Walt Boyes' Blog

Here's Jim's 6-point plan: 1.Radical change of governance—encourage volunteer involvement, but limit it to advisory suggestions. This will work, provided governance is not left to the Former President's Club. They're the ones who have shot down any meaningful change for years. And this will work provided there is a major shakeup in staff management-- old agendas have to go. One … [Read more...] about Jim Pinto's Plan to Save ISA

Yes, the Roving Editor will be blogging from the AutomationXchange event, but I won't be able to tell you much. The meetings themselves, between buyers and sellers, are completely confidential, and even the event staff and yours truly don't participate in them. But there's lots of sideshow, and I'll be covering the networking, the conversations, and the "good stuff" that … [Read more...] about More AutomationXchange…

Sunday I am off to Park City, Utah, for the second annual CONTROL AutomationXchange. Years ago, I suggested something like this to the ISA conference and exhibits board...because even then it was obvious that the big ISA show as constituted then and now, was a dinosaur and it was waiting for a comet to hit it. I suspect the comet was 9-11. The ISA show, and indeed all … [Read more...] about Why AutomationXchange works…

From the Wall Street Journal: "Federal investigators released a fresh list of safety shortcomings at BP PLC's Texas refinery, including a finding that managers authorized the start-up of a unit in March despite knowing key alarms weren't working. The start-up caused an explosion that killed 15 people, the deadliest U.S. petro-chemical accident in 15 years. Citing the findings, … [Read more...] about BP Texas City– Whose Fault Was It?

In the mid-1990s, I started keeping a list of companies whose names and/or ownership had changed. When Bela Liptak started the project to re-issue the Instrument Engineers' Handbook for a fourth time, he asked me if I would contribute the list to the book as an appendix. With the able assistance of Suzy Edvi, we did just that. We've updated it now twice, and the 2005 update … [Read more...] about The "Directory of Lost Companies" Rides Again