Carl Jung called it [base "]synchronicity[per thou], the experience of having two (or more) things happen simultaneously in a manner that is meaningful to the person or persons experiencing them. So last week when I was in Boston I found a bookstore nearby and went in looking for a copy of a Geoffrey Moore book. They didn[base ']t have Crossing the Chasm, but there was a copy of Dealing With Darwin. It[base ']s a study of innovation in large companies. Later during the reception following the Invensys InFusion announcement, Mike Bradley, president of Wonderware, asked me if I had read it. Hmmm, a pattern. So, I[base ']m reading it.
I[base ']ve just begun the book, but I[base ']ve already found the thesis provocative and inviting. I hope to finish the book next week on the rides to Germany and back. This is another book (like Kevin Kelley[base ']s Out of Control)that uses biology as a model rather than physics.
The foundation logic for the book is that free market economies operate by the same rules as organic systems in nature:
_Competition for the scarce resources of customer purchases creates hunger that stimulates innovation.
_Customer preferences for one innovation over another create a form of natural selection that leads to survival-of-the-fittest outcomes.
_Each new generation restarts the competition from a higher standard of competence than the prior generation.
_Thus over time successful companies must evolve their competence or become marginalized.
Now, apply this thinking to automation and control. This is just a first thought, but I think it[base ']s a line that I would like to pursue. So comments are welcome.
If we just look at the [base "]major[per thou] systems suppliers (ABB, Emerson Process, Honeywell Process, Invensys, Yokogawa on the process side; Rockwell Automation and Siemens for both process and discrete; GE Fanuc discrete and embedded with some process), we can see a progression. Many of the companies began with components then adding intelligence at the component level. Eventually PLCs began to replace relays and DCSs gave coordination, design and HMI intelligence to single loop control. Then commercial PC technology invaded the control domain (powerful microprocessors, cheap and dense memory, and so on) and the technology line between PLC and DCS began to blur (not to mention motion control). At each level the companies had to go beyond their competitive advantage to be competitive at a new level.
I think what we are seeing exemplified by the Invensys InFusion announcement of an [base "]Enterprise Control[per thou] platform, is the taking of the competition evolution to the next level. I think all the systems companies I have mentioned have been laying a foundation of technology in order to accomplish the enterprise information integration promised by Invensys. People can (and have) argued on the integration with SAP point, but I think that that is a done deal. Everyone is trying to integrate with the enterprise level. What Invensys has done is use Peter Martin[base ']s extensive research and modeling on how to help finance and engineering talk to one another. That is the key competitive differentiation. I think other companies have been working on this, and I expect to see more products and initiatives pop up over the next couple of years in this area of providing financial metrics for operations to base decisions upon and better KPIs for management.
Any competitors who get lost in the ArchestrA, XML, Web Services game will do just what Invensys wants while it goes straight for the executive suite talking the language of the bean counters.
3:41:05 PM 
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