Joe Kaulfersch dared to send this one in:

Festo is not a small company. Their annual turnover is 2.24 billion Euros, they have over 300,000 customers, and 16,200 employees, not counting the robot lawnmowers that look like large trilobites trundling over the grass at the headquarters and technical center.

Festo, like many of the mittelstand companies, spends heavily on Research and Development: 7%, as opposed to the 2% which is more usual in an American automation company. They also devote 1.5% of revenue each year to education and training.

From Control's resident humorist, Joe Kaulfersch:

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.