Gary Mintchell

This news lies far from my core of experience. I, however, have been impressed with Festo

I once sold a program to a customer that promised to track and maintain an inventory of one vendor’s technology assets in the plant. The president of another company explained to me about 10 years later about the company’s development of a technology asset discovery and tracking system that had done the program I had sold a quantum leap better.

I’ve written about the market I’ve covered for the past 25 years becoming mature. Symptoms of a mature market include portfolio restructuring to concentrate on a particular segment. We’ve seen this with several of the prominent automation companies. Emerson has also been shedding businesses. They have just announced three more strategic moves.

Each year for perhaps 20 years, Control magazine along with the ARC Advisory Group publishes a list of the top 50 automation suppliers globally and in North America in terms of revenue. This year’s list is introduced this way.

Other World Computing’s products are not often directly automation related. You may find many uses outside of control and HMI applications. They also show where some breakthrough computing resources are heading. These news items relate to Thunderbolt 5 ports and storage for high resolution photography.

I wrote this article for an Italian automation magazine— Automazione Oggi (Automation Today). I’ve written a monthly column called News from America for 12 or 13 years. After a change in Presidents, they are curious about the new administration’s impact on manufacturing and international trade.

I have been writing occasional blog posts regarding Quickbase and have also appeared at their annual user conference and on a podcast.* I first heard of the company at the beginning of the year. The customers who spoke at the user conference gave examples of the simplicity and speed of the nocode application development. The product is operations management software without the extensive overhead of many competitors.

Through the wonders of modern digital networking, I attended the annual ODVA press conference from Nuremberg without the expense of travel. They had two announcements. Perhaps I can make the annual meeting in Florida next March.

Blake Moret deserves credit for many reasons during his tenure as CEO of Rockwell Automation. He has not been afraid to try things. If they don’t work out, he just pivots and tries something else.

I remember Digi from many years ago as a networking interface of serial to Ethernet. I lost track of the company for some years. It has become active over the past few years, still working on connectivity. This news concerns further connectivity options.