Friday, June 16, 2006

Rockwell RSTechEd This week I also visited Rockwell Automation's RSTechEd--a training week for distributor specialists, integrators and other partners. It brought 1,500 people to Phoenix plus a few hundred Rockwell people. I sat in just a couple of sessions to get a feel where the software products were going. Sr. VP Steve Eisenbrown gave an early morning keynote focused on how Rockwell is commited to growth. Vice President of Rockwell Software Kevin Roach told the audience that Rockwell is investing heavily in Software -- in fact headcount is up about 30%, he said. The company is intent on integrating the MES space in the same manner that it integrated the Logix space. "Information is the next big thing," Roach proclaimed. I agree. Now let's see who tackles it the best. 5:03:19 PM    comment []

ISA-95 application I was happy to see this post on Jim Cahill's Emerson Weblog a little while ago. While it is Emerson Process-centric, it shows a level of detail and acceptance of ISA-95. Based upon a small sampling of Emerson customers, I was afraid that it would be the lone hold-out from acceptance of standards--instead trying to achieve a wholly inbred solution. By the way, this is a good example of a company blog. Opto 22 pioneered them, as near as I can tell. I've only seen one post from NL Belardes of ProSoft in a few months. Opto will tell you about its latest products and its successful run of worldwide training classes. ProSoft details products and applications. Jim at Emerson acts in a more evangelical role, similar to Robert Scoble of Microsoft--promoting products but also interviewing inhouse experts putting out some pretty useful information. These are ground-breaking endeavors and all should be good for the industry as well as for the companies. I hope that we all learn from each other and advance the conversation. As far as other editors in the space go, I've stopped linking to Walt Boyes' blog, because he never linked back. Plus he was going directions that didn't interest me. Then, when I tried to resubscribe, I couldn't. Told him his software must have known I was a competitor (smile). And I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't gotten to Greg Hales' blog over at Intech. Gotta catch up on that -- after vacation ;-) 4:43:45 PM    comment []

Podcast Automation Minutes Posted New edition of Automation Minutes published. 2:01:32 PM    comment []

PCSF Received a note form Michael Torppey, Technical Manager for the Process Control Systems Forum. If I had ever heard of the group, it hadn't registered. Turns out I know a lot of people associated with the organization. Check out the Website. You'll see a lot more about them in the pages of Automation World in the future. They have a strong security focus, but Michael also mentioned work they do trying to get IT and engineering/manufacturing to work together. This has been a subtle theme at AW that I'm changing to make it more obvious. Look for an article in August and a Webcast in November for starters. 7:01:05 AM    comment []

Vacation We're heading to Alaska for vacation tomorrow. Probably won't be many postings for the next 10-12 days. Unless it's a Flickr posting of pictures of me with the sled dogs up on some glacier. 6:55:16 AM    comment []