I Have Been a Bad Blogger Again

Yes, it has been a while, but I have been hard at work on several projects. Here is a preview:

I have been helping Dave Woll on the latest version of our Collaborative Process Automation System study, which is our view on what a process automation should look like and the functionality it should incorporate both as state of the art technology and functionality today and in the future. This study will be ready soon and chapters are already being edited.

Updating DCS Worldwide: The market dropped by about 7 percent according to my most recent estimates. That's more than I thought it would have dropped between 2008 and 2009, but the market is already making a strong recovery. However, we won't see the growth that we saw before the global recession hit. DCS Worldwide should be available by the end of June.

Modular Procedural Automation: There has already been a standards committee formed at ISA for this topic (ISA 106). ARC wrote a white paper for Yokogawa about MPA and we will be publishing a strategy report on this very soon.

Process Automation System Lifecycle Management Survey: A very successful ARC web based survey with over 100 respondents. ARC is looking at how users manage the overall lifecycle of their process automation systems, how they approach system migration, upgrade and migration justification, project scope, project execution, vendor relationships, spare parts strategies, and training.

I will be at ABB Automation and Power World next week with several other ARC analysts and we are having an "ARC Inside" mini forum at this event. I will be giving presentations on the topics of control system migration and lifecycle management and the benefits of an integrated approach to automation and electrical equipment.

Our most recent report on the overall health of the demand side of the automation marketplace has been released. Most of the leading economic indicators from around the world that are related to the manufacturing economy are still very much positive, although there is some cooling off in developing economies such as India and China, which is not necessarily a bad thing.