from the "lunching with the brass..." department...

Paul J. Orzeske is Vice President/General Manager of Honeywell Process Solutions for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Prior to this position, Orzeske was Regional General Manager for the Eastern United States. Paul's a homeboy from Naperville, just up the road from my house. He has an engineering degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology and an MBA from DePaul University. He is based at Honeywell's EMEA headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, but is never there. Paul is responsible for the recent establishment of a new Honeywell country office in Angola, and the appointment to run it of an Angolan native. "We have to do this," he said, "because we wouldn't be a trusted, local company if we didn't." He went on to point out that Honeywell had presence even in Russia before the fall of the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, so they aren't johnnies-come-lately. Since Eric Rasmussen and Brian Chapman (why does it take two Honeywell PR guys to keep me out of trouble?) were also there, the discussion turned to how to get younger engineers, the 24-28-year olds to become interested in jobs in automation, whether working for Honeywell or for end user companies...and how do you do that on a global basis. Chapman has some fascinating ideas, like the ones he shared at the ISA Marketing and Sales Summit in Austin in September, partly because he is still, fundamentally, an outsider looking in at how we do communications and information generation in the automation part of the high tech industry. Note that I said we were part of the high tech industry...this is something we need to make clear, since most of the rest of the industry doesn't think so, and neither does Wall Street. But we are the risk averse part, but still part. We are going to have to talk more and see what we can do to change how the industry communicates...or we'll all have to un-retire to come run plants in twenty years.