FEED FORWARD:
When Combining Technologies Makes Sense, by Gary Mitchell
There are classic combinations that work. Say, peanut butter and jelly. Or, chocolate and peanut butter. In technology, the combination that makes sense for machine builders is mechanical motions and electronic motion control—mechatronics.
It really hasn’t been that long ago that mechanical designers and controls designers didn’t talk to each other. In fact, many machine builders had only electricians who could program a programmable logic controller (PLC) and no electronic motion control engineers at all. The past ten years has witnessed a huge change in this situation.
European academic engineers coined the mechatronics concept as a way to describe how mechanical design and electronic design can work together. When designers look at moving points in a machine, they can evaluate a purely mechanical motion with gears or pulleys, a hydraulic or pneumatic motion control, or digital servo control of the motion. The increased flexibility allows designers to produce machines that give customers the ability to run smaller batches of a greater diversity of package sizes, for example.
I have seen a couple of companies that have completely redesigned their machines from the ground up to take advantage of mechatronics power. New design concepts can reduce the size of machines, improve reliability and shorten time to delivery...
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THE SETPOINT: Are We Losing Our Spirit of Innovation?, by John Berra
 The recent sad passing of Steve Jobs generated a lot of good discussion about innovation.
For those of us who work in technology, Jobs is a wonderful example—not only of innovation but also of the rewarding process of translating innovation into business success. In my time in automation, I have seen wonderful examples of innovation, but I’m very worried that the pace of innovation in automation has slowed down in the last few years. Right now the world needs our innovation more than ever.
Perhaps the most innovative time in our industry was the ‘70s and ‘80s. This period gave us the PLC, the DCS, smart field instruments, new technologies such as Coriolis flow meters, and the transformation of control rooms from meters and panel boards to video displays. Our industry is conservative, and yet all of this transformation happened in a relatively short period of around 10 years. To be sure, innovation in automation continues today, but the last 10 or so years don’t seem to measure up to the past. This is not good for the industry or the world.
Our industry must have a culture of innovation. You can’t just cost-reduce your way to success...
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PINTO’S PROSE: Automation: Overdue for a Revolution, by Jim Pinto
 The large automation companies are all spending modest amounts of research and development money to develop good products.
But these are mostly extensions of old stuff, reincarnations of tired concepts that can’t generate real growth and just won’t cut it much longer. It’s not that they can’t afford to do something different—most of them have lots of cash, but they are too conservative to do much beyond short-term extrapolations.
You know what Steve Jobs said, “If it’s good, don’t do it —it’s got to be insanely great!” Perhaps only a gutsy CEO with good market insights can make that kind of call. And how many of those are there in the automation business?
The problem is that, without top-level direction, marketing and engineering budgets can only produce new products that are mostly tweaks and extensions to support current product lines. No one has the gumption to do anything that is “insanely great”—functionality that customers need and want, but no one really supplies because it’s too different. Automation is overdue for a revolution, an inflection point...
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