WBF (formerly the World Batch Forum) has announced the recipients of the Thomas G. Fisher Award. Dennis Brandl, principal consultant of BR&L Consulting Inc., Cary, N.C., and Dave Emerson, principal system architect, Yokogawa Corp. of America, Newnan, Ga., were recognized for their outstanding contribution to the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society’s ISA-88 and ISA-95 specifications. Brandl and Emerson were individually recognized for their mutual work, collaboration, leadership and dedicated service in the development of the ISA-88 Batch Control Systems and ISA-95 Enterprise/Control Integration standards committees. Both individuals jointly worked with the WBF XML Working Group to produce the Batch Markup Language (BatchML) and the Business-To-Manufacturing Markup Language (B2MML). BatchML is an extensible markup language (XML) schema implementation of the ISA-88 Batch Control System standard and B2MML is an XML schema implementation of the ISA-95 Enterprise/Control Integration standard. Both BatchML and B2MML have been widely adopted in process manufacturing and provide automation and information technology system suppliers with implementation-ready forms of the standards that can be used to accelerate projects, enhance integration of information, standardize interfaces and provide configurable interfaces. The schemas reduce operating costs and facilitate off-the-shelf applications working better together. Working together “What they have done together makes it only proper that they receive this recognition at the same time,” said Lynn Craig, president, Manufacturing Automation Associates, and a WBF Trustee. “They worked together in the development and propagation of XML schemas based on the ISA-88 and ISA-95 standards. Their work, focused on bringing together many different information transfer approaches, has been outstanding, and they embody the intent of the distinguished Thomas G. Fisher award. Only two other individuals have ever been recognized with this coveted award.” WBF's Thomas G. Fisher Award recognizes outstanding leadership in the field of manufacturing process operation and control. The award was established in 2003 to honor Thomas G. Fisher, a former WBF chairman and tireless contributor to efforts to improve batch manufacturing standards and methods. It is presented to individuals who have demonstrated notable leadership in the development, teaching and popularization of technologies, services, and techniques in the process manufacturing field. WBFwww.wbf.org
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