PlantSuccess Newsletter

Volume III, Issue 18

27 August 2003 

Dear Subscriber:

In a short period of time, PlantSuccess has built an enviable reputation for outstanding content – actively moderated sessions addressing the successful implementation of engineering IT and the resulting improved performance of process plants. For ten conferences in the past 4 years, PlantSuccess has recruited 100 speakers from 50 companies – all innovative managers with industry leaders, addressing the owner-operator’s business drivers, work processes and integration requirements. All sessions deal with issues important to the process industry; a lively discussion is guaranteed.

Many of our sessions utilize multiple experts and provide a valuable contrast in viewpoints with consistent results. Recent examples include:

  1. Different Approaches to Supporting Plant Operations, moderated by Charlie Gillard and participation by managers with Bayer, Dow Chemical and DuPont.
  1. Knowledge Management: Getting Tangible About the Intangible, with presentations by moderator John Voeller, and executives in knowledge management with CDM, DuPont, Fluor, and SAIC.

Dennis Brandl, industry consultant and technical chair for the World Batch Forum, writes: “Integration of manufacturing systems with business systems has been a challenging problem, but it has become more important as companies start optimizing their supply chains and move to more responsive manufacturing strategies. The ISA SP95 committee working on the ISA 95 Enterprise/Control System Integration standards has been working on this complex problem for the past six years. The ISA 95 standards are designed to aid manufacturing companies in their integration of their enterprise systems and their manufacturing systems.”

The 5th annual PlantSuccess features a session on this subject of great interest with the title: Why Adopt ISA-95 as the Interface Standard for Plant Floor Integration. The moderator is John Wason, vice president, ARC Advisory Group -- a leading industry consulting organization. Wason will give us the background and set the stage for the need for this standard and will be followed by Keith Unger, Rockwell Software, ISA-95 Committee Co-Chair, with a statement on the progress and goals for this group.

True to PlantSuccess, the focus of this session is presentations by senior managers with two industry leaders, both strong supporters of standards, Dow Chemical and DuPont. Eric Cosman, process automation architect, will speak to the Case for Employing ISA-95 and Ray Walker, alliance manager, will address Using ISA-95 as a Measuring Stick for Comparing Suppliers.

Join us for PlantSuccess Northeast 2003, 15 – 16 October at the PHL Airport Marriott, for this discussion of ISA-95 and so many other topics important to meeting the demands of excellence in process plant operation.

Join our sponsors, AVEVA, Ivara Corporation, IT-GlobalForum.org, Skire Inc, The Shaw Group and ReliabilityWeb.com – the most complete source for information on plant operations and maintenance available on the Web. In addition, this site is the personification of its owner, Terrence O'Hanlon, a strong supporter of PlantSuccess and one of the most energetic people I’ve ever known.

Visit www.PlantSuccess.com for more information, to review agendas from previous conferences and to download any of the very popular presentations.

Best regards,

Carl. Howk, Chairman

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Current Links   

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Why IT Does Matter

Harvard Business School professors, McFarlan and Nolan, respond to Harvard Business Review editor-at-large, Nicholas G. Carr, author of the opinion piece "Why IT Doesn't Matter" published in the May 2003 issue of HBR.

 “In no other area is it more important to have a sense of what you don't know than it is in IT management. The most dangerous advice to CEOs has come from people who either had no idea of what they did not know, or from those who pretended to know what they didn't. Couple not knowing that you don't know with fuzzy logic, and you have the makings of Nicholas Carr's article.”  READ MORE.

Designing IT for Business

A team of consultants have penned an interesting article on companies and corporate IT for the current issue of the McKinsey Quarterly.

 “Business and IT managers at some leading companies have been working together to change the way information technology supports the enterprise. As a result, they have cut the cost of IT, made it easier to change the business, avoided the constraints of inflexible support systems, and increased the participation of business leaders in the management of IT.” READ MORE.

The PlantSuccess Newsletter generates a substantial number of visits to our website, we welcome the interest and the access to previous issues of the Newsletter which are available there. If you'd like to share this newsletter with a colleague, just forward a copy. Subscribe or cancel by sending a request to Carl.Howk@PlantSuccess.com

Full links to Volume III, Issue 18 Newsletter articles:

  1. http://www.brlconsulting.com/
  2. http://www.wbf.org/
  3. http://www.arcweb.com/
  4. http://www.reliabilityweb.com/
  5. www.PlantSuccess.com
  6. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3637&t=innovation
  7. http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.asp?ar=1338&L2=13&L3=12&srid=8&gp=1
  8. www.PlantSuccess.com