Walt Boyes' Blog

From Sean Robinson: Folks; As a past FPID director, I have to add a few general comment, aside from an endorsement of the 6 point plan. Part of the reason for the decline in membership and relevance has to do with the shift of technical talent from within manufacturing enterprises to outside firms (vendors, consultants, integrators). One of the effects of this is to turn … [Read more...] about More on the ISA situation

Walt, I've got a couple of comments from the blog. If any of this comes off sounding harsh, keep in mind I have great respect for you and your staff. One of Jim's six points for ISA: "5.Acquire ownership in several international subsidiaries in global growth areas. Again, duh. You can't be a global society if all the employees are located in RTP. Every major automation vendor … [Read more...] about Some Comments on AutomationXchange

We just had the Advisory Board meeting for AutomationXchange. Unlike most Advisory Boards for trade shows, this one is limited exclusively to end-users. We didn't ask any of the vendors present to be on the Advisory Board. The reason for this is quite simple. This is an entirely end-user driven event. We gather the end-users, and only then do we start recruiting the vendors the … [Read more...] about AutomationXchange Winds Down

  (from Baseline magazine) August 4, 2005 Software Bugs Threaten Toyota Hybrids By Mel Duvall Strong sales of Toyota's Prius hybrid vehicles could be threatened by software malfunctions that leave drivers stuck in traffic. Heading home from work in late March, Diana Len's heart raced as she tried to figure out what was happening to her normally reliable 2004 Toyota Prius. … [Read more...] about Bugs Bug Toyota Prius

There was a book a while ago called "Who Moved My Cheese?" and I keep thinking about it this week. This morning, for breakfast, some vendors had especially hard swallowing. We presented Glenn Allmendinger, of Harbor Research, who has spent the last 30+ years studying the automation market. His task was to talk about wireless, and he succeeded in the last five minutes of his … [Read more...] about AutomationXchange: The party's over and they moved the cheese.