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Wednesday, July 18, 2007 |
Because of the AW meetings this week, I didn't go to the Invensys/Foxboro user conference in Boston. There are a lot of people I like to visit with there, but I'll just have to catch them later. Anyone going to ISA in October?
I asked one of our contributing editors, Dave Gehman, to attend and he sent a report that will be (space permitting) in the August print issue. It was Dave's first meeting with Peter Martin, though. And he was as impressed as any of us with Peter's knowledge, intelligence and passion. The topic was similar to what he's been preaching for a while now. Engineers are valuable to a company, but executives too often just see expenses, not contributions. (I just had a thought while writing this--executives used to be engineers, now they're glorified bean-counters, that is, they too often come from finance backgrounds.) Anyway, here's a classic quote from Martin Dave brought back that we all need to take to heart, "CEOs and CFOs don't know your value because the accounting snapshots fail to look at the right things. Unfortunately, every financial measure on the factory floor is a negative one." Martin has used his research and analysis to help Invensys develop products that engineers can use to use accounting to their own advantage to prove their worth.
12:38:29 PM 
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Rockwell Automation hosted a Web-based press conference last week to update us about the ICS/Triplex acquisition. The company will operate much as it does today and will report to Rockwell through Terry Gebert who is vice president and general manager of the manufacturing and process solutions business. I have a feeling that it will remain together because it has strategic partnerships with many of Rockwell's competitors. Certainly Rockwell is looking to transfer the vast domain knowledge that exists within ICS/Triplex and use it to further its process, safety and sensing businesses. Gebert pointed specifically to domain expertise in oil and gas as a plus.
12:25:28 PM
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No posts for a couple of days. Every year our publisher, Dave Harvey, likes to assemble the Automation World crew and look at where we've been and where we're going (otherwise known as annual planning meeting). We started in 2003 and have come a long way since then. And I thank all of you who have helped us achieve a place in the industry.
That was Monday. A full day of strong personalities voicing strong opinions. One of the outcomes is the annual editorial calendar that every magazine publishes so that advertisers know what we cover and public relations people can use to pitch articles (special note on that--don't send me an article from a supplier, we don't publish those, we're staff-written). I have a few new wrinkles forecast for our coverage for 2008 and I'm working on some new ways to gather and share ideas about making our manufacturing more efficient, productive and profitable. You can keep track of the calendar and upcoming articles through this link.
In my last post, wrote something about a challenge I made to the automation suppliers on wireless. Now that I'm back in the run of things, I'll be following up on a challenge I made in my June podcast to other automation suppliers on programming improvements to make things easier for the end users who have to wade through so many different programming styles when they buy machines from many OEMs. The email blast on that podcast had barely been sent when I got a call from Bob Erickson of Rockwell Automation who wanted to tell me about what that company is doing. I have a chat this afternoon. Perhaps it'll end up as a follow up podcast. Anyone else out there doing things to make life easier for the end user? Let me know.
12:18:36 PM
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In my July editorial in Automation World (now online), I was responding to some questions I was getting at various gatherings of users--whether any of the automation majors is really shipping any of the wireless sensor network products. Honeywell has been--to a degree. I asked Emerson, Invensys and others if they were shipping--and received no response. Maybe now I'll get a response. We'll see. Surely there are many beta users out there. But could I give my credit card number and buy something today? That is one of the questions.
On the other hand, I believe that sometime in 2007, you will all be able to buy wireless sensor network products and hook them into an application that uses the additional information to help you make better manufacturing decisions. So, I ended my editorial saying I don't believe it's all hype with no substance. That's where I'm really sticking my neck out. I see lots of potential for improved plant operations and profitability. I hope I see it begin this year. Definitely in 2008. (I hope, or I'll have to be like stock market prognosticators who annually conveniently forget last year's predictions.)
I am losing patience with the SP100 committee and must have said something that upset Dick Caro--the noted networking guru who believes in the single-technology, single-standard approach to manufacturing networking. He didn't state what his problem was, but I must have said that if there's a mesh network built on 802.15.4 and a WiFi network built on 802.11 and a radio network like Honeywell's current offering, and they all are adopted and process plants use them all, I don't think that's a bad thing. There needs to be interoperability within each type. But my belief is that the real value is not in the network. The real value lies in the application layer that takes advantage of all that data. The value of WiFi on my laptop is not in WiFi, it could be some other technology--cellular for instance. And both radio waves can be all around me. I just use one. The value to me is what I do with it. Even more so to manufacturers.
But, I'll cover SP100 when it becomes ISA-100. Until then, it's the market that will decide. Sometimes you need a standard to build a market, but usually the market picks the technology that'll be the standard.
11:58:37 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Gary Mintchell.
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