WBF postpones 2009 conference, begins repositioning

01/06/2009

Raleigh, N.C., January 5 --  WBF, the forum for automation and manufacturing professionals, formerly known as World Batch Forum, has announced that due to the economic situation, it has decided to postpone its North American Conference for 2009 to a date later in the year to be announced subsequently.
 
“We believe that we need to respond to the global economic situation in an appropriate way,” says Maurice Wilkins, outgoing chairman of WBF. “We’ve decided that a conference held as early in 2009 as we had originally scheduled it would not serve the membership and sponsors of WBF.”
 
“We will be having a Press and Sponsors Day, along with the annual Process Automation Hall of Fame banquet and awards ceremony, sponsored by Control magazine and Yokogawa Corporation of America,” says George Devine, technical director of WBF, “in the March timeframe, in Chicago. We will be inviting the global press and our sponsors to a detailed press briefing discussing the repositioning of WBF into an organization that can have a significant impact on manufacturing going forward…as significant an impact as it has had in the past, with the adoption of ISA88 and ISA95 in manufacturing worldwide.”
 
“WBF will be remaining as part of the Automation Federation,” says Bill Stewart, incoming chairman of WBF, but WBF and ISA have arrived at a mutual decision to separate the operations of WBF from ISA.”
 
WBF has retained the services of KCA, Inc., as its association management company, under the direction of newly-appointed technical director, George Devine, reporting to the board of directors.
 
“What you’ll see in March,” Wilkins says, “is a revitalized organization that will serve production and automation technology in the process and discrete manufacturing industries long into the future.”