News and Events

Rockwell Automation Names Nicole Darden Ford Chief Information Security Officer

Rockwell Automation announced that Nicole Darden Ford has joined the company as vice president and Chief Information Security Officer on March 21. She will report to Chris Nardecchia, senior vice president and Chief Information Officer at Rockwell Automation. Darden Ford succeeds Dawn Cappelli, who retired in February.

Darden Ford joins Rockwell from Carrier, where she was global vice president and Chief Information Security Officer, overseeing global Information Security, Compliance and Product (IoT) Cybersecurity through the company’s spin-off from parent company United Technologies Corporation. Prior to Carrier, she was global vice president and Chief Information Security Officer for Baxter International, where she had global responsibility for Information Security, Information Governance and IT Quality Compliance. Darden Ford began her career in the U.S. military and federal government, including for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, handling security, network engineering, and telecommunications.

“I am excited about the energy, perspective and expertise Nicole brings to this critical area and look forward to her contributions in executing our growth, digital transformation, and cybersecurity strategies,” said Nardecchia. “With over 20 years in IT leadership, Nicole’s extensive knowledge and application experience in forensics, digital transformation, and homeland security practices is a valuable addition to our team.”

Darden Ford is also passionate about building and growing teams, fostering culture, and focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. She currently serves on the boards of IT-ISAC, South Florida Tech Hub and the Lola Mercedes Parker Foundation.

Rockwell Automation Elects Robert Soderbery to Board of Directors

Rockwell Automation announced that Robert Soderbery was elected to its board of directors effective Feb. 2, 2022. Soderbery is currently executive vice president and general manager, Flash Business Unit, at Western Digital.

Rob brings over 30 years of experience in the tech industry and will be a terrific addition to the Rockwell Automation board of directors,” said Blake Moret, chairman and chief executive officer of Rockwell Automation. “His deep technology background, product management expertise, and understanding of global customers will be a great complement to the diverse talents of our strong board.”

In his role at Western Digital, Soderbery is responsible for all aspects of the $10 billion flash memory business, serving cloud, client computing, and consumer market segments. Prior to that, he served as president of UpLift, Inc., a fintech company, where he was responsible for building a cloud-based payments and lending platform enabling consumer financing on major merchant platforms.

Soderbery previously served as senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Products, at Cisco Systems. While at Cisco, he was responsible for IoT software and hardware solutions, the introduction of the CiscoONE software architecture, and acquisition of the Meraki cloud networking platform. Prior to Cisco, Soderbery advanced through a series of leadership roles at Symantec Corporation.

Soderbery holds a Master of Science in computer science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Caltech.

Rockwell Automation Wins “Industrial IoT Solution of the Year” Award in 6th Annual IoT Breakthrough Awards Program

Prestigious Annual IoT Breakthrough Awards Program Recognizes Standout Internet of Things Companies and Products

Rockwell Automation announced that its FactoryTalk Edge Gateway solution has been selected as the winner of the “Industrial IoT Solution of the Year” award in the 6^th annual IoT Breakthrough Awards program conducted by IoT Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies, and products in the global Internet of Things (IoT) market today.

Rockwell Automation is a multiple IoT Breakthrough Award winner having won “Industrial IoT Innovator of the Year” in 2020 and “Industrial IoT Company of the Year” in 2021.

With FactoryTalk Edge Gateway, manufacturers can easily access, understand and leverage the data needed to make informed decisions. The solution simplifies and automates collection, contextualization, and organization of industrial equipment data across machines, devices and automation assets at the source itself - enabling high data integrity from the outset. It also provides the right foundation to drive edge-to-cloud IT/OT convergence at the enterprise level resulting in informed decision-making.

FactoryTalk Edge Gateway software unifies data from industrial sources and control or automation systems. It is able to integrate with a variety of cloud, Industrial IoT and big data applications. It also uses OPC-DA, the automation industry’s standard for interoperability, to access KEPServer Enterprise data for third-party connectivity. This maximizes operational insights and provides a 360-degree view of a business, simplifying and automating data ingestion in a single integration solution for IT applications.

“Manufacturing processes and machines create tremendous amounts of data that, in the right place, with the right context, and at the right time can unlock new sources of potential value from analytics, machine learning, connected worker experiences, digital twins, and much more,” said Brian Shepherd, Vice President of Software & Control at Rockwell Automation. “FactoryTalk Edge Gateway software simplifies the collection, contextualization and organization of OT data in a way that builds a high-integrity digital foundation for decision making. That foundation and ability to uncover new insights is what can help manufacturers achieve their performance goals.”

The mission of the IoT Breakthrough Awards program is to recognize the innovators, leaders, and visionaries from around the globe in a range of IoT categories, including Industrial and Enterprise IoT, Smart City technology, Connected Home and Home Automation, Connected Car, and many more. This year’s program attracted more than 3,850 nominations from companies all over the world.

“Industrial enterprises struggle to aggregate operational data from heterogeneous sources and add relevant context from the source to the IT layer. This prevents them from uncovering potentially game-changing insights at the enterprise level, “ said James Johnson, managing director at IoT Breakthrough. “FactoryTalk Edge Gateway not only enriches OT data with critical context where it matters the most - at the edge - but also delivers it in a flexible common information model to IT applications, so that industrial enterprises can derive critical insights for competitive advantage. That makes it our choice for ‘Industrial IoT Solution of the Year.’ Congratulations for the third year in a row to Rockwell Automation.”

Additionally, FactoryTalk Edge Gateway automatically discovers high-speed, contextualized OT data from controllers and packages it in a logical, common information model control engineers can configure. This common information model accelerates setup for similar assembly lines and can be enriched with third-party data. It can also be mapped to on-prem or cloud applications and easily consumed to accelerate IT/OT convergence.

Sensia acquires Swinton Technology, a market leader in metering supervisory systems for the oil and gas industry

Sensia, the leading automation specialist in oil & gas production, transportation, and processing, announced it has acquired Swinton Technology, a market leader in metering supervisory systems and measurement expertise in the oil and gas industry. The acquisition will incorporate Swinton Technology products and solutions into the Sensia portfolio, expanding Sensia’s metering opportunities and measurement domain expertise to support accelerating its customers on their digital transformation journey.

Sensia, a joint venture owned by Rockwell Automation and Schlumberger, provides hardware, software, systems and petrotechnical expertise to automate processes and workflows throughout the oil and gas industry. Swinton Technology systems generate measurement data for fiscal and financial transactions throughout the oil and gas supply chain. The acquisition provides Sensia with a market-leading asset it can incorporate into its measurement business, contributed by Schlumberger.

“Measurement is the core of oil and gas automation, and fiscal measurement is our customers’ mechanism for revenue, billing and loss management,” said Allan Rentcome, Chief Executive Officer, Sensia. “Customers are demanding integrated automation, measurement and digital solutions and Swinton Technology provides us with technology and expertise that will expand Sensia’s growth in the metering systems market.”

“There is a large customer installed base that needs to upgrade its measurement data systems to improve performance,” said Ben Leach, Swinton Technology Managing Director. “There are also metering system providers without supervisory capability. With its global reach and oil and gas expertise, Sensia will now be able to better serve this market. I’m confident that under Sensia’s ownership, Swinton Technology products and solutions will improve their market share.”

Swinton Technology is a specialist systems integrator of supervisory metering computer systems to the oil and gas industry. Swinton Technology’s offerings are high-integrity control and analytics systems for fiscal/financial information from medium to large measurement packages deployed across the oil and gas supply chain. Its software has data integrity, traceability, and compliance with regulatory, contractual and international standards. 

Swinton Technology will be known as Swinton Technology, a Sensia company.

Rockwell Automation and Cytiva collaborate to accelerate automation platforms in the biopharmaceutical industry

Companies plan to build an Automation and Digital Transformation Center in Shanghai, China

Rockwell Automation has begun collaborating with Cytiva, a global life sciences leader, to accelerate the industry’s digital transformation. This new collaboration deepens Cytiva’s 2019 pledge to invest in China and also strengthens the relationship between Rockwell and Cytiva that has been in place since 2019. Cytiva joined the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork Program as an OEM Partner to help drive a best-in-class distributed control system offering.

Rockwell Automation and Cytiva will bring their combined expertise in biomanufacturing and automation to create an efficient, flexible, and scalable platform. As part of the collaboration, the companies are building an Automation and Digital Transformation Center, located in Shanghai, to co-host demonstrations, trainings, and more.

Ian Shih, regional vice president, Greater China, Rockwell Automation, said: “Scalable and sustainable development is of the utmost importance to our companies and to the industry as a whole. Our combined solutions offer the flexibility to scale up for vaccine production or scale down to produce smaller batches of personalized medicines.”

Lihua Yu, General Manager, Greater China, Cytiva says: “As the industry moves toward more automated manufacturing solutions, together we can bring digital-oriented R&D and streamlined production to life not only in China, but throughout the world. Our joint work will accelerate the development and delivery of transformative medicines, reduce costs, and ultimately deliver more medicines to patients in need.”

Rockwell Automation and Cytiva will promote Cytiva’s Figurate automation platform in China, as well as globally. The suite of offerings by Rockwell will power Cytiva’s range of solutions from idea to injection. The collaboration enables stronger integration, data collection, and analysis. This results in a standardized manufacturing platform capable of core data management.

In addition, the two companies have established multiple centers, including the Testa Center in Uppsala, Sweden, to assist customers in their drug development process. They are exploring how to apply the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Augmented Reality (AR) and other advanced technologies for connectivity across the manufacturing process. With innovative solutions for factory field management in progress, Rockwell Automation and Cytiva are establishing a promising future for digital solutions for biopharmaceutical companies, helping enhance training and efficiency for operators, improving speed of batch review, streamlining equipment management, and intensifying efficiency.