Post DLC Presidential Interview

I was remiss in writing a new article last week. What can I say…I was traveling. One of the benefits of being ISA Society President is having the opportunity to travel the world and experience many different cultures. Such was the case last week when I traveled to Spain to participate in the District 12 Leadership Conference. District 12 covers Europe—a vast geography and a true multicultural experience. This was emphasized every time I was introduced to a new person and didn’t know if it was one, two, or three kisses on the cheek for a continental greeting! I still don’t have it straight, but suffice to say that Ireland, England, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, and the Netherlands all seem to have their own custom. Perhaps we need to write a standard!

The meeting was hosted by the Spain Section of ISA centered in Madrid. A highlight of the event was an evening of traditional Spanish food and Flamenco dancing. If you’ve never seen the traditional dances of Spain, you just haven’t lived! To say that it was emotional, passionate, and provocative would be a gross understatement.

Another highlight of the conference, for me, was seeing that the members of the Spain Section have put the same passion into meeting the needs of their local Members. The Spain Section has done a remarkable job of setting up a Masters of Instruments and Controls by partnering with industry (both users and vendors) and academia to put together a program to develop automation professionals. The program, now in its third year, is still growing. Although the Masters is not accredited, it is meeting the needs of industry and is recognized and welcomed by companies throughout Spain. Other Sections in many countries have other programs equally beneficial to their local Members—the Netherlands had their very own version of YAPfest (Young Automation Professional Festival) encouraging young engineers to consider the field of automation and the Ireland and England Sections shared their series of technical meetings that held their Members interest…just to name a few.

It was very motivational to see that our Members in Europe were not near as worried about what name we call our organization or how much we pay in dues as they were about how to meet industry and Member needs at the local level…the whole purpose of local Sections. I congratulate all of the leaders I met on their efforts and results, and thank everyone, especially the Spain Section leaders, for their warm hospitality. I’ve left with great memories that already have me wanting to return to Spain!

As I was leaving the meeting I was handed a list of questions for an interview with the local version of Chemical Engineering Magazine. Here I share the questions and answers with the readers of this blog…

Interview Kim Miller Dunn, President of ISA

1) The best known activity of ISA is the production of automation standards, which for many years have helped the process industry to improve efficiency and safety. Which are the other main ISA activities or objectives?
ISA has five core competencies: Standards, Certification, Education & Training, Publishing, and Conferences & Exhibits. Through these core competencies and with some supplemental initiatives such as workforce development programs and government relations activities, we have accepted a responsibility to create a voice for automation. This will be a recurring theme you will hear more about in the future, but I would like to give a little more detail on the other four core competencies, besides standards:

Certification: ISA has created three certification programs: Certified Automation Professional (CAP), Certified Control System Technician (CCST), and Certified Industrial Maintenance Mechanic (CIMM). All three have specific educational and/or work experience requirements as well as an exam. I am pleased to say that ISA has an outstanding reputation for the value of the certifications offered. People who carry one of these certifications are recognized as being knowledgeable in their field and valued by their employers. New approaches and enhanced marketing campaigns coupled with our global efforts are bringing the values associated with professional certification to new heights. We expect our certification programs to gain a strong foothold around the world in the next several years.

Education & Training: ISA has numerous courses offered by the training department located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA, as well as courses and educational opportunities offered by local Sections. Courses offered by ISA headquarters are offered at the headquarters facility as well as “in plant,” or at the customer site. The local chapter in Spain has excellent educational opportunities for Members such as the Masters in Instrumentation and Control—a great example of a local Section partnering with industry and academia. ISA also has invested heavily in ISA CyberU, which provides training anytime, any place through interactive multimedia courses. More about these offerings can be found on at www.isa.org/training/cyberu.

ISA has several publications: InTech Magazine and ISA Transactions. InTech is a monthly periodical of industry and technology news. ISA Transactions is a peer review journal available at no charge to all Members. Both of these publications are now available with full content on-line, which is another investment ISA has made in our commitment to provide quality products and services around the world.

We also have many conference and exhibit opportunities: Again, this global organization hosts ISA EXPO each year along with many division symposia focusing on a specific industry or technology. Two of our newest offerings include the Wireless Solutions Summit and a Manufacturing IT Forum. Our local chapters also offer local exhibits and symposia geared towards meeting local needs. These networking and knowledge sharing events are held throughout the year and around the world, and involve anywhere from 50 to 15,000 attendees.

2. Going back to the ISA Standards; which new ones will we see in the near future?
ISA has been recognized as a standard developing organization around the world for more than 60 years. As such, we are constantly scanning the horizon and looking for emerging technologies and new applications where market demand warrants the development of a standard.

We have many new activities and refinements being published on existing standards, but some of the hottest areas under development include:

ISA99, Manufacturing and Control Systems Security
ISA100, Wireless Systems for Automation
ISA101, Human-Machine Interface
ISA102, High-Power Research & Development Electrical Systems
ISA103, Field Device Tools (FDT)
ISA104, Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL)

Each of these committees is at a different stage in the standard developing life cycle, but as progress is made and new releases become available, we will communicate them to the community through multiple channels. At any time anyone can check the current status of a standard by visiting www.isa.org/ and clicking on “Standards” in the left hand navigation bar.

3. How is ISA membership evolving? Is it reflecting globalization and the growth of Far East countries?
ISA is certainly growing—more so outside of North America, but we showed modest growth in the U.S. last year as well. The growth is coming from South America, India, Europe, and of course Asia. We have only recently started focusing our attention to developing a presence in Asia. ISA hired Tim Feldman, Director of Global Operations, to help establish our presence in China, Singapore, and Korea…to name a few. We have also established an office in India and hired a country manager, Nirav Sheth, to meet the needs of the 1,800 members there. South America has had an established presence for many years and we recently launched a campaign to further enhance and strengthen the ISA brand through closer collaboration between ISA Headquarters and our dedicated members throughout the continent. And then there is the Middle East, showing a strong interest in ISA training, where we are working to capitalize on the opportunities available there.

4. How do you see the future of present Ethernet and field bus standards? Will they converge into a single standard?
I don’t see the convergence occurring. Industrial users of field instruments want ease of installation and less complex wiring—Ethernet requires a minimum of 4 wires and sometimes more. Field Bus only requires two. Field instruments also require a low-power solution. In my opinion, when you hear people talking about using Ethernet industrially, they are not talking about a “field” environment of heavy industrial processes; they are referring to the more “office” or factory floor type environment, where the Ethernet already exists.

Given these differences, I don’t see the standards being merged.

5. How do you see the evolution of wireless instrumentation? Will it be a niche application or will we see full wireless refineries in the future?
There is no question in my mind that it is not a case of will there be a wireless refinery, it is a question of when. In any given industrial setting, the cost of instrumentation and controls is far exceeded by the costs involved in installation (read wires). Wireless is a very economical solution, offering the benefit of making measurements that here-to-fore were non-economically viable or impossible to make. Wireless also offers the possibility of gathering more information about processes than ever before. In the world of wireless, the more the merrier—the more points in your wireless network, the better it will most likely operate. So yes, I believe that as time progresses you will see fewer and fewer wires—they will most likely go the way of pneumatic controls. It will take a long time, but it will happen.

6. What do you see as the main future progress lines in process plant automation?
In the near future, we have wireless, cyber security, and safety issues that will prompt change in process automation. It is difficult to predict where technology will go beyond the next 5-10 years, but if I were writing science fiction I would be predicting “instrumentless plants.” Instead of hardware attached to the process (wireless or otherwise) leading to a control system, I envision the use of nanotechnology in the process environment. What if we could make all of the measurements of a process with capsules floating in the product media and communicate that to the proper controls? Not only are wires eliminated, but invasive sensors in the process are eliminated too. I also think we will see more and more integration of the plant process environment with the business systems of companies. To find out more about this, check out the recently released ISA95 Part 5 standard. The ability to modify output based on commodity (feedstock) prices and/or market demand for a product in real-time—on the fly—would dramatically affect the way plants are currently operated.

Closing remarks:
I believe ISA has successfully re-positioned itself as an organization able to meet our Member’s needs, the industry’s needs, and the universal needs of humanity. We have lots of work to do—workforce development and raising awareness and esteem of what our professional and members do—but the future looks bright and I am proud to be a Member of ISA during this dynamic time.

Global ISA

ISA IS global! Not going global. Not maybe someday we’ll be global. We ARE global!

This was brought home to me this past week while I was sitting in a District Leadership Conference in New York, on a conference call with people in Canada, and getting e-mails from ISA100 people in China as well as from ISA leaders in Europe setting an agenda for later this month…All at the same time!

Quite often, this may make the most stalwart Member of the Instrument Society of America of old feel a little out of place, or left behind. After all, the founding of ISA was the joining of several local organizations within the US into one organization. The people who worked toward the coalition had the foresight to realize that individually they had value, but collectively their value was significantly greater. Fast forward 60 years—into the information age—where distance and geography don’t mean much…I’m glad that ISA Members long before me recognized the importance of expanding our reach beyond US borders and beyond North America.

Right now, roughly 20% of our membership lies outside of North America. ISA has significant numbers of Members in South America, Europe, and Asia. We have a Director of Global Operations (Tim Feldman) whose address must read C/O United Airlines since he spends more time on planes than at home. We have offices in Brazil and India and we are looking to increase our presence in the emerging markets of South East Asia and China.

Does that make me nervous? No. Am I concerned that this effort at globalization might weaken some perceived power that we as US Members have due to our legacy and location? No. Do I fear that US based support and programs may decline in favor of international activities? NO!

Like the Members back in 1942, who recognized the intrinsic value of belonging to a collective, I believe that sharing ideas, standards, and technical information globally can only improve the world we live in today and the world we will leave behind for future generations. I think about the potential of all those possible Members outside of North America—it’s not getting more members that intrigues me; it’s getting more grey matter working on challenges we see today on the plant floor and in the manufacturing environment. We are no longer limited to asking for help from people who show up to a meeting. We can throw a problem out into cyber-space and have a plethora of people offering potential solutions from anywhere in the world. Because our Members are global, there is nothing we cannot achieve.

No matter the problem—I believe that somewhere, someday there will be a person with a solution. He or she—most likely still a child—is probably on a computer somewhere in the world playing a cyber-game with kids located in different countries, time-zones, and maybe even different planets (you never know!). That “child” and those “kids” don’t get hung up on geography, culture, or time. They probably also assume that the “I” in ISA stands for International…or perhaps even Intergalactic.

Section Meeting Programming

I’m sitting in upstate New York after attending the first day of a two-day ISA District Leadership Conference (DLC). This falls on the heels of another DLC held last weekend in San Diego. What I find fascinating, after reflecting on the past two weeks, is that Sections seem to struggle with meeting programming, and yet I hear so many good ideas for how and what to program that I don’t understand why this seems to be difficult. What is encouraging is that Sections take this subject so seriously—ISA is only as good as the last contact we had with an individual, and that might well be a Section publication or event, so I’m glad that leaders take this seriously.

Now on to some ideas:

Section Co-sponsored Training: Want a dynamite training course in your local area? How about working with ISA headquarters to bring their professional level training to you—this is the same in-plant training ISA offers with the same professional trainer materials and subject matter. Best of all, the sponsoring Section gets to share in the revenue. If you look around, you might find several companies interested in the same training that find themselves without enough participants for in-plant training but are not willing to send people traveling…ISA local Section to the rescue! This year ISA has 20 such co-sponsored events on the books so far. More than any previous year, so this seems to be quite successful.

Webinar/Webex Meetings: What I like about this idea is that people don’t have to travel to get to these. They can sit at their desk with their quarter-pounder with cheese and Coke and listen in. Most of our speakers use PowerPoint so implementing this is easy to do. The meeting can be in the evening, over lunch, or even in the morning (over those first three cups of coffee). If you want a catchier title call it a cyber-meeting. Some of the networking benefit is lost, but this may allow people to attend a meeting that they were not able to before. And don’t forget the archived webinars on the ISA website—these are a lifesaver when your speaker has to cancel because she went into labor a little early!

Panel Discussions: Next to plant tours these are the most popular meetings to attend. If you really want to spice it up, make sure end-users are debating the pros and cons of a particular technology. Vendors are compelled to be polite in public settings but users don’t seem to feel the same need for decorum. I’ve seen some panel discussions almost go to fisticuffs!

On a final note, find out what your Members want to learn or hear about. There are many electronic survey services available that will allow you to find out what your Members would show up for. Program it and they will come.