ISA Insights
January 2008
Automation Federation Spotlight:
First Annual OMAC Symposium Hailed a Success
Fifty-nine individuals from the discrete, hybrid, and process industries attended the first annual OMAC Symposium at the Future of Flight Aviation Center at the Boeing facility in Everett, Washington.
“This was OMAC’s first ‘stand alone’ event that focused on our competencies and core strengths,” said AF Executive Director Bruno Kisala. “Boeing, and specifically Sid Venkatesh, did a stellar job in hosting this event and provided the Future of Flight facility as the venue to conduct the meeting, the Boeing resources necessary to facilitate the sessions, and the tour of the 787 DreamLiner manufacturing facility.”
“The symposium allowed attendees to come together for two days of networking and discussion about the importance of utilizing standards in the packaging process, and they all learned more about the importance of OMAC as the advocate for the discrete and process industries,” said Automation Federation Director of Government Relations Mike Marlowe.
During the course of this two day event, with its theme of “Bridging the Gap between the Discrete and Process Industries,” the attendees heard from speakers that focused on the value of standardization to positively impact the bottom line for manufacturing. Topics included:
- “‘Swimming Upstream with Your Friends’: Enabling and Implementing Open Standards for Manufacturing”
- “CNC-ERP Connectivity—Top Floor to Shop Floor”
- “PLM / MES Integration—Closing the Loop from As-built to As-Designed”
- “ISA88 Part 5: Modular Concepts for Automated Systems”
- “On the Road to OMAC HMI Best Practices”
- “Enabling & Deploying Operational Performance”
- “Global Strategy and Scalable Architectures”
- “Training, Opening the Door behind the Door”
- “OMAC to THINC to Factory (The Red Queen Inference)”
- “Best Practices and Applications in Manufacturing IT”
The PowerPoint presentations for these speakers will be available on the OMAC website at www.omac.org/techsymp2007.
In addition to the speakers, the attendees conducted breakout sessions to drill down on key discussion points dealing with increasing the ranks of OMAC, gaining the attention of upper management for implementing standards and technology that would have a profound positive impact for their companies, and mapping out a course of action that will position OMAC to be an invaluable educational resource for the industry.
Breakout session topics focused on the industry areas (discreet, hybrid, process) and how OMAC meets their needs; OMAC working groups’ issues and recruitment; globalization with regards to security, sourcing, supply chain management, manufacturing machines, developing nations, and interoperability; and standardization, including business processes, computer processes, best practices, and attainment, adoption, and integration of OMAC standards into industry standards. The sessions studied ways to leverage lessons learned, and methods of focusing on workforce development, education, training, and certification.
“Many strategic issues for OMAC were addressed during the road map and breakout sessions, identifying key topics that were of interest to the industry, new directions for the organization, technology and market drives, and the identification of new ideas in terms of reshaping OMAC to better meet the needs of today,” said Kisala.
As the symposium concluded, attendees unanimously agreed to continue the work started in Seattle during 2008. Working groups were identified to focus attention on key areas and bring forth recommendations for action items to be implemented by OMAC.
Okuma has volunteered to host the 2008 OMAC symposium in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the Partner’s in THINC Facility in November.
To see the schedule and presentation abstracts for the 2007 OMAC Symposium, visit www.omac.org/techsymp2007. Information for the 2008 Symposium will be released as it becomes available.
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