Nancy Bartels is Control's managing editor. You can her at
[email protected] or check out her
Google+ profile.Last weekend I was wandering around Concourse A in the international terminal at Heathrow, London, waiting for the airport gods to declare which gate my plane for Chicago was going to board from. Whatever its failings, there are few places better suited to people watching. Heathrow handles more international passengers than any other airport in the world, so it seems as if everybody from everywhere eventually ends up in Concourse A.
Now ControlGlobal.com might not be the gateway to quite as many exotic sights, but there's a world of process control information available at the click of a mouse, much of it unavailable elsewhere. For example, in "
The Nuclear Mess," editor-in-chief Walt Boyes tackles some of the long-term consequences of the Fukushima disaster, and shares his conversation with Ed Halpin, president and CEO of the South Texas Project, about the future of nuclear power. This is "don't-miss" reading. If nuclear is still on your mind, another must read is Béla Lipták's, "
The Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Part 1," which presents a lucid analysis of what went wrong when the waters swamped the reactor.
Similarly, our SoundOff! blog, written mostly by Boyes, is a kind of Heathrow Concourse A for process control. He either knows, or knows somebody who knows, the people at the top of the A, B and C lists in process control—and talks to them often. Just in the last week, Boyes brought news of dubious new smart grid initiatives, reviews of the latest books on process control issues, interviews with new companies offering interesting services, and a fascinating explanation of the name change from Ferraz Shawmut to Merson. If you haven't bookmarked SoundOff!, you should.
On the Web
Temperature Instrument Market Report
This market intelligence report compares the temperature instrumentation market in 2009 with this year. See the changes two years can make.
The Future of Process Management
Emerson Process Management's former VP, Dave Beckmann, says that to thrive in the current environment, we need to change the way we think and the systems we use to manage our companies. Are you ready for a new way of doing things?
Just like a 21st-century airport, we offer some of the latest technology, in this case, multimedia. Check out our latest podcast with ARC Advisory Group on distributed safety (
Distributed Safety Podcast). If YouTube is more to your liking, watch the video about the DCS upgrade at the Golden Triangle Energy cooperative in Craig. Mo. (
Golden Triangle Energy Cooperative Replaces Outdated DCS in Favor of PlantPAx Process Automation System from Rockwell Automation)ControlGlobal may not have a duty-free shop, but we can give you access and be the jumping-off point to a world of process automation information.
