Manufacturing & Industrial Technology

Espoo – October 29, 2026 -- Valmet has agreed to acquire Tieto's manufacturing execution system (MES) business, which generates annual revenues of about EUR 32 million and runs at roughly 300 pulp and paper production sites worldwide. Closing is expected in the second quarter of 2027, subject to customary closing conditions. The release did not disclose the purchase price.

Deal covers TIPS MES and Order to Cash for pulp, paper and fibre

The transaction includes the AI-powered TIPS MES for production planning and execution, plus the Order to Cash solution for the pulp, paper and fibre industry. TIPS MES combines Tieto Indtech's MES and Order to Cash products. It links production planning with manufacturing operations so manufacturers can manage and optimize output in real time. The web-based system is available as software as a service (SaaS). Its generative AI capabilities are meant to complement Valmet's own AI development.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- Industrial historians should default to data-change subscriptions for continuously monitored OPC UA process variables and reserve polling for explicitly periodic records, according to collection guidance tied to TDengine TSDB-Enterprise.

Polling leaves a blind spot between reads

A polling client issues Read requests at a fixed interval, so a ten-second poll fetches the latest value every ten seconds whether or not it changed. If a motor status flips from 0 to 1 and back to 0 inside that window, both surrounding polls return 0. A shorter interval cuts the risk but raises load, and it never removes the gap between samples.

Polling fits periodic reporting, slow-changing values that need regular records, and servers with weak subscription support. A quality report requiring one temperature record per minute, including unchanged periods, is a polling case.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- Choosing the wrong OPC UA timestamp can reorder events, hide network delay or place valid data outside the historian query window, so most process analysis should use a trustworthy SourceTimestamp as event time and keep collector receipt time as a separate field.

SourceTimestamp stays fixed as data passes through servers

The OPC UA specification defines SourceTimestamp as the time a data source applies to a value, ideally the last change of the value or status, generated as close to the source as possible. It does not change when the value passes through another OPC UA server. That makes it the best fit for sequence-of-events work, batch analysis and calculations tied to when the process changed.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- Industrial historians that store an OPC UA value and timestamp without the accompanying 32-bit StatusCode can pass stale, substituted, or Bad readings into averages, alarm reviews, and production calculations as ordinary process measurements.

StatusCode carries more than a Good, Bad, or Uncertain label

Every OPC UA DataValue can contain a value, timestamps, and a StatusCode. The severity class is Good, Uncertain, or Bad. The remaining bits can carry a specific subcode and information bits, such as monitored-item queue overflow, limit state, or changed semantics.

The SemanticsChanged bit can indicate that metadata such as engineering units changed and should be re-read before processing. A value of 100 is not comparable with the previous day's 100 if the unit or scale changed in between.

DOWNERS GROVE – October 29, 2026 -- Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE: FSS) declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share on its common stock, the company said today.

Board sets December 1, 2026 payment date for common stockholders

The Board of Directors approved the payout, which is due on December 1, 2026.

Stockholders on the books by November 13, 2026 qualify for the payout

Only holders of record at the close of business on November 13, 2026 will receive the dividend. The company did not disclose the total payout amount or any change to its dividend policy.

Delray Beach – October 28, 2026 -- The global machine safety market will grow from USD 6.03 billion in 2026 to USD 8.78 billion by 2032, a CAGR of 6.4%, according to a MarketsandMarkets forecast.

Automation and Industry 4.0 raise machinery complexity and workplace risk

MarketsandMarkets attributes the growth to rapid adoption of automation and Industry 4.0 technologies. These increase machinery complexity and workplace risks, driving demand for safety PLCs and presence detection sensors. Manufacturers are also investing in IoT-enabled solutions for predictive analytics and for reducing downtime.

FREMONT – October 28, 2026 -- Velo3D, Inc. (Nasdaq: VELO) will release its third-quarter 2026 financial results after the U.S. market close on November 10, 2026, the metal additive manufacturing company said.

Velo3D schedules its earnings call for 2 p.m. Pacific on results day

Management will discuss the results on a conference call and webcast at 2 p.m. Pacific Time (5 p.m. Eastern Time) on November 10. U.S. participants can dial 877-704-2771, and international callers can use 201-689-8732. Callers should ask to be joined to the Velo3D call.

Velo3D will post the earnings release and presentation before the call begins

The live webcast will be available on the Events page of the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Velo3D will publish the earnings press release and the accompanying presentation there before the call starts.

Berlin – October 28, 2026 -- Germany's federal employers' association for the chemical industry (BAVC) will bring Labor Minister Alexander Schweitzer, IGBCE union chief Michael Vassiliadis and FDP leader Wolfgang Kubicki together on November 4, 2026 to debate how the chemical-pharmaceutical sector can regain competitiveness.

Three-hour ChemieArbeitgeberTag runs from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at AXICA Berlin

The 2026 ChemieArbeitgeberTag takes place on Wednesday, November 4, at the AXICA Congress and Conference Center, Pariser Platz 3, in Berlin. BAVC President Katja Scharpwinkel leads the discussions under the motto of regaining competitiveness and charting paths forward.

The agenda centers on three goals: restoring competitiveness, enabling investment and strengthening Germany as an industrial location over the long term. BAVC describes the sector's current environment as challenging and economically uncertain.

MILWAUKEE – October 28, 2026 -- Rockwell Automation (NYSE: ROK) will present ten product groups spanning controllers, I/O, drives, software, AI and cybersecurity at Automation Fair 2026, expanding its showcase for industrial manufacturers.

Matheus Bulho, senior vice president, software & control, said production systems must balance growth, workforce challenges and cybersecurity threats while adapting faster. He said the company is combining hardware, software and industrial intelligence to give customers tools "to move faster, adapt with confidence."

LogixEdge controller brings AI workloads to the control layer

The LogixEdge Controller adds new form factors and integrates IT and OT workloads, including AI workloads that enable autonomous control. The CompactLogix 5390 Controller targets performance, security and scalability in modern production environments.

Global – October 28, 2026 -- Neither MQTT retained messages nor persistent sessions can guarantee complete production history, so industrial operators who need every measurement must add application-level buffering and a historian, according to an engineering analysis of the OASIS MQTT 5.0 specification.

Retained messages deliver the latest state to new subscribers

A retained message gives a subscriber the last retained value on a topic when it subscribes. In the example of a packaging line publishing to plant/line2/packer/status, a new maintenance display receives the retained RUNNING state without waiting for the next live publication, provided the message is still available and the subscription's retain-handling settings permit delivery.