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Friday, May 23, 2008 |
The ISA100 committee on wireless systems for automation faced two letter ballots regarding what to do with the WirelessHart standard. After much confusion and debate, the committee ratified one of the two proposals. It has created a new subcommittee (temporarily named ISA 100.12) to address options for convergence of ISA100.11a and WirelessHart. The press release notes, "This initiative is a key step in the mission of the ISA100 committee to develop a family of universal industrial wireless standards designed to satisfy the needs of end users across a variety of applications."
The subcommittee will contrast and compare the technology within the ISA100.11a and WirelessHart standards, building on the experiences gained with industrial applications of both standards, with an ultimate goal of merging the best of both standards into a single converged subsequent release of the ISA standard.
"This is an important development for industry since it furthers the mission of ISA100 to embrace relevant industrial wireless standards and serves the expressed needs of the end user community," said Paul Sereiko of Airsprite, who has been invited, along with Dick Caro of CMC Associates, to serve as co-chairs of the new subcommittee.
"On behalf of end users, I believe I can safely state that our ultimate goal is to have a single industry standard for process applications. We are pleased that a path is developing to achieve that goal and that interim steps for achieving interoperable practical experience with both standards have been identified," said ISA100 End User Working Group co-chair Jim Reizner of Procter and Gamble who led a team of end users, including Pat Schweitzer of ExxonMobil, Herman Storey of Shell Global Solutions, and others, which stimulated the formation of the subcommittee.
An early activity of the ISA100 WirelessHART Convergence Subcommittee is to prepare the WirelessHart standard in an ISA standard format by the end of July to facilitate the evaluations.
"We look forward to the prospects of evaluating WirelessHart for convergence within ISA100 and remain committed to the timely approval of the ISA100.11a standard in 2008," said Jose Gutierrez of Emerson Electric Company. Dave Kaufman of Honeywell International added, "We remain committed to the final release of an approved ISA100.11a standard and to the subsequent collaborative evaluation of WirelessHart within the ISA100 family of universal wireless standards."
"Adoption of the ISA100.11a standard in 2008 will be an important step in fulfilling our ISA100 committee mission and of significant value to industry. This new subcommittee is the next logical step to helping industry fully achieve the significant benefits of wireless technology," added Pat Schweitzer of ExxonMobil who serves as co-chair of the ISA100 committee along with Wayne Manges of Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
Industry professionals desiring to learn more about the ISA100 activities or to contribute to work of the subcommittee can click here.
4:47:38 PM 
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Think I need to get into consulting. Had a call this morning with a "consultant" who has a contract to help a company expand into the automation market. I won't go into any details, but suffice to say that they didn't have a clue! Evidently neither the principal or the consultant knew the technology, customers, market, applications or anything else. They were talking about getting into a crowded market segment where the products are pretty much commodities. Since there are already several established low-cost suppliers, I don't know where they'd fit. They seemed to think the customers would design the product and have things built to spec. I just couldn't get through to them that they were talking commodity products. I told them to buy someone. I'll guarantee that none of them read my blog or Automation World (she asked for my credentials after sending an email asking for participation), but if they slip and do read this--there was my free advice ;-)
OK, I have to admit, I've had several consulting contracts over the years. My favorite was probably when I did quality testing for a company and set up a lab in my garage. My least favorite was helping someone who had gotten a gig with a local government agency after a teaching career. He was lost in a financial jungle. I untangled the mess and recommended a fix--but I didn't get to implement it. To me that's the worst part of consulting--send a report and walk away. But, I cashed the check.
4:26:31 PM
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I've started playing around with Spaces in Apple OSX Leopard. It is a pretty cool way to organize your work. Think I like it.
Also upgraded my Quicktime Pro software to record podcasts and video casts. Look for a video series of Gary on the road coming soon to AutomationWorld.com.
3:26:35 PM
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Kepware Technologies continues with its seemingly unending stream of news. Actually VP Roy Kok assured me Monday that there will be more news coming. The news this time is that its KepServerEX has passed the latest OPC certification tests administered by the OPC Foundation independent test laboratory.
"The OPC Certification process is extremely thorough," says Tony Paine, Executive VP and CTO for Kepware. "We have a very high degree of confidence in our product and we are thrilled to have achieved certification without having to make changes. In actuality, the process did highlight two areas of ambiguity, nothing that has ever affected our customers -- to the best of our knowledge. They have been addressed, primarily to enable Kepware to claim the first perfect score in the certification process."
"The architecture and design of the Kepware products is outstanding," says Thomas Burke, President of the OPC Foundation. "Kepware truly understands delivering quality products that facilitate the deployment of totally interoperable and reliable solutions. Many vendors resell and rebrand versions of the KEPServerEX product. Kepware's OPC certification automatically applies to all these products. Future vendors that partner with Kepware, and leverage KepServerEX, will also instantly benefit from the outstanding product quality and OPC certification that Kepware offers."
2:42:21 PM
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Yesterday was a catch up day--not to mention I spent half of it on the phone. It's too bad you missed the ISA Manufacturing IT Forum this week. Actually, there were several Automation World and Feed Forward readers there. The speakers and conversations were all good. But a few more attendees would have added some additional energy. Because I was at our own Packaging Automation Forum on Tuesday, I missed the Tuesday sessions. But Cliff Pederson of Suncor must have given a great keynote, because it was the only news on the blogosphere (Greg Hale of Intech) from the conference but it was also commented on frequently when I arrived Wednesday morning. In the session I moderated, there were three good presentations. Mike Brooks of Chevron presented a view of where manufacturing software needs to go and IT's role with operations to bring it about. Brian Oulton of Rockwell (they had a few vendor speakers, I heard two, and both gave good information mixed with a dose of marketing spin) talked of the convergence of IT and manufacturing through the example of Rockwell's partnership with Cisco. The last presenter was a little off the wall, but extremely entertaining and informative. Jake Jackson, who is a Certified Automation Professional but who defected into the audio/visual world, talked about how IT listened to AV (Apple with the iPod, iPhone and more) and how AV listened to IT (for example need to talk bandwidth when specifying video conferencing in an office). There was a lot to learn. Wish I had seen you there.
7:39:13 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Gary Mintchell.
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