News ranged from tips for developing IT support for organizational change to a new online forum for industrial automation software.

John Southcott, MESA chair, recognized Mike James as Contributor of the Year for heading up the education effort.

Chris Gaffney, SVP Coca Cola Refreshments, gave the second day keynote detailing his company’s “Demand-Driven Journey.” This entailed developing IT support for an organization change embracing a customer-centric supply chain.
This means identifying real-time demand signals and adapting manufacturing to “make what we can sell rather than sell what we make.” Selling to more outlets with more variability requires faster manufacturing response with the ability to adapt product and packaging quickly. One key tip-run pilot implementations before rollout, he said.

During the conference, Microsoft announced a Chemical and Oil Refining Industries Reference Architecture. The intent is to detail a stable platform for developing solutions based upon Microsoft technologies for application development in these industries.

Also announced: Participants learned Gaute Grastveit from Norway had developed a question and answer industrial automation software site on Stack Exchange, the online open community based on the wildly successful programmers’ site, Stack Overflow by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood. Visit the Q&A site, bit.ly/awstack.

The conference also once again featured several “unconference” sessions. “These are gatherings of people interested in discussing a topic. There are no Powerpoints and no designated speaker. A designated facilitator records thoughts and gently guides discussion if someone’s comments become inappropriate or wildly off topic,” says Mintchell. He guided a session on social media for business use. 

MESA ( www.mesa.org)

Renee Robbins Bassett , rbassett@automationworld.com, is Manager Editor of Automation World .