The MTConnect standard facilitates data collection vital for meaningful analysis of machine tool behavior. In 2007, a group at the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) led by Paul Warndorf realized the need for a comprehensive standard to address the inability to collect data from manufacturing equipment. That was six years ago and various machine tool builders and controller manufacturers functioned as islands of automation, requiring proprietary methods to access their data.

Costing $1.3 billion to build, the news of the plant approval is a major boost for GM, coming at a time when it has expressed its interest to increase its share of the luxury car market in China. Currently dominated by Audi and BMW, this market has been steadily growing in recent years as people’s income levels have increased.

The two companies first entered into a strategic alliance in August 2012 with the stated aim being to acquire such projects in Brazil.

Under the first stage of the MoUs, the alliance will spend some $4 million on exploration, with BC Iron noting that the expenditure for each following stage would be dependent on the success of the preceding work to delineate economic mineralisation.

Regions such as Latin America, the Middle East and China were singled out by the International Air Transport Association (Iata) for their robust expansion at a time when developed markets had seen relatively little growth.

Iata's director general, Tony Tyler said in a statement: "Strong demand for air travel is consistent with improving business conditions. Performance, however, has been uneven. Mature markets are seeing relatively little growth, while emerging markets continue to show a robust expansion."

Having beaten off France’s Total to the deal, Shell will now work with ADNOC to develop the Bab field. The project in question, which could be worth up to $10 billion over the course of its lifetime, is considered to be a particularly complex undertaking as it contains sour gas, a poisonous and foul smelling product.

As field service organisations review their priorities, it’s important to note what factors are driving them. Budgets? Productivity? Efficiency? All of these play a role in some capacity but when it comes to key strategies, there are several that come up time and time again.

“Over the course of the last 18 months,” explains Technical Support Service Manager for International Business Development, Feisal Aden Darar, “we have been focusing on local and international trends to materialise our core goals. We have improved our Internet transit solutions by deploying Level 3 PoP, a world class Tier 1 and Saudi Telecommunication Company’s POP, with strong presence in the Middle East. In addition we have upgraded our existing Telecom Italia Sparkle node in terms of capacity and diversity.

Western Australia's Pilbara region is best known today as one of the world's biggest sources of iron ore and manganese – principally the former. These minerals are shipped out of Port Hedland to the hungry markets of north Asia and India, where demand for steel seems insatiable and likely to hold up for a good many years to come. In 2012, out of a total of 245 million tonnes of every kind of cargo that was exported through Hedland, 97 percent was accounted for by iron ore, 0.8 percent by manganese.