Festo is one of those "mittelstand" companies that seem to be the real engines of the German economy. "Mittelstanden" are companies, usually family owned, or closely held, that are medium sized enterprises. Unlike the Siemens of the world, these companies usually are niche players and they often dominate their niches. They are renowned for being long-term driven, and heavy R&D spenders. I'm here in Germany to attend a press conference about Festo and their offerings in process automation...something Festo is not well known for.

And once again we have a chemical plant on fire. Williams Chemical Co., in Geismar, Louisiana, blew up yesterday, killing one worker and sending over 70 to hospitals. There are reports that OSHA had not inspected the plant since 1993. 

A couple of weeks ago, Darius Adamczyk, CEO of Honeywell Process Systems, had a media chat. He didn't answer any of Control's questions. See my blog post from 5/29/2013.

Jason Urso, Honeywell Process Systems' CTO, responded to one of my questions:

I've just received the list of the 2013 ISA Fellows and the Honorees from the Honors and Awards program. I am pleased to say that I helped many of those elected Fellow either by nominating them or serving as an evaluator. I must say that it is about time that some of these men were elected Fellow, especially Peter Martin, Maurice Wilkins and Willy Wojsznis.

Here's the list, as I received it:

Making paper profitably is a game of pennies. Picking up all the pennies as you drop them and making sure you can squeeze out all the pennies that might be hiding in that roll of paper are essential. So it makes sense that something as energy intensive as cooking pulp should be optimized in real time. Metso has announced that Smurfit Kappa is using their optimization service. Here's the release:

This one is definitely from the department of it's about time, isn't it?

Here's the release, courtesy of ISA's redoubtable Jennifer Infantino:

We've known for a while that the famous "lights out" factory is not in the cards. Quality, throughput and flexibility in manufacturing are all better when actual people are involved in the process. Not like George Jetson, sitting in his chair, pushing one button in the morning and one button in the evening, but really involved in the process on a minute to minute basis.

Kaulfersch in overdrive:

If Restaurants Functioned like Microsoft

Patron: Waiter!

From our resident humorist, Joe Kaulfersch:

Last week, Schneider Electric had an important press event that revealed several major initiatives around sustainability in power, water, building automation and even home automation. Each of these initiatives is interesting and considerable by themselves. It is the number of them that amazes me.  

Schneider Electric Xperience Efficiency News Digest: