Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Siemens completes acquisition of engineering firm Well, the new year is starting off with a bang. Here's process industry news. Looks like competitors in process industry markets had better pay as much attention to Siemens Energy & Automation as those in discrete industries should. The company just enhanced its presence in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries through the acquisition of Berwanger, a Houston-based engineering and plant services integrator with world-wide operations. It will become part of the oil and gas business of Siemens Industrial Solutions & Services Group. Berwanger's Houston location will become the global center of competence for oil, gas and petrochemical operations. The announcement mentioned that Siemens expects to invest in the company in order to grow the business. I hope they do. Sometimes an acquisition is followed by the gutting of the acquired company's products and its personnel are replaced by those from the acquiring company. In this case, Siemens is "buying" expertise and human capital. We'll have to watch how this acquisition works out. 10:46:12 AM    comment []

MES Product Upgrade Just saw an announcement of an upgraded MES product. This is currently the hot area in manufacturing software. Wonderware, a business unit of Invensys Systems has released an upgrade to its Enterprise Integration Application. Version 2.0 extends the library of pre-built integration templates and a production dispatch client that enables the independent release of production orders regardless of business system or network availability. Apparently Wonderware at the same time is increasing its consulting services presence along with "collaborating more closely" with its certified systems integrators. "The two main benefits we've received from using the Wonderware Enterprise Integration Application are that it takes away a lot of risk while maintaining the flexibility to meet specific requirements," said Robert Peters, president of ASECO, a Wonderware certified systems integrator. "It also has helped us pursue new opportunities because the ability to integrate business and plant-floor information improves our standing with potential customers." The software is built on Wonderware's ArchestrA architecture--essentially a Microsoft .Net foundation built on XML technologies. As the name states, Enterprise Integration Application is designed to bridge the gap between real-time manufacturing operations and manufacturing systems. It can aggregate data from many manufacturing sites allowing corporate managers to see manufacturing status and make appropriate decisions. 9:53:24 AM    comment []