Some may think the idea of manufacturing information flowing “from sensor to boardroom” may just be an unachievable dream. After all, the reality of manufacturing information is that there are a multitude of different applications that each store information in different ways and communicate using differing protocols and methods.

  We keep hearing that all you need to do to retain younger employees is give them more money, and that older employees are easy to retain because they have everything they want. But our research showed that those stereotypes arenít accurate; employees of all ages are motivated by the same factors at work.

 End-users are often looking for the latest and greatest technologies that are so easy to install that anyone, or most anyone, can do it. But engineering easier factory-floor life requires vendors to listen to users.

  The Web standard for communicating information, the eXtensible Markup Language or XML, is more than eleven years old. Its use in automation is still in infancy, however.

  Expand a single-node system by a couple or more nodes, or change topologies, or connect computers to another server—and “things get complicated,” states Rashesh Mody, vice president of human-machine-interface (HMI) and supervisory-control-and-data-acquisition (SCADA) services for manufacturing software vendor Wonderware (www.wonderware.com), Lake Forest, Calif.

  Current trends in robotics will enable better human-robot interaction, making robots easier and safer to use.

  Mnemonics such as “all people seem to need data processing” or “aliens probably stole the Ninja Dew pop” make it easy to recall the seven layers or levels of the International Organization for Standardization’s (www.iso.ch) Open System Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model—application, presentation, session, transport, network, datalink and physical.

  Snowed under by volumes of ever-multiplying Web-posted information? It’s challenging enough just to regularly find and grab data helpful data.

  Born on May 25, 2007, the Center for Operator Performance (COP, www.operatorperformance.org), in Dayton, Ohio, provides a unique setting for operating companies and vendors to hold open discussions and focus on mutually beneficial research, states Duane Toavs, director of the Ease of Use Center of Excellence at process controls vendor Emerson Process Management (www.emersonprocess.com), in Austin, Texas.

  Calling OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA or UA) from Scottsdale, Ariz.-based OPC Foundation (www.opcfoundation.org) “very scalable,” Jeff Harding identifies two principal features that make it a communication mechanism across various protocols or standards: its ability to model complex things, and the basic set of services it provides.

 ILS Technology Inc. (www.ilstechnology.com), of Boca Raton, Fla., leverages 25 years of experience in device-and-automation-to-enterprise connectivity through its deviceWise platform.

 Jeff Lytle has some unique bragging rights. He entered manufacturing-excellence record books by recently receiving the first-ever Lean Gold Certification. 

  You would presume companies realize that customers are treasured assets. You’d expect companies to know that first-rate customer relationship management (CRM) promotes success. You’d think companies would view CRM as a business strategy, not just a technology fix. You would suppose that companies strive, up and down the supply chain, to balance operational flexibility and customer relationships. But you might be wrong.

  If you are captive of drop-everything, produce-information-now fire drills that create hectic sorting of e-mails or other files, deliverance comes through Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp.’s (MS, www.microsoft.com) Office SharePoint Server’s collaborative technology.

  Service-oriented architecture (SOA) visionary Ron Schmelzer thinks businesses create most of their own problems.

  Think you’ve won the go-ahead for your pet project because you’ve convinced local management to support your proposal? That’s certainly the first hurdle.

 “Security is the journey, not the destination,” declares Bradford H. Hegrat, senior network security engineer with automation vendor Rockwell Automation Inc.’s (www.rockwellautomation.com) Components and Packaged Applications Group, in Cleveland.

  To the ears, “spend management” may sound odd. But nothing is strange about a company ensuring that it’s on the path to capture and sustain the level of spending that will make it competitive and keep it successful.

  Because of the power to analyze numbers for all manner of uses from accounting to engineering, companies have needed to live in spreadsheets. Oftentimes, though, that lifestyle has produced pain and agony when one tries to verify a single point of truth.

  Jim Gray says the most important thing about electronic device description language (EDDL) is that it makes managing process instrumentation easier.