With all the attention in the past few years on “financial engineering” and its consequent destruction of the economy, are you still wondering about the value of “real engineering” that creates real value? Do you wonder about your role in the enterprise?
How would you like to be responsible for the problems facing Johnson and Johnson? Like this article from the LA Times: “The plan would require McNeil-PPC, a division of Johnson & Johnson, to adhere to a specific timetable to correct violations at the three plants and to hire an independent expert to inspect the facilities and make sure that manufacturing processes meet federal standards. The plants are in Fort Washington, Pa.; Lancaster, Pa.; and Las Piedras, Puerto Rico.” What are the repercussions on the enterprise when manufacturing management gets its priorities mixed and brings in the Feds?
Or take the case of the engineers and operators working valiantly in dangerous conditions to bring the nuclear reactors under control in Japan. I think they are heroes. They also are providing great value not only to their company, but also to their country and society.
You can check on progress here and get a simplified explanation here.
We have a new company in the space, plus User Group news is picking up.
Aware Technology
I have known Roy Kok for many years now. The veteran marketer has helped start a new company and is serving as President. Aware Technology, based on NASA R&D, additional layered intellectual property and the vision of industry professionals, says it will deliver “the next step in the evolution of HMI/SCADA, DCS Systems and Historians.” The value proposition is layered analytics delivering “Automation Confidence through System Awareness.”
The automated learning solution builds a knowledge base of process experience to deliver both operational confidence metrics and anomaly detection. The product, Process Data Monitor (PDM), will integrate with all existing HMI/SCADA, DCS and Historian solutions through both native interfaces and industry standards such as OPC. PDM will also integrate directly with automation components—sensors and controllers—through a PDM Data Gateway. Gateway-collected data will be delivered to PDM running as an enterprise appliance, or to PDM running as a hosted “Private Cloud” application.
Target markets initially include Process and Hybrid applications. Examples include; Oil and Gas Production and Refining, Power Generation and Distribution, Water Purification, Wastewater Treatment, Chemical Manufacturing, Metals Manufacturing, Mining, and Building Automation. PDM is said to complement existing Advanced Process Control (APC), Health Monitoring and Asset Management systems.
“This is not a grass roots startup,” commented Peter Millett, chairman and CTO of Aware Technology. “iSagacity, a services company I co-founded in 2004, initially pioneered this technology in 2006, licensing and improving upon NASA’s patents and offering it to our customers in the nuclear industry as a service. We’ve formed Aware Technology to improve the product and deliver it to the masses, under the guidance of Roy Kok, our president and longtime automation industry veteran.”
“This product represents the natural next evolution of virtually all automation systems,” stated Kok. “It is widely known that 50% of automation engineers and operators are likely to retire over the next 5 to 10 years. This is a major loss of experience for the industry as a whole and the focus will be on capturing experience into a database, to offer guidance to new personnel, and give operators and engineers the tools to be proactive in process management rather than reactive to process alarms and failures. Other solutions focus on Advanced Process Control through complicated modeling processes and can’t deliver Confidence Metrics. Our solution is quite unique and is designed for the majority of the market, even addressing applications that do not have control rooms today, like Building and Facilities management.”
User Group Conferences
I was reminded of the upcoming User Conference Season by this Jim Cahill post on Emerson Process Experts. Jim writes about the last couple of weeks for you to submit an idea for a paper for Emerson Global User Exchange (this year October 24-28 at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville).
Other upcoming events that either I will attend or someone from Automation World include the ABB Power and Automation World conference April 19-21, Siemens PLM May 2-5 in Las Vegas, WBF May 23-25 in Deleware, Honeywell User Group in Phoenix and Rockwell’s RSTechEd in Orlando both the week of June 12, a Cisco summit in July in Las Vegas, NI Week in Austin August 2-4, Rockwell’s PSUG and Automation Fair November 14-17 in Chicago.
Odd Thoughts
Humans have always enjoyed entertainment. But actors were considered low-class people from, say, the beginning of humankind until the Hollywood press machine got rolling in the 1920s. Then actors/actresses became celebrities. And with that status, they thought they could speak with authority on all manner of issues—and people actually listened to them! (well, many people anyway)
Now we see the explosion of Charlie Sheen. The problems of Mel Gibson. And many others. Perhaps it is time to revisit the wisdom of 5,000 years of human experience versus the last 90. Maybe our ancestors got something right?
I can’t believe that it’s only a few weeks until the 6th annual Packaging Automation Forum. This year it’s April 26 at the Westin O’Hare in suburban Chicago. We have an outstanding lineup of speakers that will present experiences and expertise that will help anyone who builds and implements machines–even if they aren’t packaging. I’ve even assembled a panel of experts on machine safety who will touch on many benefits of building safety into machines.
Here is a video introduction to the entire program. Enjoy.
Martin Ford is a pessimist. I guess he wasn’t too worried when automation (supposedly) put working people out of jobs. Now it appears that automation will put IT and other “knowledge” workers out of jobs, too. That has him worried.
In today’s post, he quotes from economists Paul Krugman and David Autor.
“Two notable economists have recently weighed in on the issue that I’ve been writing about extensively here: job automation and its impact on the future economy.
“Paul Krugman links to a 1996 article in which he imagined a future where ‘information technology would end up reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers, because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing — indeed, replaced more easily than a lot of manual labor.’
“That’s very much inline with what I think is likely to happen. In fact The Atlantic recently published an excerpt in which I talk about how a Radioligist’s job might be easier to automate than a housekeeper’s.
“Brad DeLong seems less concerned:
“ ‘I don’t see a problem with the number of jobs: I don’t see any reason that technological unemployment should be any more in our future than it has been in our past.’
“Really? Keep in mind that in the U.S. we need to create over a million jobs a year just to keep up with population growth. Within the next decade or so, I think it’s likely that millions of jobs in both low skill areas and high skill occupations are going to be increasingly susceptible to automation. If that happens, we’ll need to replace all those jobs while still keeping up with growth in the workforce. (And of course that’s on top of digging out of the massive unemployment hole we’re currently in).
“As Krugman notes, one economist that has done extensive work in this area is David Autor of MIT. Autor co-authored a paper that looked at how computers have substituted for labor going all the way back to the 1960s and found that, as we might expect, routine and repetitive jobs are highly susceptible to automation. Autor has found that, as a result, the job market is currently polarized: A great many of the middle-skill jobs that used to support a solid middle class lifestyle have been automated—leaving us with high skill/high wage jobs that require lots of education and training and lots of low skill jobs with very low wages.”
But I ask the question, does job creation come from older businesses that are automating in order to stay productive, or from new businesses? Everything I read about job creation is that the generator of new jobs is small business—startups, entrepreneurs hiring, new places we’ve never dreamed about.
In the March Automation World, at least two business owners contributed experiences where automation not only saved jobs that might have gone overseas but actually added more high-quality jobs.
I’m not an unbridled optimist, but I don’t see the end of the world, either. I’m optimistic about the US if we can continue to provide the infrastructure and financing that encourages more new businesses. If we don’t, then we’re toast.
I’ve previously written about Ford and his book Lights in the Tunnelhere and here.
I enjoy many of the articles by professors of the Goizuetta Business School of Emory University. Here are a few from this month (registration required).
Revisiting Sputnik: The Will to Invest in Competitive Advantage Can America get its competitive groove back? President Barack Obama is proposing tax incentives as a way to lift American production back to the world-class leadership position it once enjoyed. The president cited the space race as an example of the country’s ability to come from behind and emerge victorious, but Emory professor Thomas M. Smith says the parallel only goes so far. And he questions whether Americans are once again willing to pay the price of short-term discomfort for long-term gains.
Knowledge@Emory Feb 25 – Mar 22
Why are U.S. Executive Salaries So High? On February 18, the Associated Press reported that the base salary for David Nelms, chairman and CEO of Discover Financial Services Co, increased to $4.55 million in 2010, up from $1 million the year before. He was also awarded a $1.7 million bonus. Many observers wonder what’s driving the increases in executive pay, particularly given that the unemployment rate in the U.S. continues to hover around the 9 percent mark in most states. According to Shivaram Rajgopal, a professor of accounting at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School who studies executive pay, this suggests that something is wrong with the compensation-setting system. In particular, he sees two problems: Wall Street’s preference for short-term profit over long-term investment, and cozy corporate boards.
Blackboards or Basketballs: The Future of American Education? Does the U.S. have the willpower to return to its historical commitment to funding excellence in education? President Barack Obama wants to reignite the education system, but in a country that has fallen demonstrably behind their counterparts in Asia, and where science and math often take a backseat to sports, is significant change possible? Emory University professor Jag Sheth, who is founder of the India China America Institute (ICA), addresses these and other education questions, noting that while parents need to step up their game when it comes to helping educate their children, more government action is also necessary if the U.S. wants to regain its place at the head of the class.
Brainsteering: The Art of Asking the Right Questions What do companies that go from zero revenue to a billion dollars in four years have in common? According to Kevin Coyne, senior teaching professor in organization & management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, companies like Google, eBay, or Groupon were built around a single, powerful idea. In an interview with Knowledge@Emory, Coyne discusses his new book, “Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas,” due out Tuesday, and the process that goes beyond brainstorming to jumpstart success by “steering” idea generation.
ODVA Executive Director Katherine Voss announced to the assembly March 2 that a new Special Interest Group (SIG) has been authorized to develop objects and services within the CIP (Common Industrial Protocol) networks to communicate energy information–OEU for optimization of energy usage. Some target results for implementers include awareness of energy usage, efficient use of energy and transacting energy use for best results. ODVA expects products implementing OEU in 2012.
UPDATE: Voss just announced the official publication of the Energy Whitepaper. Visit the organization website.
