If you're at all concerned about where the next generation of manufacturing workers is going to come from, this white paper from SME might be worth your time. "Workforce Imperative: A Manufacturing Education Strategy" has some good ideas--and some that have been around for a long time, during which nobody seemed to be listening--but implementation is going to be tricky, I think. Still, we have to start someplace. This could be a good place.

These days, much technical training for process automation specialists and other engineers--especially post-college--is pretty much a DIY affair. The glory days of deep company-sponsored training programs are long gone. But that doesn't mean resources aren't out there. 

National Engineering Week is Feb 20-26 this year. Besides buying a drink or sending a flower to your favorite engineer, there are other things you can do to promote the industry and, more to the point, get the young 'uns fired up about the possibility of becoming engineers. Project Lead the Way and the National Engineering Week Foundation are offering their help.

Came across the item below in my mailbox this morning. The University of Texas El Paso is doing some exciting things in engineering education. UTEP is a place to be watching.

If you're looking for another New Year's resolution (perhaps to make up for the one that already fell by the wayside when you succumbed to the siren call of the Snickers bars in the candy machine), keeping up with or sharpening your professional skills is always a good one. And that's getting easier all the time. Here's another offering for online courses (at your time, your pace, your location, etc.)

This release popped up in my mailbox this morning.

At breakfast this morning, Eddie Habibi, founder of PAS and I were talking about the importance of the type of change management, configuration management and geneology management that his "Integrity" product does. One of the topics of our pretty far ranging discussion was the failure, so far, of the "knowledge base capture" campaigns that companies have run for the past 15 years trying to suck the institutional knowledge out of the "grey headed guys" and get it down into some sort of database that can be used for training and decision support.

Jonathan Love's tour-de-force single volume Process Automation Handbook is a necessary reference, right beside Liptak's Instrument Engineer's Handbook, and if I can be pardoned, my own Instrumentation Reference Book, that should be on every process automation professional's desk or bookshelf.

I got an email a few weeks back asking if I would review a book that had the title, "Core Engineering Concepts." I said sure, send it along.

Hey, it doesn't get much better than that. ISA sent this reminder to my email box this morning. Check it out. SIS training and free CDs. Sweet.