Walt Boyes' Blog

The thought for the day, as Lou Pillai started his discussion of how Pfizer is dealing with PAT and the FDA's new focus on continuing process improvement, is "Be the change you want to see in the world." Gandhi's phrase sums up Pfizer's change management around GMP for the 21st century. The top issues facing the pharmaceutical industry are: --Patent expiration (14 major drugs … [Read more...] about AutomationXchange Lunch Speaker: Pfizer's Lou Pillai

Every so often, a book comes out that takes a very complex subject, and renders it easy to understand, without trivializing the subject, or leaving all the good stuff out. That's my take on Advanced PID Control by Karl J. Astrom (there's supposed to be diacritical marks in his name, and his co-author's but I can't do 'em here) and Tore Hagglund. Both teach at the Lund Institute … [Read more...] about Interlude: Book Review–Advanced PID Control by Astrom and Hagglund

...from the first set of meetings. Walt:"Would you have stopped to visit this company on a tradeshow floor?" End-Users:"Yes, but we wouldn't have had the time with them, or the level of focus on our specific applications, or met with the company president, either. They wouldn't have stood out at a tradeshow. We might have missed them completely, and now we are talking about … [Read more...] about Some End-User Comments…

Last night was the obligatory "meet and greet" where the end-users and the vendors get to socialize before the meetings that start today. There were lots of familiar faces, on both the end-user side and the vendor side. I left the m&G about 10 so I could get some editing done...but it probably kept on going. It is really nice to see vendors and end-users meeting in a … [Read more...] about AutomationXchange Rumbles to Life

Reports are now surfacing that the recently released worm targeted at un-patched Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Server systems did considerable damage in the automotive industry, at least. 13 Daimler-Chrysler production plants were temporarily shut down, and Ford announced some systems went down as well. Anybody doubt that process control security is important? It will be very … [Read more...] about Windows 2000 Worm Stops Production