RSS
Print pageHome » Focus on the factory of the future
Focus on the factory of the future
02/14/2005
By Walt Boyes, Editor in Chief| RELATED STORY Dear Emerson-san, we're coming to get you! |
| R |
evolutions-R-Us! That's what Andy Chatha, CEO of ARC Advisory Group reached in his keynote address at the ARC Forum held Jan. 31-Feb. 3 in Orlando, Fla. And the Chinese are coming! The Chinese are coming! So the time is right for a revolution in manufacturing. Finally, we will all become those lean, realtime manufacturing companies the TLA (three letter acronym) consultants have been preaching about for the past 20 years.
Right. OK, maybe.
One of the things that always bothers me about the analyst-speak and the consulting contingent is that they've been preaching the same things for years (me too, because I've also been a consultant and an analyst in my shady past), but the things they predict never seem to happen. It seems so obviously a no-brainer to do these things, yet fewer than half of American companies (or European companies, for that matter) are using real-time key performance indicators and other techniques from "the factory of the future" to run their operations. The real number of forward-thinking enterprises may be as low as 2%.
The people who present at these forums are long on the advantages of doing these things but they won't ever talk about drag. Drag, like institutional unwillingness to change work rules and so forth. Drag factors are what I believe are holding things up the most. Just once, I would like to hear a paper that was a balanced presentation of what should be done, and what is necessary to get it done.
More News:
-
05/21/2013
Compressor Controls: Saudi Aramco Buys First GE Compressor Control Systems
Saudi Aramco has purchased advanced compressor control technology from GE for the Haradh GOSP-1 facility in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.
-
05/21/2013
ISA Training Through June in Houston
Technician training, engineering survival and SIS boot camps for condensed, intense, comprehensive educational experience.
-
05/20/2013
NIST Releases Initial Cyber Security Framework Comment Analysis
The National Institute for Standards and Technology has released an initial analysis of the hundreds of comments by industry and the public they have received on the Obama Administration's "Improving Critical Infrastructure Cyber Security" executive order.
-
05/20/2013
Past Time to Upgrade Your DCS?
Upgrading Your DCS: Why You May Need to Do It Sooner Than You Think
-
05/20/2013
Metso Provides New Heating Solution for Finnish Utility
Finland's largest pellet-fired heating plant produces environmentally friendly energy in Tampere
-
05/20/2013
K-BIM Consortium Selects Siemens' Parasolid for New AEC Applications
-BIM, a consortium of commercial, academic and government organizations wants the new application suite to help create a national standard for building information management (BIM)
-
05/17/2013
Friday p.m. Wrap-Up:This Week on ControlGlobal and Elsewhere
Some of the week's biggest stories in process automation
-
05/16/2013
What's Bad Weather Costing Us?
U.S. taxpayers paid nearly $100 billion responding to damages caused by last year’s extreme weather events associated with climate change, about $1,100 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
-
05/16/2013
BP, Shell, Statoil Raided by EC
European Commission investigators raided the offices of oil companies BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Statoil as well as data collector Platts as part of a larger inquiry into price manipulation of the global crude market.
-
05/15/2013
What We Can Learn About Safety from the Titanic Hearings
This report from the U.K. publication The Engineer is instructive. It reprints a report from the May, 1912 hearings on the sinking of the Titanic.
- All news »
Sponsored Links
Control Digital Edition
Access the entire print issue on-line and be notified each month via e-mail when your new issue is ready for you. Subscribe today.
- Featured White Papers
