According to Webster control is “to exercise restraining or directing influence over” whereas manage is “to exercise executive, administrative, and supervisory direction of”.  Subtle but distinctly different.  While process control may be necessary to ensure safety and proper operation it is process management that makes money for t

The conference wrapped up on Thursday with morning sessions.  The first session covered Maturity assessment and was presented by Mary Ahner of The Sinclair Group.  Some key points raised during the session were 1) You must perform your assessment across the business - piecemeal assessment leads to piecemeal optimization, 2) Benchmarking carries the risk of promoting the status quo - It ma not promote best-in-class but “running with the pack”, 3) Skills assessment is easier than cult

Day two of the MRO symposium, the first full day, kicked off with a presentation by the ex-head of Maintenance for Dow Chemicals, now the founder of the Sinclair Group.  Hank Sinclair related how he took his 30+ years of experience at Dow and is using it to help other manufacturers transform the way they do maintenance.

Some 100 + attendees are gathering in St.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is conducting research into how manufacturers use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to improve manufacturing productivity.  The study is being conducted by Dr. Brian Weiss and a press release detailing the study follows:

So why do I think we are potentially on the cusp of a integration breakthrough in manufacturing?

This post was supposed to be about why the SMLC initiatives might deliver a step change in manufacturing productivity when past efforts have fallen short but that will have to wait until the next post.

In my previous post I suggested that manufacturing might be at a point where we can make a step-change in productivity.  Unlike the past 20-25 years where it seems we have struggled with the integration of process control and business systems and deriving value from that integration recent advances in both technology and political leadership may allow us to finally “cross the chasm”.  First - from a political leadership perspective.  The US government has finally put some horsepower be

As I have noted in the last several posts I have been traveling a lot lately and it has just been recently that I have finally caught up with reading all my email, blogs I follow and the forums/groups that I belong to.  Having been involved in automation and process control for almost 45 years, the last 18 as an analyst/consultant I am struck by the fact that the issues we are all discussing seem to be essentially the same as when I entered the field.

One of the readers took me task over the last couple of postings - and rightfully so.  Since mid February I have been traveling extensively and pressed to keep this blog current while on the road.  In my haste to keep content flowing I made several posts that were plainly just sloppy.  Punctuation and spelling, like for many engineers, is not my strong suit.  I usually rely on Microsoft Word to help me proofread my material.  For the last couple of posts I just typed them into the blogging tool we use.  Unfortunately it does not alert me to potential errors like Word does.