by Gary Mintchell | Feb 28, 2011 | Security
I saw this release last week while I was trying to get the March issue of Automation World out the door. McAfee Inc. announced new research which found that 41 percent of organizations are not well aware of or protected against IT security risks. Another 40 percent are not completely confident they can accurately deploy countermeasure products thus leaving them at risk. The report Risk and Compliance Outlook: 2011, commissioned by McAfee and conducted by Evalueserve found that to address these concerns, nearly half of all companies plan to spend an average of 21 percent more in 2011 on Risk and Compliance solutions. Overall, the survey indicated strong growth for risk and compliance products in 2011 with the majority of CSO’s and other decision-making executives demanding integrated and automated solutions rather than point products.
I’m working on a security article for an upcoming issue. Just curious–how many of you care about security standards for industrial control and automation products? There are a couple security standards floating around. Would you put compliance in your specs? Would you like to see other standards? Send me a note or comment on the blog. Thanks.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 25, 2011 | Commentary
I haven’t seen any shocking news, but here’s a roundup of some thoughts on this Friday afternoon.
WBF Conference
The annual WBF Conference is shaping up to be a good one. This year’s gathering is in Delaware, May 23-25. You can visit this Web site to see the agenda and register. It’s on my calendar to attend. Hope to see you there.
Alarm Management
Jim Cahill at Emerson Process Experts wrote a good entry on alarm management. This is a crucial topic that is getting well-deserved attention lately. Certainly operators are tired of alarm overload–as someone told me once, we discovered we could instrument more things, but that meant that we had more information, so we thought we feed it all to the operator.
While I’m on that subject, I have the Second Edition of The Alarm Management Handbook by Bill Hollifield & Eddie Habibi to review. I’ve been too swamped to read it (kind of like the operators, I guess), but it’s next up on my list. Habibi is CEO and founder of PAS, and I met with him during the ARC Forum this month. He is now talking about “human reliability.” Given the serious incidents over the past few years in the processing industry, serious thought that is occurring at Emerson and PAS (among others) on this topic is welcome.
Media
I listen to a podcast with Dave Winer and Jay Rosen (journalism professor at NYU). A couple of weeks ago, Rosen made an interesting and provocative observation relative to coverage of the unrest in the Middle East. Talking about Al Jazeera, he said that everyone inside the company knows the are pro-democracy in the Middle East and it infuses their coverage. Its hosts know the background information and are not afraid to argue with officials who are spreading BS. It also plays videos as a news item. Meanwhile at CNN, it has hosts who know nothing talking with “experts” who know nothing and they talk over the videos as if it were just wallpaper.
Supposedly Fox News and MSNBC have a point of view that bleeds into their coverage (you can use me to prove it–I watch none of them), but I quit watching when I perceived the “know nothing” approach and grew tired of the sensationalism. Same way that I am now tired of watching the Weather Channel and Jim “Bad News is Great” Cantore.
Sorry, but that’s why I’ve crafted Automation World to have a stance (how automation makes manufacturing and production better and more profitable) but to tell a story and not just hype marketing stuff. Every time we slip from my ideal on that, I hurt (because I know that the readers hurt, too).
Fiscal Sanity
Check out this article on TechCrunch about a study made of the finances of the U.S. government. This is actually well-known information–but no one discusses it. Why? The political reality is too hard. The Republicans and Democrats can quibble all they want–until they tackle Medicare and Medicaid, they will not solve the fiscal issues they are arguing over. (By the way, I’m not that far from 65 and eligible for it .)
The issues are more complex than I can handle. I guess that’s why I’m not running for Congress. On the other hand, I hope my reputation is better than that of a Congressperson. But I know a few things from business. There are three approaches to fiscal issues. You can hack costs to as little as possible. We know that only works on the very short term (ask “Chainsaw Al” at Sunbeam). You can invest tons and not watch costs (but that will bleed you dry or you’ll owe so much that you lose the company). OR, you can watch your costs and invest wisely for the future.
I cover many companies who do just that. Rockwell has been doing that. So has Emerson. And National Instruments. And Opto 22. And many more. These are companies that are growing and thriving (sorry Jim Pinto, who has this theory gleaned from some “expert” who thinks companies the size of Rockwell can’t grow anymore). I believe, with Thomas Jefferson, that debt enslaves you. But I also believe, as Jefferson did with his actions buying Louisiana, that you must also make investments for the future. I’d like to hear more balance.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 24, 2011 | Operations Management
Here are some interesting pieces of news from today’s release wire. ODVA entices a new principal member and National Instruments is reselling someone else’s technology.
Bosch Rexroth Joins ODVA
ODVA today announced that Bosch Rexroth, known for drive and control technologies–as well as a supporter of Sercos, will become one of the organization’s principal members, joining Cisco Systems, Rockwell Automation, Omron and Schneider Electric. Bosch Rexroth’s increased participation builds on its long-term support of ODVA technologies and the ODVA organization in which it has been an active member for several years.
“Our customers demand open, interoperable solutions for Rexroth’s core product offerings in drives and controls, and our ability to do so will be enhanced by our increased integration of ODVA technologies into our solutions, especially EtherNet/IP,” said Dr. Bernd-Josef Schäfer, senior vice president, Technical Electric Drives and Controls in the Business Unit Industrial Applications, Bosch Rexroth. “Through our increased collaboration inside ODVA with other market leaders in industrial automation, Bosch Rexroth looks forward to helping industry achieve integration from device level up to enterprise business systems that is possible with industrial Ethernet and Internet technologies.”
“ODVA welcomes the increased participation of Bosch Rexroth as a principal member as well as their expertise in such areas as motion control and OEM machinery,” said Katherine Voss, executive director, ODVA. “Their engagement as a principal member will significantly increase ODVA’s ability to drive a holistic and integrated view of the industrial enterprise.”
ODVA will introduce Bosch Rexroth as a principal member at its 2011 Industry Conference and 14th Annual meeting, to be held March 1-3, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona, where Bosch Rexroth will also present an overview of the company and its motivation to become a principal member of ODVA. For more information about the ODVA event, visit www.odva.org.
NI To Resell GE Reflective Memory Cards
GE Intelligent Platforms today announced that it has signed an agreement that will see National Instruments (NI) distribute the GE cPCI-5565PIO Reflective Memory PMC and PMC Carrier Card for 3U CompactPCI systems. The cPCI-5565PIO – which operates at 2Gbaud and features 256Mbytes of memory and multi-mode transceivers – is based on the GE PMC-5565PIORC, but includes a customized carrier card specifically designed to be configured with NI PXI chassis as part of the company’s NI VeriStand real-time testing and simulation software platform.
“Reflective Memory is a technology that uniquely enables real time local area networks and in which each computer always has an up-to-date local copy of the shared memory set,” said Wayne McGee, Manager, Commercial Product Management at GE Intelligent Platforms. “These specialty networks are specifically designed to provide highly deterministic data communications, and deliver the tightly timed performance necessary for a variety of sophisticated, demanding distributed simulation and industrial control applications. As such, Reflective Memory is highly appropriate for the applications targeted by National Instruments, and can help NI achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.”
“Our business is about helping engineers and scientists more efficiently design, prototype, and deploy systems for test, control, and embedded design applications,” said Ian Fountain, Senior Platform Manager for Real-Time Test at National Instruments. “Our customers continuously develop innovative technologies that impact millions of people. Adding the GE Reflective Memory to our NI VeriStand platform will help us deliver the network performance and reliability that those customers demand.”
NI VeriStand is a software environment designed for creating real-time testing applications more efficiently. It allows configuration of a multicore-ready real-time engine to execute tasks that include analog, digital, communication bus, and field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based I/O interfaces; triggerable, multifile data logging; real-time stimulus generation; calculated channels, and event alarming and alarm response routines.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 23, 2011 | Automation
Rex Hammock (@r on twitter) and Dave Winer (@davewiner) had a conversation on Dave’s Rebooting the News podcast this week. Some interesting and worthwhile thoughts on media and magazines.
Meanwhile, Gary can be heard or seen with thoughts on Automation and a recap of the ARC Forum.
Meanwhile, I’m wrapping up my writing for the March issue of Automation World and preparing for a trip to Phoenix next week where I’m promised a lot of information at the ODVA annual meeting.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 22, 2011 | Software
I don’t cover ERP in detail, but I do touch on the parts that interact with manufacturing. I received a note from Derek Singleton who researches aspects of ERP and has done this comparison of the features of various ERP applications that reside in the cloud. It’s a worthwhile look into the players, but you’d need to dive deeper if you’re evaluating for possible purchase, of course.
