CONTROL Process Automation Hall of Fame:

What makes a hero? Definitions range from the mythological to the mundane. World events seem to shape the word's use, and tragedy, as we saw in our space program earlier this month, can make its application instantaneous.

Maybe the word's application to engineering seems a little strained, but look up "hero" in the dictionary and about halfway down the list of meanings comes the simple definition: "a person prominent in some event, field, period, or cause by reason of his special achievements or contributions."

Behind every lifesaving drug, within every steel mill that employs half the town, for every chemical plant that performs complex transformations with utter safety, toils a process engineer who keeps it all in control. To those whose lives, livelihoods, or neighborhoods are touched, these guys are heroes; or they should be.

These everyday process control engineers have their heroes, too; guys who have made their work easier and more effective. These process control stars have formulated new algorithms, created better hardware and software, or taught a new generation of engineers how to apply existing knowledge.

So we set out two years ago to honor the luminaries in our profession with a virtual Hall of Fame populated by some of the finest minds and practitioners of process control. We are fortunate already to have the likes of Marion "Bud" Keyes, Bela Liptak, Greg McMillan, Greg Shinskey, Terry Tolliver, and Harold Wade.

CONTROL's Process Automation Hall of Fame is in its third year of honoring outstanding professionals in the field. Members are drawn from the heavyweights in our industry--recognized significant contributors who have devoted their lives to the advancement and implementation of the craft.

This year's trio was selected from a list of worthy candidates nominated by editors, readers, CONTROL's editorial advisory board, and the current Hall of Famers. To help us select future members, we welcome suggestions from readers. If you know someone you believe should be in the Process Automation Hall of Fame, please let us know who and why.

This year we are pleased to add:

* Karl Astrom, a world-renowned educator and theoretician who resides in Sweden.

* Lynn Craig, president of Manufacturing Automation Associates, Medford, N.J., a longtime engineer with Rohm and Haas, and a batch control expert.

* Charles Cutler, a longtime process control engineer at Shell Oil Co. who created the Dynamic Matrix Control algorithm and then founded a company on that control concept.

Astrom's career is chronicled in the following story. Craig will be featured in the March issue, and Cutler in April.

Join us in appreciating the contribution these engineers have made to our careers and our lives.

The formal presentation of our CONTROL Process Automation Hall of Fame plaques comes during an awards dinner the first evening of World Batch Forum. The 10th annual North American conference for those in batch manufacturing will be April 13-16 at the Hilton Woodcliff Lake, Woodcliff Lake, N.J.

The first day, a Sunday, opens with tutorials on ISA standards on batch control (S88) and standard manufacturing models and data exchange (S95) and ends with the CONTROL Hall of Fame dinner.

The forum gets rolling the next morning when Paul Baduini, vice president and director of engineering at Rohm and Haas Co., delivers the keynote on "Optimizing Manufacturing Strategy to Align With Changing Business Requirements." A keynote the following day is "Without Operations Agility, Manufacturers Cannot Profitably Meet Consumer Demand," from Roddy Martin, a vice president at AMR Research.

The three days are filled with tutorials, panel discussions, case studies, special sessions, and a table-top exhibit, all dedicated to improving batch processes. For more information, call 480/893-8803 or see http://www.wbf.org.

Karl Astrom

A Practical Theoretician

Ever wonder why Sweden has long been a leading source of paper-making technology? Karl Astrom is one big reason.

The Swedish engineer has been called the foremost process control theoretician in the world, creator of the best automated tuning method, and, through his long tenure in academia, teacher of some of the cream of the current crop of control engineers the world over.