It's interesting to watch an idea come of age. I've been covering manufacturing of one sort or another for more years than I'm usually prepared to admit to, and from the beginning, about once a year, someone would come up and say, "You know, you really oughta do a story on the decline of American manufacturing. The kids don't want to do this. The companies are moving everything overseas. What are we going to do when we don't make anything here anymore?"

At Rockwell Automation's Automation Fair in 2009, we were treated to a little bit of live theater. Several RA product managers put on a show about the features and usability of PlantPAx, the version of FactoryTalk and Integrated Architecture that RA has optimized for process, batch and hybrid automation. It was cute, a little rocky ("in any live demo, three things can happen, and two of them are bad"), but it made its point extremely well, and was very easy to follow and understand.A Day in the Life

On Wednesday, Matt Andrejzscak of MarketWatch reported:

"Rockwell Automation on Wednesday raised its profit
and sales outlook for fiscal 2010, noting a gradual pick-up in global
demand for industrial equipment and factory electronics.

"Shares of Rockwell Automation jumped 10% to $50.84.

This is a wonderful piece of news, relayed by Theresa Houck of "The Journal"...

Rockwell has restored salary cuts to more than 5,000 salaried workers effective the first January paycheck. This is another clear indication that the recession's effects on the automation industry are lessening.

I recently posted a vulnerability in several models of the Rockwell Automation MicroLogix product line, and noted that, per the security researcher, Eyal Udassin of C4, Rockwell had been completely cooperative with the security researcher in working out a solution to the problem.

The following was posted, among other places, on the SCADASEC listserv. Eyal Udassin, a well-known and well respected security researcher with significant experience with control system functional security has discovered a vulnerability in some of Rockwell's products, and he and Rockwell have moved quickly to fix the vulnerability.

Here's the text of Udassin's report:

After last week's announcement by Endress+Hauser at the Rockwell Automation Automation Fair of a Coriolis Mass Flow meter with native Ethernet communications, instead of Foundation Fieldbus, HART or Profibus, Rockwell Automation again gives Cisco Systems' "Ethernet to the Device" and the IPv6 Internet protocol a big lift.

Rockwell Automation has announced a development from the Odo Struger Laboratory at the University of Vienna-- a device stack for Ethernet/IP.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not dissing Rockwell Automation here. It's just that when we're in the middle of producing show dailies at events such as Automation Fair, we get pretty focused. So I'm taking a break here to see what's happening in the rest of the world. For AF updates, go here. For a bit of other news, stick with me.

A post from Briefing.com reports:

"Rockwell Automation (ROK 44.06) reaffirmed its full year earnings outlook Wednesday morning ahead of an industry conference in New York.

Walt says he's turned over the keys to the blogging machine to me. Silly man. Only one day, and I've already muffed it. Didn't post anything yesterday. That's like Dad leaving you the keys to the car, and you leave it sitting in the garage.