Thursday, December 11, 2008

ABB CEO speaks to employees in New Berlin Here's some of the first public words I've heard from ABB's new CEO Joe Hogan. He spoke at a town hall meeting at the ABB New Berlin, Wis. facility recently. He told employees there, "Continue to focus on your market orientation to business. Execute well in this, and every business cycle; get ever closer to customers; and build ever-better solutions and relationships." In morning meetings, Hogan was briefed on the business performance of the Automation Products division, including a profile from general managers from five of the divisionâo[dot accent]s 10 Local Business Units located on campus, as well as the Power & Control Sales team (which supports a number of the LBUs) on progress and growth in the U.S. "This campus houses one of the largest operating units for ABB in North America, and these facilities include offices, manufacturing and local warehousing and distribution operations," said Rick Hepperla, regional division manager for Automation Products in North America. "The New Berlin operation represents nearly half of the Automation Products volume in North America," noted Hepperla, "and the healthy earnings contribute significantly to the total for Automation Products." Hogan added, "Look, the focus is where it needs to be -- on offering our core competencies of power and automation to the market. ABB is very global, truly multi-national, and there is a great, earned pride in engineering and R&D across the company; these assets, combined with good cash, gives us the tools to become stronger in the long-term." Asked how ABB gets ever closer to customers, Hogan emphasized, "Listen! Be humble. Be hungry." He noted that responses with product and service solutions need to be rapid, but based on multiple inputs from end users that confirm a true trend. "ABB absolutely has, or can create, the technology to respond with better solutions," he said. Employees queried him on a variety of concerns, including his views on the current economic climate. "Focus on your market and what you can control," responded Hogan. "Work really hard; getting better at your job every day actually assures our future," he noted. "Work on becoming faster, leaner and more pertinent to the customers we serve." 8:57:54 PM    comment []

Distributed control in discrete applications I've been sitting on this post for a long time while contemplating all the meanings. Finally getting caught up a little and taking time to put something coherent together. Opto 22 has long been a bellweather in shaping my view of what's happening in the industry and its use of technology. It jumped on PC-based control early (black arm bands at a trade show announcing the death of the PLC). And it has a good, flow-chart based programming and control offering--although "PC" has morphed into modern embedded computing designs, not your off-the-shelf Dell. Then there was machnine-to-machine communications. Really a type of SCADA using embedded cellular wireless technology. The M2M market is still strange, but Opto sold a bunch of systems. Early on, Opto developed Ethernet I/O and used the power of the TCP/IP stack. After a couple of press releases, I had a long chat with Benson Hougland at ISA last October. Opto has now adopted the CIP protocol from ODVA and can connect to Rockwell Automation PACs and PLCs. This is interesting on many levels. First, Rockwell used to be the hated enemy. Now Opto recognizes a couple of things beginning with the huge market share Rockwell has in North America in controllers. But the interesting thing is the power of distributed processing in discrete applications (similar, but not the same as process control). Using EtherNet/IP (Ethernet TCP/IP with the CIP protocol) in its I/O products, Opto can give customers a less expensive option for distributing I/O and even control on a machine from the central controller -- and this is definitely the technical and market sweet spot for Opto. With its Snap I/O line some control functions such as PID loop control, high-speed counting and latching, quadrature counting, pulsing, thermocouple linearization, analog ramping, scaling, engineering unit conversion, temperature conversion and time-proportional output can be distributed and performed at the I/O level. This effectively frees PLCs from these and other time-consuming, time-critical, or processor-intensive tasks--improving performance and keeping scan rates from being adversely affected. By the way, this wasn't brought up in our meeting, but given the technical beauty of Ethernet and all the technologies that have grown up around it, seems to me that Opto could develop for other Ethernet fieldbus flavors as it looks at market penetration globally. So the incipient trend I'm anticipating--greater distribution of control and I/O. Reduced cost. Reduced footprint. Greater flexibility. These are all high on any OEMs wish list--as well as their customers. One to watch. 8:49:05 PM    comment []

Crime and punishment Boy, Illinois knows how to be corrupt. In Ohio, we're just in the minor leagues. A few years ago we had a governor who looked like an Eagle Scout and was in the direct linage of a President, Supreme Court Chief Justice and U.S. Senator. He took a couple of airplane rides with lobbyists that he didn't report and got socked with a misdemeanor conviction. Then we just had an Attorney General resign that had something to do with women not his wife (don't know or care about those details, just hope we have a good one now). As you know, my main office is in Chicago. For the past few years everyone has been murmuring about Blogojevich, the current governor. None good. And surprisingly, even Democrats whispered about how bad he is. Then all this news about auctioning off the Senate seat vacated by Obama. Stuff seems to be splattering everywhere. (Note, he's just been arrested, not convicted.) I bet that trial will be a humdinger. Aren't you glad you're in manufacturing and not politics. 4:14:51 PM    comment []

Attention to detail For some reason I follow Bill Marriott's blog. I guess this is the reason. This post is about attention to detail. During my first 10 years in manufacturing, I wore a lot of hats. One was cost accounting (sort of) and another was purchasing. These taught me about attention to detail. In my present position every time I take to high of a view and leave the details to others, I get bit. I know the engineers who read this blog need little reminder about paying attention to detail (well, maybe they do), but all of us need to remember to pay attention to the little things. Check out the source of Bill's embarrassment and life lesson on his blog. 4:07:57 PM    comment []