Mourning the loss Friday of Greg Wilkinson, supremely capable and enthusiastic business associate through many years at GrowthPoint, Microsoft and Rockwell Automation. The automation marketing community lost one of the good ones. We'll miss you, Greg. Be at peace.  

Wilkinson, Greg

Every so often an automation vendor company does something cool. Here's a release from Advantech to celebrate their thirtieth year in business.

I am pleased to report that in a few weeks, this blog, probably with a new name, will be the blogosphere home of Dan Miklovic, who many will remember as a founder and Fellow of the Industrial Computing Society, and for many years a Vice President at Gartner Group, specializing in manufacturing systems and theory.

As a Fellow of the Institute of Measurement and Control in the United Kingdom, I want to be one of the first to welcome Dr. Maurice Wilkins, a member of the Process Automation Hall of Fame, as a new Fellow of InstMC. It is a highly deserved honor, which I hope ISA will replicate this year.

Congratulations, Maurice! Truly well deserved. Now we're really going to have to start working on chapter meetings in the USA.

I don't like starting off the year this way, but I am saddened to report that Dennis Morin, founder with several others, of the seminal HMI company, Wonderware, now part of Invensys, passed away on the 31st after a long battle with cancer.

For the first Soundoff blog of the new year, I am delighted to reveal the incoming class of inductees to the Process Automation Hall of Fame:

Dr. Peter G. Martin, of Invensys, for seminal work connecting the plant floor to the business systems

Mr. Dennis Brandl, of BRandL Consultants, for being a major author of B2MML and BatchML markup languages, and having been the editor of the WBF Series published by Momentum Press.

Mr. Ian Verhappen, for his work to popularize and extend the use of Foundation fieldbus.

December contains Control's look at the process automation economy. Who are the Top 50 vendors? What does 2013 look like? Maybe like a swan: All serene on the surface, but underneath, paddling as fast as he can.

I am attending the SPS/IPC-Drives exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany this week. It never ceases to amaze me (and every other American journalist attending) how huge this exhibit is, and how crowded. Very much unlike the US scene where salesmen can roll bowling balls down the aisles with no fear of hitting a customer. This exhibition started out as a PLC and drives exhibit, for OEM and machine automation, so there are many exhibitors that specialize in factory automation. But there are also many process automation exhibitors as well, including ABB, Rockwell Automation, Iconics and others.

You may have seen this elsewhere, but just in case, BP today announced Nov. 15 that it’s “agreed with the United States government, subject to court approval, to resolve all federal criminal charges and all claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the company stemming from the Deepwater Horizon accident, oil spill, and response.”

In the November issue of Control Sr. Technical Editor Dan Hebert says advanced process control "ain't easy." The rewards of a successful implementation can be huge, but getting there isn't necessarily half the fun. Greg McMillan warns us to beware of imposter control valves, and we explore how Europe's largest copper mine used an integrated EAM system to improve operator fault reporting.