The SpaceX space station delivery launch and docking was a huge accomplishment. Certain projects need the investment of a large government to get them going, but often it becomes time for entrepreneurs to exploit the technology to take it to the next level of commercialization. This is great.

Of course, commercialization of NASA-developed technologies has been going on for a long time. Even back in the 80s when I was leading marketing and engineering for a small company in Dayton, I read NASA Tech Briefs searching for an expoitable technology to incorporate in what we were doing.

The Automation Conference went well. I liked what Bryan Griffen of Nestle had to say about standards and using PackML. When the OMAC Packaging Working Group first developed that state model, everyone touted it as a programming model. In reality, it's not so much about programming--although I'm a believer in structured programming and this is an ideal model to serve as an outline for programming machine control--it's really about consistent operation of a series of machines that leads to minimizing operator training and optimizing operator efficiency. When the HMI screens are similar machine to machine and the names and expected actions align, then operators will have an easier time running the machines and can operate more machines.

Necessary Step

I see this as a necessary step of two organizations that have accomplished much in their time, but also two organizations that seem to be at an inflection point of what to do next. WBF developed B2MML and BatchML and has members committed to bringing some standardization to batch process automation. The members have done an excellent job of institutionalizing ISA-88 for batch control.

MESA International leaders beginning about 6-7 years ago brought new life to a stagnant suppliers' association, but it has lost momentum over the past couple of years. What leaders of the association seem to desire is to bring in more users of MES/MOM technology in order to have conversations between the vendors and users.

The best initiative going with MESA right now, aside from development of papers explaining MES/MOM, is its new education program. If the WBF people can add education in the area of B2MML to the decidedly discrete orientation of MESA, that can be a win.

Other Organizations

I look at OMAC similarly. OMAC, like WBF, fell into the sphere of ISA when that organization was looking for some new life and thought it would become an umbrella organization for all the production and automation associations. That federation was a costly (both in terms of money and momentum) decision for both organizations. OMAC also had its heyday several years ago when it developed a standardized way of looking at and describing packaging machines (PackML and PackTags). What it needs now is evangelization--some of which it is receiving this week at The Automation Conference.

There is probably more work to go for OMAC. But the work of bringing order to the PackML idea is going on in the ISA-88.05 working group. If this work is finished, then users, OEMs and suppliers would have the comfort level to institutionalize the ideas. That work, unfortunately, has stalled. I have also picked up vibes that there are tensions among various groups--never a good thing when you are trying to develop a consensus standard.

Disclaimer

I am a member of both MESA and WBF and have been very active with the marketing and technical committees of MESA, but I have to wonder about the long-term viability of both organizations. I will be awaiting a new vision statement from the combined organization to see where leaders think they can go.

So, I'm interested. What do you think these organizations should be doing? Or, do you care?

Speaking of automation and manufacturing, last night we had a reception for speakers with a featured speaker from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. William Strauss, senior economist and economic advisor at the Fed of Chicago, spoke on the status of manufacturing. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, do it. He lays out a clear explanation of economic data. I know, that's almost an oxymoron, but he can do it.

Here are a few nuggets:

Watch out for the mis-use of statistics by politicians. It is easy to take the same set of data and show it in different ways to support political points of view.

If you obtain all of your information about the state of manufacturing from main-stream media, you will have a warped view.

Over a long period of time (about 70 years), manufacturing employment in total numbers has been stable, but manufacturing output has risen dramatically. The key is productivity. So if you look at the numbers of total manufacturing employment as a ratio of total US employment, then you would think manufacturing is in decline. If you look at the output of manufacturing in the US, then you would have an optimistic view of the state of manufacturing.

[As an aside, that is what we do, right? We help make manufacturing more productive. From an economic point of view, that is good. But, just as the percent of workers in agriculture that it takes to feed us had dropped tremendously over the past 180 years or so, just so the percent of workers it will take in manufacturing to produce all the goods we need will continue to decline over time.]

If you graph manufacturing productivity, you see an inflection point in 1979. Why? Development of CNC and PLC. Automation. What we do is good for wealth creation in the country. We just can't be the driver of full employment. The trends are against that.

The main thing about Joe is that he doesn't talk only about the IT and networking aspect of cyber security, but he also brings in vulnerabilities and challenges around the control system itself.

Highlights of the conference include:

Most discussions on securing ICSs are concerned with new designs or to meet compliance requirements. One domestic utility is concerned with security impacts on the reliability of their legacy ICSs. Consequently, a “test bed” program has been established with various ICS suppliers to secure legacy ICSs for reliability. The utility and participating ICS suppliers will provide lessons-learned and an understanding of the size of the effort.

Aurora is a gap in protection in the electric grid (not just in North America). There has been a lack of implementing hardware fixes for Aurora as well as misunderstanding of what actually occurred with the 2007 Aurora test at the Idaho National Laboratory INL). Consequently, there will be discussions on what actually occurred at the INL test, dispelling myths about Aurora, and providing lessons-learned from implementing hardware solutions for Aurora. As Aurora affects almost every substation, these discussions should be of great interest in meeting expected NERC/FERC requirements.

An international utility has requested a detailed technical assessment of their nuclear plant control and safety system upgrade to understand their cyber vulnerabilities (not for compliance). The assessment is arguably the most comprehensive of any nuclear or non-nuclear plant nuclear plant. There will be presentation on the utility’s rationale for the assessment and the cyber issues identified.

Most discussions on securing ICSs are by security solution providers and do not address engineering issues. Many of the most significant ICS cyber incidents and vulnerabilities are not due to network issues. Consequently, a panel of ICS experts from multiple industries (chemicals, water, oil/gas, power, and DOD) will provide their perspectives on the functional requirements including engineering considerations needed to secure ICSs (security solution providers need to hear this!)

Additional discussions are expected to include:

• New incidents, such as the complete loss of all ICS logic in operating power plants

• Unpublicized water system compromises

• Cyber security of surface transportation systems, chemical plants, pipelines and micro-grids…

• A status of relevant standards for ICS security

• What makes quantifying risk unique for ICS cyber security

• Demonstration of selected ICS vulnerabilities

• International perspectives
  
• Finally, sponsors will discuss and display their solutions.
  
  For more information on the conference you can click the link above or call (408) 253-7934.

Pass the word to anyone you think would benefit.

Manufacturing companies join the Center and contract with engineering Ph.D. and post-doctoral researchers to conduct research into various engineering problems. Some of the companies I've seen in the past included GE Aviation, P&G and Toyota. This year at the Industry Forum Spirit Aerosystems, a spin off from Boeing, presented its experience moving its maintenance experience from reactive to condition-based. A presentation from Applied Materials explained something of semiconductor manufacturing and how it's looking for more sensing and automated data collection into an event-based database in order to improve its machine uptime.

Jay Lee, Director of the Center and a Professor of Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, challenged the audience to expand thinking by considering a cloud-based predictive analytics. The idea would be to perform the analytics in the cloud, not to store data there. There are potentially many people who would be interested in the analytics, but most would prefer to store data locally. While he mentioned to the audience the efficacy of Amazon's S3 cloud service and other similar ones, he really was advocating what's known as a "private cloud." Being from an Ohio-based university, he mentioned another benefit of the cloud idea--Only Handle Information Once (OHIO).

As I examined the poster board corridor containing information about some of the research students had conducted recently, two especially caught my eye: Estimation of Maintenance Opportunity Windows in a Manufacturing System; and Importance Measure-based Reliability Improvement for Multi-State Systems. With any luck, I'll get a paper from each to publish in Automation World.

So, just what comprises the Industry Business, I asked. "It includes industrial automation, which in turn includes products such as drives, motion control, HMI, controllers and sensors. MES, data systems, and solutions around PlantStruxure are also included. PlantStruxure is about plant optimization software, beginning with data acquisition changing to meaningful information with a knowledge base around what each role is. I also have responsibility for these main industry segments--water/wastewater, mining/minerals/metal, automotive, food & beverage along with MachineStruxure in HVAC and packaging."

Her primary goals are to align with customers and differentiate Schneider Electric. "Our customers want to be up and running quickly with intelligence around asset management," she added. "We offer comprehensive, intelligent libraries in a toolbox. We bring more software competency to our customers through several acquisitions. I'm bringing them closer together. Schneider is known as a hardware company, and automation is a foothold with our expertise in connectivity, platforms, open platforms, safety/regulatory issues and energy management"

Ramsey sees her mission to get the word out about all the Schneider initiatives. "We don't go for a big splash, but we need to let people know we're not just the controller piece."

"We realize that aging workforce has some built-in knowhow to deal with automation problems," Ramsey said. "We have a full program around university recruiting to help through that. We try to make it a compelling story to bring new recruits and help manufacturers into generational change. So many manufacturing people feel you need an electrical engineering degree, and it helps. But today, more people like having software knowledge. So many things are modeled today, so having the right skill sets for access to information."

And a final word, Ramsey said, "Finally there is the energy story. It is a hidden cost in different parts of buildings. We are doing a significant differentiation by adding energy management to our offerings. Customers can't afford rip and replace, so they more often ask how to help manage what they have with better efficiency."

This is a really smart group of Ph.D. and Post-doc researchers who are looking into modeling prognostics and diagnostics. Several companies are here, too, such as National Instruments and Forcam. GE Aviation has been a big sponsor, today we'll hear from P&G, Spirit Aerosystems and Applied Materials.

Among the posters showing research set up in the hall were a couple of interesting ones: Estimation of Maintenance Opportunity Windows in Manufacturing Systems; Importance Measure-based Reliability Improvements for Multi-State Systems.

Hope to get some good engineering papers for Automation World out of this.

So, the question of the day is "How are you really using Foundation Fieldbus?" ARC Advisory Group along with the Fieldbus Foundation has constructed a simple online survey. Help them out by letting them know "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" of the network. It will help the product development process. And, I'll get a chance to report the findings. Thank you.

The most important things are about people and how we grow as people. Do we continue to learn? How do we relate to others? How do we relate to our spouses and children? How do we act? Are we honest and ethical?

Much of ancient philosophy and certainly the writings collected in The Bible are there to teach us how to live. We probably took courses in philosophy and religion if we went to a university. The professors probably taught it as either history or an intellectual pastime. But most of them missed the point.

This post’s title comes from Proverbs 19. People are still people, no matter how sophisticated or rich we become. During the past couple of weeks we’ve witnessed more cases of people in power acting like emotional children. And the effect was devastating.

Yahoo! is one of the oldest and most respected brands on the Web. Yet lately it has had trouble finding a chief executive officer to lead it to new heights. Then it settled on a guy by the name of  Scott Thompson. Then, oops, it came out that his resume said he had a degree in computer science. That gave him technical credibility in Silicon Valley where he felt he needed it (evidently). Trouble is–he never earned such a degree. Well, he won’t be poor. He was paid $6.2 million for his four months at the company. But he is far poorer in both wealth and reputation for lying and then trying to mumble his way out of it by blaming others.

Then I read about the technology products retailer Best Buy. Seems the CEO of that company had an inappropriate relationship with a female employee according to news reports. Those reports appeared just after he resigned after a quarter of poor financial performance. Although nothing was said at the time, the assumption was he resigned due to performance. Over the weekend, news appeared that the founder and chairman of the board resigned as chairman because he knew about the relationship and did not tell the internal audit committee.

If it's all about people, then it's all about us. Have you ever lied on your resume? Or stretched the truth when seeking a job? I have a weird educational history–partly because even though I have a college degree, I’m mostly self-taught. I try to be very careful when describing my background (even though my last three positions didn’t really require much, but when I had engineering jobs, well…). Since I don't make any money from this blog, all I have is my integrity with it. That, I try to keep sacred.

It’s not about technology; it's all about how you live your life. How are you doing?