There are Jim Cahill (@JimCahill) from Emerson Process Management and I (@garymintchell) at the WBF Conference (in the back at a special desk). The presentations were high quality and should have been heard by about 5 times the people that attended. Watch for next year’s conference and sign up. It’s among the best education you’ll get all year.
Dennis Brandl of BRL Consulting welcomes attendees.
Chairman Bill Wray introduces sessions.
Tuesday keynoter Prof. Thomas Edgar of the University of Texas Chemical Engineering department talks about energy.
Dennis Brandl and the Willie Nelson 5 (aka standards committee chairs) with “Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Hate Standards.” (always a fun ending to the first WBF day)
We’re at the end of the first full day of papers at the WBF Conference. Minute-for-minute it’s the best, most informative conference I’ve attended. These are truly the thought leaders for much of manufacturing. The shame is, there should be 350 people here. I’ll have to work on that.
They’ve covered various aspects of implementing various standards (ISA88, ISA95, B2MML, BatchML) for the betterment of manufacturing. I can’t report on everything said that can replicate the experience of being here. But I’ll summarize when I get a chance to think.
Catching up on a number of items I’ve found over the past few weeks of travel and getting a magazine out.
ISA100
This hardly comes as a surprise, but GE Energy sent a release Monday, May 24, about supporting the ISA 100 Wireless Compliance Institute by joining the board. GE, along with Honeywell, have been the support foundation for the standard as it has developed with Yokogawa also supporting this one.
Internet of things
I keep watching this space to see if anything is going to take off. Mostly I’ve seen smaller companies either sell or fold. Still the technology is interesting–and watch IP networking spread eventually to the Wireless Sensor Network space contested by WirelessHart and ISA100.
The IPSO Alliance, the leading organization promoting the use of Internet Protocol (IP) for smart object communications, announced partnerships with two major industry consortiums the IPv6 Forum and ZigBee Alliance. By working together, these three organizations aim to more quickly accelerate the adoption of IP networked devices for use in energy, consumer, healthcare and industrial applications, often referred to as the “Internet of Things.”
Oil spills and concerns
In the wake of the massive spilling of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, here is a press release from Shell:
“In advance of the 18 May Shell Annual General Meeting (AGM), Royal Dutch Shell and its joint-venture Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) are announcing sweeping plans to clean up all areas of the Niger Delta where they operate, compensate local communities for past injuries, and institute a local stakeholders program that will contribute to lifting the region out of poverty.”
The release continues, “Comprehensive Shell Remediation Plan for the Niger Delta (CSR-ND) has been steadily developing behind closed doors since Shell CEO Peter Voser took the helm last year, but was fast-tracked in response to public pressure to include an immediate cessation of deep-water drilling in the Niger Delta.”
NEMA cites gain in industrial control numbers
NEMA’s Primary Industrial Controls Index climbed 11.7 percent on a quarter-to-quarter basis during the first three months of 2010. The index has increased in each of the last three quarters, but the latest gain marks the index’s largest percentage increase since the second quarter of 2010. Industrial control shipments also increased on a year-over-year basis for the first time since 2008Q3, posting an increase of 11 percent compared to the first quarter of 2009. Nonetheless, inflation- and seasonally-adjusted shipments remain nearly 23 percent below their cyclical peak. The Primary Industrial Controls and Adjustable Speed Drives Index, a broader measure of demand for the industrial controls market, recorded a robust 13.9 percent quarter-to-quarter increase during 2010Q1 and posted its largest year-over-year increase in four years (13 percent).
Seth Godin posts:
Some interesting thoughts from marketing guru Seth Godin
Consumer debt is not your friend
Rights and Responsibilities–“It seems, though, that organizations and individuals that focus more on their responsibilities and less on their rights tend to outperform.”
Facebook and privacy
Many people are becoming concerned about Facebook’s flippant attitude toward users’ privacy–or at least Facebook’s seeming attitude of indifference about users as it pursues a viable commercial strategy, i.e. making money from your information on its site. So, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the pages of the Washington Post (whose chairman sits on the Facebook board of directors) for a free press release about privace. He, of course, was disingenuous saying almost nothing. Kind of like a PR person wrote it. See for yourself.
Adobe unloads 3D software development kit
Leading 3D component provider Tech Soft 3D announced it has signed an agreement, subject to certain customary closing conditions, with Adobe Systems Incorporated to transition development and support of Adobe’s 3D SDK and related technologies and associated employees and resources to Tech Soft 3D. Consisting of a 3D CAD translation suite and PDF publishing SDK, the technology allows OEM development teams to create applications that access data from over 25 popular 3D file formats, and publish rich 3D PDF files in the industry-standard PRC and U3D formats. Adobe will continue to support viewing of and interaction with 3D data within its applicable products, including the free Adobe Reader software. Moving forward, Tech Soft 3D will continue to make updated CAD translators available to end users as plug-ins to applicable Adobe software for reading and outputting 3D PDF.
Upon closing of the transaction, Tech Soft 3D will maintain the existing development center in Lyon, France, which will continue to update, enhance and support the technology. For easier application integration, Tech Soft 3D plans to immediately repackage the 3D SDK and PRC publisher into pure library form.
And an Adobe blog post explanation from Kumar Vora, VP&GM, LiveCycle Business.
“Today, Adobe’s long-term partner Tech Soft 3D announced it is taking over responsibilities to develop and deliver Adobe’s 3D technologies that are currently in our Acrobat 9 Pro Extended product. While this decision brings about significant benefits for our manufacturing customers, some may have questions about Adobe’s decision to transfer these 3D technologies to Tech Soft 3D. With that in mind, I wanted to provide some background information to help provide context for this action.”
WBF, the organization formerly known as World Batch Forum and the B2MML and BatchML developers, is meeting in Austin, Texas. Dr. Thomas Edgar, a professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas, just finished his opening keynote address. He surveyed the area of energy–usage, production, resources and control. A couple of key points. First, he looked at why discussions of energy technology are confusing. Not only are there many ways of talking about it (differing units of measure, for example), but few understand it in detail, there are no undergraduate requirements in engineering to study it, journalists apply “sound-bite” journalism to discuss it, and even if they wrote long articles, no one would read it.
He concluded that once we had a saving economy, now we have a consumption economy. “We need to develop a culture of personal responsibility (vs. personal freedom) for energy consumption in the US,” he noted. Other actions he challenged the 70 or so assembled automation engineers with included getting engineering departments to increase the energy IQ of engineering graduates, encourage the chemical industry to use renewable energy sources and encourage engineers to contribute to energy technology.
