Manufacturing & Industrial Technology

STOCKHOLM – October 29, 2026 -- ASSA ABLOY lifted third-quarter EBITA by 12% to SEK 7,612 M (6,815) on net sales of SEK 40,771 M (38,146), with the operating margin reaching a record 18.7% (17.9). Operating income (EBIT) rose 11% to SEK 7,102 M, the first time the group has exceeded SEK 7bn in a quarter.

Organic growth of 4% extends the streak to seven quarters

Organic sales growth was 4% (3), acquisitions added 2% (5) and currency effects contributed 1% (-6), for total sales growth of 7%. CEO Nico Delvaux said it was the seventh consecutive quarter of organic growth despite geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty.

Boston – October 29, 2026 -- Demand for key critical minerals will reach roughly 120% to 250% of forecast supply through 2040, and industrial companies are underestimating their exposure, according to a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report. BCG's proprietary model covers rare earths, graphite, copper and lithium. The report, "Why Critical Mineral Shortages Are a CEO Issue," says three blind spots in standard risk metrics hide where the danger sits.

Gallium market under $350 million underpins $3.5 trillion of products

BCG calls the most overlooked inputs "mosquito minerals": their traded value is so small that they never reach a risk register. Gallium is traded in a market worth under $350 million a year, with production of about 900 tons. BCG estimates about $3.5 trillion of final products depend on it.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- The deviceWISE Intelligence Suite now integrates NVIDIA Metropolis Video Search and Summarization (VSS) Blueprint, feeding camera detections directly into live machine data and automated response workflows on production lines.

Platform connects PLCs, robots and CNCs to video analysis

The suite deploys industrial AI agents at the operational edge and links PLCs, robots, CNCs and enterprise systems into one real-time operational picture. NVIDIA VSS Blueprint adds accelerated computer vision, vision-language models including NVIDIA Cosmos, and large language models to analyze live and recorded video.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) and NVIDIA NIM microservices connect the visual insights to machine state and process history. NIM matches each task to the most effective model to speed agent deployment.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- SupplyOne cut lead times for a global performance materials manufacturer from approximately 6 weeks to 2 weeks by moving key packaging materials from an international supplier to a domestic source.

The customer had struggled with long lead times, supply inconsistencies and packaging performance problems across thermoformed trays, stretch film and corrugated. SupplyOne built a multi-category program around domestic sourcing, inventory support and material optimization.

SupplyOne replaces international supplier with domestic source under stocking agreement

The stocking agreement improved availability and supply continuity for the manufacturer's key materials, in addition to the shorter lead times.

Las Vegas – October 29, 2026 -- Xerox Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: XRX) introduced three new production presses and feature upgrades to two existing models at PRINTING United Expo 2026, extending its inkjet range across cut-sheet and continuous-feed formats.

Proficio Jet CF1200 delivers 525 feet per minute in a 28-foot footprint

The industrial continuous-feed inkjet press runs at up to 525 feet per minute at 1200 dpi. Xerox describes it as the smallest 20-inch press in its class. It handles 4 million to 30 million Letter/A4 impressions per month, targeting high-volume print providers that need more capacity and want to protect margins.

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.