December 2008 – PI North America

Merry Christmas and Happy Downtime

By Michael Bowne | December 23, 2008

Happy Downtime! Downtime meaning personal time off to relax and recuperate as opposed to having your plant shut down unintentionally. I’ll be taking some time to enjoy family and friends, watch little ones open presents, eat too much (especially buckeyes – the candy, not the nut), and make some resolutions for 2009. Now I’m off…

More SUE

By Michael Bowne | December 19, 2008

Since this blogging software doesn’t do a good job of sending out comments via RSS, I’m promoting a comment from Gary Mintchell and my response to this post: Hi Carl, I’ve talked with their technical people about apples to apples comparisons. Evidently the message has not reached corporate communications people. It’s not so bad that…

The Big Lie: SUE

By Michael Bowne | December 17, 2008

The Big Lie is a propaganda technique. It was defined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf as a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. [So begins the Wikipedia article Big Lie.] The Big Lie has been widely practiced…

Asset Management Convergence

By Michael Bowne | December 10, 2008

Two diverse newsletters recently converged in my email inbox to make me think about asset management. The first one was an e-newsletter from Chemical Processing magazine. (I’m not sure how I got on their mailing list, but once in a while I see something germane to PROFIBUS and PROFINET.) “The Asset Management Benchmark Report: Moving…

More Long Beach Process Q & A

By Michael Bowne | December 9, 2008

Belatedly here are more of the questions and comments from the Long Beach PROFIBUS in the Process Industry one-day training class. I started this three weeks ago promising I would get to these in a day or so. Turned out to be “or so.” Here’s a question, some praise, and some criticism… Need exceptional clarification…

Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

By Michael Bowne | December 9, 2008

I love graphs. Clicking on an article in a recent email newsletter brought me to “The Wireless Hype in Process Automation” by Dieter Schaudel at ControlGlobal.com. The wireless part hooked me, but the graph of the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies really grabbed me. It takes us from the Technology Trigger over the Peak…

SPS Drives 2008 Report: Wrap-up

By Michael Bowne | December 5, 2008

As usual many organizations, including PI, used the show for press conferences and press releases. There were some interesting product releases, some news from us (although little from competing fieldbuses), much networking, and a little weirdness (more on that later). I’ve already referred you to all our press releases but one. Next year the first…

SPS Drives 2008 Report: Visiting Other Booths

By Michael Bowne | December 4, 2008

The further adventures in SPS/Drives land wherein our intrepid blogger ventures out of the comfortable region of PROFIthis and PROFIthat to the far frontiers of SPS/Drives land. (Said intrepid blogger returned home to develop a monster cold – annoying when daytime temperatures are in the mid-70s. His writing skills may have been adversely affected by…

SPS Drives 2008 Report: IO-Link

By Michael Bowne | December 3, 2008

I’ve previously described IO-Link as HART for discrete. IO-Link was widely displayed at this year’s show. For more explanation, how it fits with PROFIBUS and PROFINET, reports, photos, and video, click here.