Ending up in Long Beach

Our final PROFINET one-day training event of 2006 concluded earlier today in Long Beach.  The group was a little small but they asked so many good questions we actually ran late – didn’t wheel the bar in until 4:30pm.  We had an IT person in the group again.  That’s always a good sign in my opinion.  I asked the group how many saw cooperation between IT and Automation and how many saw tension.  They were equally divided in their answers.  I’m afraid I got on my soapbox again about the need for cooperation.  Then in today’s email I discovered an article in Control called “Mission possible: Control and IT integration.”  This article is definitely recommended reading.  There are a couple good quotes from Peter Martin at Invensys:

“We no longer tolerate islands of automation, and we shouldn’t tolerate islands of culture.”

“It’s not about connecting DCS and ERP systems or the latest Microsoft this or that; it’s about running the business better!”

Anyway, tonight we celebrated our last PROFINET one-day training class and tomorrow we start planning 2007’s schedule.