BEST OF THE BLOG

More on ISA Expo

I wrote about 10 blog posts on the airplane over to China, but then I couldn't access my blog from over there. I don't think I ever said anything bad about the country. Anyway, here's the first of many catch up posts.

Attendance was low and the hall was only about half-filled with exhibits, but there was some buzz and company announcements at the annual (actually last) ISA Expo held in Houston Oct. 6 through 8. At least that was true until Thursday morning when it was announced that there would be no more Expos and rumors flew regarding a huge restructuring of the organization's staff.

ISA switches to technical training "Automation Week"

The International Society of Automation (ISA) unveiled plans for its new event, ISA Automation Week: Technology and Solutions Event, to be held 4-7 October 2010 at the Westin Galleria Complex in Houston, Texas, USA... Read more

WBF Conference

WBF has announced its forthcoming 2010 North American Conference to be held May 24-25, 2010 at the University of Texas, Austin. The theme is "Achieving Operations Strength." This is an opportunity to share and learn with the leaders in automation, control and manufacturing operations.

The conference is designed to help attendees learn from presentations and tutorials from people who have real experience on real projects and studies, and is a rare opportunity to network and exchange information with other manufacturing and automation professionals. WBF provides an opportunity for you to share what really works and what doesn't work... Read more

What did he see

Longwatch Introduces Operator’s Console Recorder

Longwatch began life as a video security company whose gig was the ability to compress video files to send over slow, legacy networks. However, broadband and Ethernet growth rendered that point moot. So Steve Rubin, of Intellution fame and invester in the company, took the reins and looked for the real core competency. He found it in video recording. Rather than just record remote video for security purposes--probably a smallish market--he turned it into a sort of video historian to aid troubleshooting by showing just what the operator console displayed during situations... Read more

Radical industrialist

I listened to a podcast interview on TechNation with Moira Gunn and Ray Anderson, author of Cofessions of a Radical Industrialist. There is a lot of talk about sustainability... Read more

Increase OEE

I met Dragan Filipovic, then at Kraft, at an event at Omron several years ago. He also spoke a few years ago at our Packaging Automation Forum. He always had a lot of ideas--maybe more than a big company could use. So, he's on his own now with a tool he says will help increase OEE by speeding changeover of machines... Read more

Automation Video

Automation Video: Interview with System Integrator, Jeff Miller

Attending the OpsManage '09 Conference in Anaheim, Calif., Wes Iversen, Managing Editor, interviews Jeff Miller, Director of MES Solutions for E-Technologies Solution, a West Chester, Ohio-based systems integrator, regarding a display technology concept that the company has developed for use with Wonderware systems. Also Visit Automation World's Video Library for more automation videos on the latest automation technology trends.