June 2011 - Page 3 of 4 - The Manufacturing Connection

Video Recap of Honeywell User Group – Automation and Wireless

by Gary Mintchell | Jun 17, 2011 | Automation, Events, Wireless

Here’s a video essay recapping Honeywell User Group – Going from automation to business transformation, technology and product trends, and wireless / ISA100 update.

Honeywell User Conference Attendance, Energy Up

by Gary Mintchell | Jun 14, 2011 | Automation, Events, Operations Management

The 36th iteration of the Honeywell User Conference (HUG) kicked off yesterday with over 1,000 people in attendance. This is up significantly over the past couple of years–getting back to 2007 levels. And the energy in the demo room when I got there after lunch was also very high.

Honeywell Process Systems (HPS) President Norm Gilsdorf began by talking about being in the “business transformation” business. In a later private interview, he told me that he meant that HPS and its customers are moving beyond solutions to genuinely transforming their businesses.

To that end, he announced a reorganization at the top of HPS that will bring all the recent acquisitions into relevant groups with existing businesses and focus them on this transformative vision. One of the interesting points was when I asked about field devices–since that is one of the new groups. He admitted that with all the focus on acquisitions, investments in basic field instrumentation and devices had lagged. Remedying this will be a focus this year.

Gilsdorf’s four themes in his keynote were globalization, integration, collaboration and regulation. The first and last go without needing much more explanation. HPS is working with many partners including Microsoft and IBM, as well as other Honeywell divisions, to provide solutions more tightly coupled to the enterprise.

HPS is about finished with a total re-work of its Web site. Brian Chapman (my normal marketing contact) has been working on this for some time. It’s a clean and interesting look. Focus is on filtered search in areas that research showed customers and prospects expect to see.

Jason Urso, CTO, gave his usual fast-paced (I couldn’t write that fast) and polished presentation. Many of the new products and trends he discussed will come out later this year or into 2012. Suffice it to say that HPS has a lot of new technology and products in the pipeline. One that I’ll single out is what Urso called “game changing” three times in his presentation. That product is a gas detector that, combined with wireless communication, is worn by plant personnel that can send a signal if dangerous gases are in the area. In fact, much of the wireless discussion was about plant personnel locators and mobile operators.

More detail coming later when I get a chance to catch my breath.

Festo and Audi Manufacturing

by Gary Mintchell | Jun 14, 2011 | Automation, Operations Management

Manufacturing of automobile engines has changed dramatically since I first entered one in 1990. The “dark ages” of engine manufacturing really were dark. The plant was poorly lit, partly due to the haze from evaporating machining oil. The control enclosures were painted dark green. Floors were slick with oil and littered with metal chips from the machining processes. The noise was so bad that hearing protection barely worked.

Things had changed for the better by the time I left that plant for the last time at the end of 1997. Fast forward to 2011 and you’d never believe the changes.

I visited Hungary June 6-10 to attend the 9th Festo International Press Conference. On Wednesday we were treated to a tour of the Audi plant in Györ. This plant is both an assembly plant (see the picture of my next car–well, maybe) and an engine plant. Lean Manufacturing concepts were everywhere in evidence. The plant is well lit, clean, quiet and efficient. Of course, Festo pneumatic control products were all over the place.

Highlights of the press conference:

Christian Leonhard, Head of Global Factories for Festo, told us that Festo had sales of 1.8 billion euros with 14,600 employees. It invests about 8.5 percent of its revenues in research and development. It is a global manufacturer–and itself uses Lean Manufacturing throughout.

The theme of the day was energy efficiency, and Dr. Axel Gomeringer, Head of Innovation and Technology Management, suggested that the quest for increased energy efficiency would propel the next major innovation cycle. Like many companies I talk with, Festo is putting strategic thinkers into positions to conceptualize sustainability and its impact on products, processes and plants.

Festo has been great at turning loose its research group to study “bionics” that is replicating biological forms using pneumatics for motion. This year’s product is a sea gull that actually flies. Below is a picture. We were in a new building that had a large empty room. The day was too windy to fly it outside.

Hungary Manufacturing Thriving

by Gary Mintchell | Jun 14, 2011 | Automation, Commentary, Operations Management

Hungary has received much bad press. Some of this is generated by leaders from the old regime who formed a sort of oligopoly after the communists driven from power. These leaders who were a hold-over from communist times were recently voted out in parliamentary elections, but their ties to the US media stemming from their Ivy League educations tends to perpetuate the bad press Hungary receives in the US and worldwide. “The country really needs some positive press about the things actually happening here,” Janos Horvath told me over lunch last week.

I’ve been on a whirlwind bunch of trips the last few weeks. We held our annual company meeting the first of June, then I was off for Budapest. Pictures on Flickr here and here. While we were in Budapest, we were privileged to meet with Janos Horvath, who is the oldest member of the Hungarian Parliament. In 1944, he was the youngest member of the Parliament. In between, he lived in the US while the communists were in power only returning in 1998.

His story is amazing. In 1943 as a member of the anti-Hitler movement, he was arrested and about to be executed. Literally at the last minute, the Russian troops reached Hungary and began shelling Budapest. In the uncertainty that followed, Horvath escaped. Hungary had a free government for a couple of years, and he became a Member of Parliament. The came the Soviet “putsch” that overthrew the elected government and established a Communist state. So, he escaped again.

In the United States he earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia and taught in universities for many years. He actually ran for election to the US Congress once. And, at 89 years old, he remains sharper than many younger people I know. This was an inspirational meeting.

I actually got the opportunity to meet him because he is a friend of another Hungarian who escaped to the US–Bela Liptak. Liptak has been a columnist for Control magazine since its beginning and is the author/editor of the bible of process control. Keith Larson from Control was also on the trip. He wrote Liptak and asked for suggestions on things to do in Budapest.

Under the communists and for some time afterwards, the Hungarian economy was based on scarcity. Therefore clerks and others developed a mentality of “I’m doing you a favor by selling you this.”

But changes are occurring in Hungary as the market economy takes hold. Horvath told us stories of entrepreneurship in manufacturing that are taking place in the country. Industries currently strongly represented in Hungarian manufacturing include automotive, pharmaceutical and chemicals.

If you are building a plant in eastern Europe, it would be worth your time to investigate Hungary.