PlantSuccess Newsletter
Volume IV, Issue 1
7 January 2004
Dear
Subscriber:
I was in
college in 1961 when the Russians won the space race with Major Yuri Gagarin
(1934 – 1968) the first to orbit the earth. Three weeks later, in a
sub-orbital flight, Alan Shepard (1923 – 1998), was the first American
in space. Within another three weeks, President Kennedy (1917 – 1963)
made his now famous statement to the world that began: “I believe that this
nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out,
of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Fifteen years later, I had dinner with one
of many pilots who ferried industry executives across the country to Andrews
Air Force Base and was present at the meeting in the White House that preceded
this challenge.
Between May
’65 and May ’68, I was a junior officer on an amphibious ship, steamed 100,000
miles on the Pacific Ocean because of four deployments to Vietnam, stood lots
of bridge watches and had ample opportunity to look at the moon – JFK’s
commitment seemed very daunting. Of course, this fantastic feat was realized,
21 July 1969, when Neil Armstrong (1930 -) stepped onto the Moon's
surface, in the Sea of Tranquility – an event widely regarded as the pinnacle
of the space race.
I served as
Navigator for an 8-month deployment of mostly independent steaming, learned
about the celestial bodies and how to navigate by them, as this was long before
GPS. I could not be impressed by the magnitude of going to the moon without
being awed by the obstacles facing the goal of landing a space vehicle on
planet Mars. The first pictures of the Mars surface were beamed back to earth
by the Viking I Spacecraft on 20 July 1976 – 27+ years ago – and were
very impressive. The color pictures sent this week by NASA’s Spirit Rover
from the surface of Mars – 105 million miles away – are absolutely fantastic. READ MORE.
Once again,
the USA has demonstrated its ability to do incredible things with available and
developing technologies and more and more of these tools are COTS (commercial
off-the-shelf) products. Best Practices and these technologies are being
applied to the War Against Terrorism and will result in increased security and
safety.
Because of
the obvious impact on process plant performance, PlantSuccess Gulf Coast 2004 –
22 April at the Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake -- will include sessions on the
successful implementation of some of these technologies. Unfortunately, there
is a need in the process manufacturing industry.
Information
on this unique event will be forthcoming at www.PlantSuccess.com and in this
Newsletter. Of course, we are always interested in talking to potential
speakers, moderators and sponsors. Please call me at 770-565-3282.
Carl. Howk,
Chairman
*****************
Current
Links
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FedEx
plan to transform its technology and business processes.
Born at an
IT executive planning meeting, “The
initiative's ultimate goal is to transform our use of business technology by
improving on six different strategies by 2006. It's a three-year plan because
real transformation takes time—this stuff is heavy lifting.”
The six areas that comprise the program are:
The vision of the Transformation
initiative is simple: FedEx IT will dynamically align resources to the
corporation's critical priorities while improving cycle time and return on
investment and a $23 billion company will become better and stronger. READ
MORE.
The story
of FedEx has long been a classic example of the conclusion that nothing is
impossible. The response of a Yale
University management professor to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable
overnight delivery service: “The
concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’,
the idea must be feasible.” When
someone says: “that’s impossible," what they’re really saying is that they
don't know how to do it.
Top 100
Maintenance & Reliability Websites
An interesting website, www.ReliabilityWeb.com, has again
added www.PlantSuccess.com to its
list of Top 100 Maintenance & Reliability websites. We welcome their selection;
Terrence
O’Hanlon, president and publisher, likes the content from all
of the PlantSuccess conferences and the fact that we make it so readily
available. READ
MORE.
Despite many significant achievements in the War Against Terrorism over
the past two years, events of the past couple of weeks tell me that we need to
continue or perhaps renew our vigilance.
FOXNews.com has compiled a
comprehensive handbook that will teach all of us things we may not want to
learn but are better off knowing. It addresses the complex matrix of threats,
potential weapons of mass destruction, international terrorist groups and a
brief history of recent acts of terrorism that puts today’s news in historical
– and global -- context. 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 IV, Issue 1 Newsletter articles:
1. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,107468,00.html
3. http://www.optimizemag.com/issue/027/roi.htm;jsessionid=DQZRL3Z2YPOVIQSNDBCCKHQ
4. http://www.reliabilityweb.com/forms/rw100_list.htm