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Saturday, January 27, 2007 |
Getting to the ARC Forum in Orlando next month a little early? Consider attending the Hart Users Group Roundtable on the topic of WirelessHart. It'll be held on Monday February 12 from 5 to 6:30 PM at the Rosen Centre Hotel. Contact Ed Ladd.
12:13:17 PM 
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The XML Working Group of the WBF's Business to Manufacturing Markup Language (B2MML) v04 release candidate 2 schemas and documentation are now available for public review and comment. This is a major enhancement to B2MML that includes support for ISA-95 Part 5 Transactions, OAGIS messages and UN/CEFACT core components while maintaining backward compatibility to V0300.
If you have questions, please contact Jennifer Infantino at jinfantino@wbf.org.
This is a major step forward in interoperability. Take some time to consider it.
12:04:44 PM
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Big news broke while I was in Germany and just when I was losing Internet access for the day. Siemens Automation and Drives has purchased UGS--the product lifecycle management (PLM) supplier. UGS also includes Tecnomatix and the former USDATA--MES and HMI/SCADA products. I was surprised, but not shocked. Last year in Orlando I had an executive briefing where the relationship of the two companies was explained as part of the Siemens Digital Manufacturing initiative. Furthering of this initiative will be a key thing to watch.
Since the Siemens purchase of Moore Products some years ago, my opinion of its ability to manage a takeover has been critical. However, I chanced to have a conversation with a Siemens employee on the plane home and supplemented it with some information since, and I may have changed my mind. He acknowledged that the Moore situation was not good. But he pointed to the Robicon and IndX acquisitions that occurred since. He's correct. Both acquisitions have gone well. So, perhaps Siemens will leave UGS management in Plano, Texas reasonably alone to grow its business.
The question will be the integration of Tecnomatix into the existing Siemens MES business. I've had a distinct impression that that business has not been growing as much as hoped for lately. (This group was a part of an acquisition several years ago.) The MES situation will be interesting as it plays out. Many competitors are looking at this space for growth.
11:52:06 AM
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I've been curious about the status of ISA committee SP104 on EDDL. Terry Blevins has an excellent post on what's happening with the committee and an explanation about why he initiated the committee. I saw some questions and heard some opinions at the time of the request from other editors wondering if this was a power play by one vendor. I doubt that. Emerson does have a consistent strategy of tying everything from instrumentation through control to asset management around EDDL and Foundation Fieldbus. Nothing wrong with that. Others could, too, if they wished. Different strategies for different companies. This essay should go far toward explaining the situation. Thanks for a good post, Terry.
The only point in his post that I'd take exception to is that FDT/DTM is a competing technology. Its proponents do not believe that it is competitive, but is additive. Members of the FDT association seem to believe that certain DCS systems do not "play fair" with the presentation of their devices as it renders them within the system.
I have no opinion on that. I've seen the latest EDDL and it does a lot. But then, I don't make the competing devices.
11:42:52 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Gary Mintchell.
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