by Gary Mintchell | Aug 19, 2011 | Automation, Operations Management
Just spent two exhausting days in meetings in Chicago in the office. Interesting that in the editorial team meeting, we had Grant who has been with us something over three years and Jim, Renee and Dave who combine for about a year with Automation World.
My primary role as editor in chief of Automation World is to set editorial direction and coverage. After many stable years, now I need to make sure that many new people are on board with the direction. The good news is that with new people come new ideas. You won’t see any radical changes but the variety of stories may broaden.
I’ve been reading that the merger and acquisition market was still hot. And sure enough, this week two announcements in our space. Each makes sense to me but in different ways.
First, Spectris plc has purchased Omega Engineering. Then GE has acquired Commtest, a provider and designer of machinery health information systems. If Omega is not the most famous supplier in the control and automation space, it is not for lack of trying. Advertising is its sales force, and it does that well and prolifically. Omega ads run everywhere touting a myriad of products–many of which it designs. I have met the owners and I am not surprised that they saw a great opportunity to cash out and remove themselves from active management. It’s a goal many of us have. GE Energy will be able to incorporate Commtest products into its Bently Nevada line and enhance its offering.
Here are the details.
Omega Acquired
Spectris plc announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire the Omega Engineering business. Omega is a leading supplier of process measurement and control instrumentation across a broad range of categories, including automation, wireless, test and measurement, process control, power monitoring, environmental and lab equipment.
Founded in 1962, Omega offers over 100,000 solutions for measurement of temperature, pressure, flow, level, strain, humidity, pH and conductivity, as well as a comprehensive line of data acquisition, electric heating and custom engineered products.
“We are delighted to have reached agreement to acquire the Omega Engineering business, which will bring a significant strategic growth platform to Spectris,” said John O’Higgins, Chief Executive of Spectris. “Omega will continue to serve its customers with innovative products and outstanding service. With its focus on control of temperature, pressure, flow and other common industrial process measurements, Omega is a natural fit for our industrial controls segment and enables us to expand our product offering to customers globally.”
Spectris owns, among others, Red Lion, Microscan and Bruel and Kjaer–a high technology vibration analysis company. It seems to be more of a portfolio manager at this point.
GE Acquisition
GE announced the acquisition of Commtest, a provider and designer of machinery health information systems. GE Energy’s Bently Nevada product line, a global leader in condition monitoring, will incorporate Commtest products into its portfolio and enhance an already robust lineup. Bently Nevada provides machinery protection and condition monitoring for refineries, petrochemical plants, power plants and wind farms.
As a major component of predictive maintenance, condition monitoring is essential to increasing asset longevity. Through condition monitoring, plant managers constantly receive data that provides input about the health of their machinery. For example, by knowing the vibration behavior and temperature of certain assets, managers can make strategic decisions about preventative maintenance to avoid asset fatigue, breakdown and failure. This is especially critical in the oil and gas and power industries where failed assets potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day in lost production revenue and increased operating and maintenance costs.
Commtest is based in Christchurch, New Zealand, and primarily focuses on producing vibration analysis and monitoring equipment. Vibration analysis detects early signs of impending machine failure so managers can proactively direct repairs and make replacements before they encounter expensive failures.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 16, 2011 | Events, Marketing, Software
Except for NI Week, August is a pretty quiet month. Except for soccer referee assigning, a “hobby” that keeps me up every night. I’ll be glad to see the season start and my assigning work decline.
There are two places you’ll find me in September. First is the ISA Marketing and Sales Summit in St. Louis. (You can chart #hecklegary for a thread on twitter. I tweeted that you should come to the event and heckle me.) This summit is designed to help automation and control marketing people improve their knowledge and skills about the latest thinking in the field. I’ll be helping out a little by giving some ideas on PR and working with editors.
The second conference is the MESA International North American conference in Orlando. My news story about “Cloudy With a Chance of Profits” is on Automation World.
Hope to see you there, too.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 16, 2011 | Automation, Operations Management, Software
Process systems suppliers send press releases proclaiming their larger systems sales–or at least a few of them do that. Most are interesting just to see what technologies users are interested in. Sometimes it’s just interesting that someone is investing in new technology in order to upgrade operations.
Then there is the release that validates a new direction a supplier has taken. Invensys Operations Management announced something called InFusion several years ago. Pundits and editors have been confounded ever since. What is it? Is it selling any? Why would anyone buy it? I have weighed in on the discussion a few times in feeble attempts to explain what can be a somewhat vague concept. Some of my blog posts are here and here.
Invensys Operations Management just issued a press release specifically about the sale of an InFusion system. Specifically, the announcement proclaimed, “Invensys Operations Management has signed a multi-million dollar contract to implement an integrated refinery information system (IRIS) for Saudi Aramco Total Refining & Petrochemical Company (SATORP). Under the terms of the agreement, Invensys Operations Management, in a strategic alliance with Wipro Arabia Limited, will provide an integrated InFusion enterprise control system solution.”
Until now, Invensys has deflected questions about InFusion sales with comments that InFusion actually is a solution package or suite that includes parts or all of a number of existing Invensys products. In this release, we see a clearer definition. Quoting the release, “(InFusion solution encompasses) total supply chain management; refinery planning and scheduling; operations management, including health, safety and environment management; quality control and assurance; and performance control and management. The company will also provide data validation and reconciliation, mass energy balance, utilities optimization, electronic logbooks and control performance solutions to help SATORP achieve operational excellence.”
This reads just like the vision of InFusion shared at its launch.
A note about the other companies involved:
Wipro Arabia Limited is a joint venture between Wipro Limited, a global IT services provider based in India, and Dar Al Riyadh, a Saudi Arabia-based company with business expertise in engineering services, industrial products, systems integration and information technology.
A joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Total France, SATORP is constructing a state-of-the-art, 400,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, that is expected to be operational before the end of 2013. The refinery will produce diesel, jet fuel and gasoline, as well as petrochemicals like paraxylene, aromatic benzene and propylene.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 12, 2011 | Commentary
I wrote the jobs post and got some interesting comments from Doug and Jon. They made some valid points. Are people so caught up in the acquisitive life that they cannot be content with a simpler lifestyle—even though studies show that people are happier?
This brought back memories of a book I read. Took a while to find it. This is from one of my first blog posts in early 2004. Much of this is still true today.
Perhaps the most important book that I’ll read this year is “The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse,” by Gregg Easterbrook. Although he cites extensive research to support his thesis, the book is very readable. The first half explores research showing how things have improved over the last century and how people feel about it.
Just stop to think about it, especially if you are older than about 40. We had three bedroom houses with one car. Many people dropped out of high school and few went to college. Now we live in four-bedroom houses and have 2-3 cars, one of which is some sort of hog like an SUV or mini-van. More people are in school. Despite the media hype, test scores really have improved over time.
That last comment brings in one of Easterbrook’s pet complaints. That is, how the media feeds on people’s wish that everything is bad. Even the Weather Channel. Used to be they gave us the weather and the forecast. Now it’s Storm Stories. Recently Jennifer Lopez (meteorologist, not singer) turned to Jim Cantore (OK, so I have too much free time) and asked breathlessly, “So, Jim, how bad is it going to be tomorrow?” Every general media outlet and even some trade publications dwell on the negative.
Recently I saw an article about IT jobs outsourcing to India. If you only read the first two paragraphs, you’d think that there won’t be any IT jobs left in the US within five years. Turns out that the “experts” think that maybe 10 percent of today’s jobs will be sent overseas. A lot less than the hype of the lead paragraphs. Plus, in five years there should be many more jobs created at a higher content. Many of the IT jobs going over there are simply for coding databases. That’s not so terribly high tech any more. The more value added jobs are those working with customers to design databases and portals then managing the projects.
That’s one reason that I never watch TV news, local or national. There’s no depth. Liberal or conservative, it’s really about negativity and sensationalism. I have grown tired of the whole thing. I want real information that I can use or that will help me grow as a person.
Easterbrook then takes most of the last half of the book to discuss various reasons why humans take delight in negative information. Very informative. Recommended.
