portfolio of software testing products with Tx3’s specialised digital validation platform, “Tricentis will provide an incredibly comprehensive and powerful solution specifically for life sciences and healthcare organisations looking to advance their digital transformation journey.” “We have enjoyed a strong partnership with Tricentis for many years, and we look forward to officially becoming part of the Tricentis family with this acquisition,” said Jason Tepfenhardt, CEO at Tx3 Services. “The combination of Tricentis and Tx3 will now enable even further integration and greater innovation as we continue to deliver products to help life sciences companies accelerate software testing, increase efficiency, and reduce risk.”

bp signs licensing agreement for Honeywell UOP’s Ecofining technology.

Under the agreement, bp will revamp hydroprocessing equipment at its former refinery site in Kwinana, Australia, to Honeywell UOP’s Ecofining process for a capital-efficient, fast-to-market path to produce approximately biodiesel at the underutilised plant. The refurbishment would enable bp to produce 10kbd diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from renewable feeds, integrating with its existing terminal operations. This production aligns with the company’s efforts around pre-feed engineering for its proposed diesel and SAF project in Western Australia. Renewable feeds have substantially similar molecules to petroleum-based diesel and jet fuel and can be used as a drop-in replacement without engine modifications, in the case of SAF in blends of up to 50 percent with the remainder as conventional jet fuel. Depending on feedstock choice, diesel and SAF produced from the Ecofining process is expected to result in a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared with conventional diesel or aviation fuel from petroleum.

Beckhoff automation solutions

Founded in 1980, by Hans Beckhoff as a one-man operation, Beckhoff implements open automation systems using proven PC-based control technology. Primary areas their product range covers include industrial PCs, I/O and fieldbus components, drive technology, automation software as well as control cabinet-free automation. Products that can be used as separate components or integrated into a complete and mutually compatible control system are available for all sectors. The company’s new automation technology stands for universal and industry-independent control and automation solutions that are used worldwide in a large variety of different applications, ranging from CNC-controlled machine tools to intelligent building control. Development of innovative products and solutions based on PC-based control technology is key to the company’s continued success. The company has recognised many standards in automation technology that are taken for granted and introduced to the market as innovations. Beckhoff’s philosophy of PC-based control as well as the invention of the Lightbus system and TwinCAT automation software are milestones in automation technology and have proven themselves as powerful alternatives to traditional control technology. EtherCAT, the real-time Ethernet solution, provides a powerful and future-oriented technology for a new generation of control concepts. Beckhoff is headquartered in Verl, Germany and there are 4,500 employees worldwide and 1,900 engineers. The company has 39 representative offices worldwide from an overall total of 75 representatives worldwide. The corporate headquarters of Beckhoff Automation GmbH & Co. KG in Verl, Germany, is the site of the central departments such as development, production, administration, sales, marketing, support and service. Beckhoff has been represented in Australia since 2000, and in 2006 founded its own head office and warehouse in Melbourne. The first sales office in Sydney was established in 2011 and is now the National Engineering Hub responsible for project implementation. Beckhoff’s Managing Director, Nick Psahoulias, has been with the company […]

Book now! Registrations open for Australian Manufacturing Week 2022

Online registrations are open now for visitors to the inaugural Australian Manufacturing Week exhibition, taking place in Sydney in June 2022. Owned and operated by AMTIL, AMW is Australia’s premier manufacturing solutions event. Under the theme ‘Where technology meets innovation’, AMW 2022 will take place at the International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney) in Darling Harbour from 7-10 June 2022. The opening of registrations marks a major milestone in the build-up to the exhibition. Preparations for AMW 2022 have been marked by high levels of early interest, with the floor space almost entirely booked out well before the end of last year. “It’s great to finally have opened up registrations for visitors to AMW,” says Kim Banks, Head of Events at AMTIL. “We’ve had an incredible response from exhibitors, with stands getting booked faster than any of us had anticipated. There’s clearly a really strong appetite across the industry for an exhibition like AMW. Now we’re just concentrating on welcoming as many visitors to the show as we can.” AMW will occupy more than 9,000 square metres of floor space at the ICC Sydney, with more than 155 organisations taking stands to exhibit some of the very latest manufacturing technologies, processes and support services. AMTIL will be making regular announcements between now and the start of the event about its plans for the show, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the AMW website as well as its social media channels for the latest updates. The AMW exhibition will consist of six dedicated zones offering a comprehensive view of the modern manufacturing landscape. The Austech Machine Tools & Ancillary Equipment Zone will host an extensive range of metalworking and machine tool technology, including the latest state-of-the-art cutting tools from Iscar Australia. Exhibitors such as Automated Solutions Australia and Epicor Software […]

Carmichael-Mine-haul-truck-trainee-driver-Brooke-McNee-AUS-MN

Brooke revved up for a career in mining

Brooke McNee was born with a passion for performance vehicles in her veins. “My grandma has always been into cars, she passed that passion onto my dad, and as soon as they took me to my first Summernats I was hooked,” Brooke said. “Add to that growing up on a cane farm surrounded by a culture of big agricultural equipment, and there was no chance the McNee love of machinery and motorsport would skip a generation.” Now the 22-year-old is about to jump behind the wheel of an 85 litre, 3,500 horsepower engine as one of 60 new trainee haul truck drivers at Bravus Mining and Resources’ Carmichael Mine. The Burdekin local said getting to learn and qualify on Bravus’ fleet of Caterpillar 796 AC mining trucks was the “opportunity of a lifetime”. “I first began applying for mine operator roles in 2019 and when I wasn’t successful moved into a good job in real estate, which I really enjoyed,” she said. “But when I saw this traineeship advertised I knew I had to apply. “Not only is this my start in an amazing industry and working with massive, sophisticated machinery, it’s an opportunity that will open doors to other goals like building my first home.” Bravus Mining and Resources CEO David Boshoff said Brooke and her peers would undertake a four-week program of desk-based and supervised on-the-job training, including both day and night shifts. The 60 trainees will be employed by Bravus’ mining services contractor MacKellar, and their start dates will be staggered from the end of February through to May 2022. “We’re delighted to continue to invest in regional Queenslanders and give Brooke and the other trainees a paid, structured, environment to kick start their career in mining,” Mr Boshoff said. “We had just shy of 4,000 applications […]

Tasmania and Rio Tinto partner for a strong and sustainable future at Bell Bay

The Tasmanian Government and Rio Tinto will work together to ensure a strong and sustainable future economy for George Town, the Tamar Valley region and Tasmania, in a new partnership signed today at the Bell Bay Aluminium smelter. The partnership will seek to drive economic growth and employment outcomes in the State and support the Tasmanian Government’s target of doubling renewable electricity generation by 2040. Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), the Tasmanian Government and Rio Tinto will jointly investigate how the smelter’s manufacturing capability and electricity demand can help support the development of new industries and more renewable energy supply in the region. Rio Tinto has also committed to look at how it could further decarbonise Bell Bay Aluminium and investigate options for future investment to secure the competitiveness of the smelter. The MOU was signed at Bell Bay by Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein and Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm. Peter Gutwein said “This MOU is a strong demonstration of our shared commitment to Tasmania’s economic and industrial future and reinforces the State’s renewable energy credentials. “Rio Tinto has been a figurehead of local industry here for some 67 years, directly employing more than 500 Tasmanians and more than 700 indirectly, and this agreement reaffirms Rio Tinto’s long-term commitment to our state.” Jakob Stausholm said “Aluminium is essential for the global transition to a low-carbon economy, and we are excited about the contribution our Bell Bay smelter can make both towards this transition and to the region’s future. “We want to help ensure a strong and vibrant future for Bell Bay, where we have been part of the community for well over half a century and where we are actively working with the Tasmanian Government on a shared vision for the future.” Bell Bay Aluminium General Manager Shona […]

Eraring set to close seven years early in 2025

Chris Briggs,Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney In a major step forward for Australia’s clean energy transition, the country’s biggest coal-fired power station Eraring is set to close seven years early in 2025, Origin Energy announced this morning. Eraring has been operating for 35 years in the central coast of New South Wales. Last year, it alone was responsible for around 2% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, based on calculations from electricity market and emissions data. The fundamental reason for its early closure is the brutal impact the growth of renewable energy is having on the profitability of coal plants. Origin has announced it will be building a large, 700 megawatt battery on-site in its place to store renewable energy. This announcement follows the acceleration of other major coal plant closures: Liddell power station is scheduled to close in 2023, Yallourn’s closure was brought forward to 2028, and only last week AGL Energy edged forwards the scheduled closure of two more coal plants. This is a welcome step with transition planning by Origin – but also underlines the risks of Australia’s clean energy transition accelerating without a national plan for the exit of coal. Why is this happening? Old power stations are excellent sites for batteries due to their existing connections to transmission lines and lots of electricity capacity. This has also been announced for the closed Hazelwood and Wallerawang coal power stations. Over the past 12 months, the market share of renewable energy has increased to over 30%. In particular, the rapid growth of rooftop solar and solar farms in the middle of the day has sent daytime wholesale electricity prices crashing. To stay open, coal plants are using a variety of coping strategies. This includes cycling their output down on sunny days and ramping back up for higher prices as the sun sets and demand increases at the end of […]

Royal Wolf sets sail for future growth in global supply squeeze

As the global logistics squeeze continues to make front page news, the humble cargo box has seized the spotlight. Logistics woes now impact an estimated two out of three businesses, with no easy fix in sight for the world’s fractured supply chain. The two-year-old pandemic continues to whip up a perfect storm of culprits: global labour shortages; container crews benched for weeks on end by Chinese quarantines; a logjam of empty containers piling up at congested ports. The result? Soaring freight and transportation costs colliding head-on with a spike in e-commerce, spawned by long lockdowns. Royal Wolf, Australasia’s largest importer of new shipping containers and the biggest rental supplier, is right in the eye of the storm. Managing Director, Neil Littlewood, speaks about the challenges of the commodities squeeze, countering customer frustrations, and finding new growth solutions in adverse conditions. Compounding forces When you consider that about 90 per cent of the world’s exports are transported via ships and that most of those goods arrive ashore in container boxes, the scale of the problem becomes clear, says Mr Littlewood. Weighing in, too, are factors not directly pinned to C0vid-19. Australia’s trade imbalance with China means empty containers aren’t returning to China. Plus, the six-day Suez Canal blockage last March effectively paralysed one of the world’s most vital shipping arteries. On top of Omicron, you’ve had the Chinese New Year with its sacrosanct shutdown of factories and the Winter Olympics in Beijing coming straight after that, says Mr Littlewood. All these ripple effects just compound in a sphere as interconnected as the global shipping industry. Rates and reliability Both container prices and production times are at least double their pre-COVID levels, reports Mr Littlewood. Pre-pandemic, if we placed an order for standard (20 or 40 foot) containers, they would be in […]

OFS Debuts in US with Pelican Brewing Deal

Australian manufacturing performance software company, OFS, has made its official debut in the United States through a breakthrough deal with Oregon-based craft brewery, Pelican Brewing Company. With three breweries and brewpubs along the coast near Portland, Pelican has been a staple of the US craft brewing industry since it was established in 1996. It now produces nearly50,000 barrels – equivalent to almost six million litres or 14 million schooners – every year, serving Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California, and with an eye on further expansion. It makes beer on demand for its retail and consumer customers, a key element of the quality and freshness standards to which it holds itself. The craft brewer was looking for a software solution that could provide better insights to help it identify and resolve issues, improve efficiency, and reduce waste. The OFS software uses sensors to draw real-time data from Pelican’s filling and packing lines and combines this with insights from the folks who operate the line to identify and reduce inefficiencies and waste. The implementation of OFS hardware and software at Pelican was completed in less than one day. One of the key areas where Pelican has seen tremendous value is in starting up production. Understanding the inefficiencies and inconsistencies in methods and time consumed as operators perform sanitation and initial quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) checks is very important. Pelican can now identify the delays that occur early in the morning, allowing the team to optimise these processes. Another significant insight, and subsequent opportunity, discovered during the OFS trial at Pelican Brewing Company came from an unlikely source. OFS identified that the cardboard boxes used on the bottling line wasn’t folding correctly due to quality issues, resulting in one of the biggest causes of unplanned downtime. Pelican was able to use this data […]

Sydney Trains reduce testing time with cloud-first codeless test automation strategy

Sydney Trains has implemented Tricentis Tosca for codeless test automation as part of its cloud–first strategy. This shift from manual testing has resulted in a 100% regression test automation for existing applications and has enabled a 66% reduction in testing time on 10,000 mobile devices in the field. “Our goal is to serve the public and to move them safely on their full journey – spanning their service on roadways, waterways and trains,” says Ernie Lam, Senior Manager of Digital Products and Applications at Sydney Trains. “We look at transport as a whole, not just point to point. We want to get you all the way from your home to wherever you want to go and ensure your travels are as seamless as possible in an exceptionally large area.” Achieving such a goal is dependent on both prebuilt and custom internal systems. These applications are designed to ensure a seamless travel experience for travelers, deploy management and safety tools for the million trips taken per day in Sydney, and facilitate the daily journeys of thousands of individuals. In addition to maintaining existing software in the tech stack, the development and testing teams work closely together to deploy new applications and feature sets throughout the year. Many of these applications are designed to run on 10,000+ mobile iOS devices, including iPhones and iPads, as part of Transports NSW’s cloud first strategy. “It was not sustainable to keep doing manual testing. The major focus was needed to build quality from the beginning and all the way through each code release. To achieve this at speed, we needed to embed test automation to facilitate that quality”, says Lam. In addition to maintaining existing system upgrades, the team is working to provide testing for new cloud applications including the rollout of a critical internal […]

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