I'm going to go camping this weekend, and if you're like me you may want to bring a book or two along wherever you are going.

For professional reading, I'm bringing Safety Instrumented Systems Verification by Bill Goble and Harry Cheddie, available from www.isa.org.
I am also bringing Practical Process Control for Engineers and Technicians by Wolfgang Altman, available from Newnes. You can get your own copy direct from www.elsevier.com, or through Amazon.com. I'm looking forward t...

Ron Monday said yesterday that the big thing he was having trouble explaining is that the xCoupler is an appliance, not a software system. It is like a hardware router or firewall, not a server. People keep saying, "It can't be that simple." But it is.

This brings me to another thought I've had increasingly. I think that sometimes we overengineer the bejayzus out of things.

For example, Emerson CSI's Machinery Health Monitor. Understand me, I think it is an impressive device, and for some appl...

Sam Herb at Foxboro sent me the following from Eric Byres, because of my copying of a quote from him relayed to us by Honeywell.

"Unfortunately it seems like editorial licence distorting my quote - what we actually said was "Of the five systems we have tested so far, this is the first we haven't disabled". We have never tested any Foxboro products - before we test anything we need a project sponsor, typically the vendor themselves or a major customer like BP or Syncrude. Regardless we try to wo...

I've been blogging rather raggedly for the last week or so, mainly because I've been trying to get the July issue of CONTROL to the printer. Not having a managing editor right now (thank you, Siemens, for pirating my excellent managing editor, Steve Kuehn) it has been just loads of fun. The issue is off to the press now, and I can catch up on stuff.

I stopped blogging last week right in the middle of the ARC conference on interoperability, which is where I met Ron Monday (see the previous item ...

Ron Monday is a very sharp fellow. He is the president and CEO of a company most people have never heard of, but which is quite significant in automation.

Ron builds OEM modules for Rockwell ControlLogix and for ProSoft. Now, with the help of some technology from ILS (a spin-off of IBM), he is ready to set the world of interoperability on its ear.

Basically, the world of enterprise IT grew incrementally, and the world of plant automation did too. As the desire to interconnect at the enterprise...

Putman Media sets a record with 14 ASBPE Awards!
The following is the list of Putman's ASBPE award winners:

Design Award Winners

Front Cover — Computer Generated
Under 80,000 circulation
Gold Award
"Time to Market Issue"
Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
February/March 2004
Stephen Herner, Agnes Shanley

Front Cover — Illustration
Under 80,000 circulation
Gold Award
"Drug Makers Take Aim at Variability"
Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
January 2004
Stephen Herner, Agnes Shanley

Front Cover — Ill...

It is hard, after having been to one of the slickest, best produced and highest information-transfer bandwidth user group meetings in the world last week, the Honeywell User Group, to drop back to the lower speed and lower information-transfer rate of an ARC Forum. The HUG is designed to give value every minute, while it seems that so far this morning there have been more vendor commercials than anything else here in Boston.

David Anderson, of Chevron, however, gave a very interesting presentat...

My biggest critique of ARC and the other TLA bandits (excuse me, I mean major knowledgebase consultants) has always been that they are very long on theory and very very short on implementation. Andy Chatha has apparently heard this from other people...you don't think he listens to me, do you?...like his manufacturing sector clients, because ARC has dived into helping to foster and facilitate IOp (that is the TLA for Interoperability...you didn't think they'd let the opportunity pass did you?)......

Being here in Phoenix, Keith Larson and I missed last nights regional ASBPE Awards Dinner in Chicago. Putman Media received more than its share of regional awards, and next week some of us will attend the national ASBPE awards dinner in Cleveland at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where Control, Plant Services, and Control Design will receive national awards.

It is gratifying to see that our work is being noticed and honored by our peers in the media, but it is even more gratifying to realize t...

Last night, Peter Zornio and his merry band of Honeywell elves stayed up late putting together answers for the questions users have submitted throughout the week. Today is Q&A Day, and it is the day when users expect straight, detailed answers from Honeywell to the questions they have asked. Unfortunately I will miss the vast majority of it, since I will be winging it back to Chicago and total collapse (grin).

Former Honeyweller Dan Sussman, who is writing the HART Communications Foundation Ann...