Exit for Automation Insider - well not quite!

Industrial Automation Insider publishes final issue!

The editorial in the latest issue on Industrial Automation Insider is (we think) somewhat sad. Walt Boyes writes

"Well, this is it. This is the last issue of the INSIDER. When David Spitzer and I bought the INSIDER in 2014 we hoped to find a market for news and analysis in the automation industries that was not influenced by advertising spend. We believed there was such a market, and we decided we would keep the INSIDER a subscription only publication. We are proud to have provided you news untainted by advertising dollars. We believe that we have produced great news, some interesting scoops (that’s hard to do in a monthly magazine) and some hard-hitting deep analysis. We have gotten feedback to the effect that we are unique, and we are doing a service to the industry that is needed. But everything comes to an end.  We want to thank our readers and subscribers for supporting us these last years."

So much water has flowed under so many bridges since Andrew Bond first put pen to paper and produced the first beige coloured edition way back in pre pdf day. He then passed the torch on to Nick Denbow who continued the good work. Some years ago it crossed the Atlantic when Walt Boyes of Boyes & Spitzer took up the mantle. It perhaps lost a little of its European flavour in the transition but it never ceased to be interesting and sometimes controversial.

Like so many print and distributed periodicals the easily availability of news "as it happens" (not to mention the news that hasn't happened) the number of people who actually read these in their oh-so-busy mailboxes must shrink. Insider,and indeed our own publication Read-out, have suffered.   The Read-out name is preserved as a constantly changing news presence on continually updated website.

Walt thanks his co-writers David Spitzer, Joy Ward, Rajabahadur Arcot, Nick Denbow and all of the other people who supported the INSIDER over the past few years. He also promises that they will continue continue to appear, from time to time, "in our blog on the Spitzer & Boyes website."

David W Spitzer's own e-zine - which provides technical and indeed marketing, information for automation professional bay email each month - will continue to be produced. (Get your copy each month by signing up on the website.)

We wish those involved in the monthly production of Insider every success as they continue to provide news and analysis in the automation industries but in a different way. We thank Walt and his team for great - and perhaps irreplaceable - service through the years.

#PAuto @waltboyes @DavidWSpitzer @Processingtalk 

Catastrophic computer failure at automation publication.

As a result of a normal upgrade of Windows 10, the computer on which Spitzer & Boyes makes the Industrial Automation & Process Control INSIDER (IAI) has suffered a catastrophic failure. We usually highlight each issue on our home page.

Walt Boyes, the editor advises, "According to the repair shop, it isn’t worth repairing, so they are taking the data off for us. It will take about a week to get the data back, and so we have decided to produce an October/November issue at the end of November."

In the meantime they are going to try something different.

Over the next week or so, they intend to post some of the articles that would be in the October issue on the IAI blog, on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, for everyone to read, whether a subscriber or not.

"If you find that you like what you’ll be seeing, you can become a subscriber by visiting the site. Individual subscriptions are quite reasonable, and large company subscriptions that allow circulation to all within the company are also available."

As a user of a different sort of computer we might, somewhat facetiously, have a word of advice for them. "Buy a MAC." In almost thirty years of publishing we have only had one catastrophic failure but that was an act of God aided by our carelessness - a lightning strike at 3.00 one morning. We quickly replaced it - amazingly it was covered by insurance - and were back on line. We now fully protected through two surge protecting devices - one for the computer and another for the modem.

#Pauto

Back in harness...

"Everything has consequences, and nothing is ever simple."

Back Again

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed that the Industrial Automation Insider (IAI) taster that we usually put on our home page had not been changed since April. This was the unintended consequence of the unplanned absence of Editor Walt Boyes from his typewriter for health reasons.

And of course there is a message to be gleaned from all this. "This is a lesson," he says,  "that any automation company needs to keep in mind. Everything has consequences, and nothing is ever simple."

His absence was itself the unintended consequence of some corrective medical treatment he had had some years previously. However we are delighted that he is now back in harness and the latest Industrial Automation Insider is now back in a super two month bumper issue.

If you don't get it you can hardly be said to be up to date on happening in the automation sector.

Welcome back Walt and welcome back Insider!

#PAuto #IAI 

Automation & process archive now available!

Spitzer & Boyes have established an archive for the Industrial Automation and Process Control INSIDER. This archive covers all of 2014, and all but the most current two months in 2015.

One does not need to be a subscriber to access the INSIDER Archive, just visit  and select the issue required.

To obtain current issues as they appear subscriptions may be made here to the only magazine that covers both factory automation and process automation that does not take advertising. This means that they can cover events and issues without fear or favour, and their commentary is not flavoured by the size of any advertising budget. 

As David Spitzer says, "At the INSIDER you get the straight stuff. If knowing what's really going on in automation is important to you, you can't be without the INSIDER every month."

Much ado about .... ? #PAuto @PASGlobal #Cybersecurity ?

You may think that but we cannot possibly comment!

The June issue of Industrial Automation Insider just out has this intriguing report. It is embedded in a larger and more informative report on the PAS Technology Conference 2014  - which was a major celibration of their 20th birthday this year.

"If I Tell You I Have to Kill You!

FBI Special Agent Angela Haun gave another keynote, but she insisted on no interviews, no photographs, and posted the talk she gave as FOUO, the lowest rung in the top secret ladder. So, I can’t tell you what she said. I CAN tell you that everything she said was easily available in the public domain, so the purpose of the cloak and daggery remains unclear."

Funnily enough Pas themselves  did indicate that she was going to speak in a release in April and even hinted on her subject as "..initiatives on cyber security protection for the industrial infrastructure..," but, as the IAI report on her keynote says, in so many words "You may think that but we cannot possibly comment!"

One wonders is this more of the Edward Snowden effect!

The front page of the current issue of Insider!

And then there was the one about the Englishman, the Irishman and...

"Three A, M&C journalists faced a test - two failed!" is the title of a piece by the (English) editor of the Industrial Automation & Process Control Insider (IAI - soon to be under new management!). Perhaps because the "man from Galway" came from the Irish speaking part of Ireland it is correct to indicate that as a separate identity to "Irishman!" Be that as it may we thought our readers would enjoy this story.

"Three journalists, an Englishman, an Irishman and a man from Galway, deep in the far west of Ireland, went on a press trip to Switzerland (see our report "Raising the bar at Baar!"). Fairly competent at handling the complexities of automation and control systems, the air travel was straightforward. From there it was just a simple task to transfer downstairs to the railway station underneath the airport, to catch a train and travel the few stops to the destination.

However, here was a challenge that was to test their capabilities in driving another automated system. Undaunted by such trivia, all three stepped up, side by side, to face three of the robotic ticket dispensing machines, for there was a train due to depart in only 5 minutes.

The reckoning
Heading quickly for the platform with ticket(s) in hand, everything seemed OK: all three had spent the same amount of money. But sitting down in the train there seemed to be a difference between the three tickets, both in terms of colour, thickness, and number of pieces of paper – the man from Galway had two.

Now as perhaps the man from Galway was the only true European citizen, and more accustomed to foreign travel, the Englishman and the Irishman asked why he had two tickets? He explained that he did not really know how this had happened, but since the machines were tri-lingual, he had chosen to use German as the language on the screen to get some practice and brush up his German skill. So maybe this was a special system applying to German travellers, because the Englishman and the Irishman had used English as their screen language.

Judgement day
There was no need to worry, because all would soon be explained by the friendly ticket collector lady, who was coming down the train. First to show his ticket was the Englishman, and the lady did not seem very impressed, but also did not seem to speak much English.

There was some mention of an 80 Swiss Franc fine, which did not sound too bad, until a quick calculation showed this was around $90. Apparently the Englishman had got the right ticket, but it was for use sometime in the future, and should have been stamped in the handy little time stamp machine on the edge of the platform, or somewhere, before boarding the train.

After much discussion to try to understand each other, ably assisted by the Irishman and the man from Galway, whose dialect the lady possibly found even more confusing, she decided the Englishman was just another tourist of limited intelligence and would be let off.

The last straw
In trepidation the Irishman offered his ticket, and the Inspector lady seemed pleased, in her own way – he had done everything right (possibly), and it seemed OK.

Then of course there was the man from Galway, with his two tickets. They were the same of course, because they were both half fare tickets for children. There was not much conversation about this, the lady just wrote something unintelligible across the tickets, muttered something about that we should pay an 80 Swiss Franc fine really, and then maybe there was something about our competence in travelling on our own - and she went on down the train to seek help for her sanity."

 And friends this story is true!

 I know, I was that guy from Galway!

A new rôle, a rule, and an acquisition

Snippits from the first Industrial Automation Insider for 2011

● Eoin Ó Riain has started a two year term as Vice President in the Publications Department at the International Society of Automation (ISA). As publisher of the major Irish instrumentation and control magazine ‘Read-out’, and the associated ‘Instrumentation Signpost’ website, Ó Riain will bring interesting fresh thinking to the ISA in respect of their approach to the media. Quite apart from his ‘Tweets’, and probably other electronic alerts that the rest of the automation press have not yet found, his website is notable for publishing detailed reports on industrial press conferences even before the applause for the presentation has died down. So the next steps from ISA publications will be awaited with justifiable anticipation!

● Invensys Rail has advised their ‘preferred’ UK suppliers that their invoice payment terms will be extended to two months after the month in which the invoice is raised, which can therefore be up to 90 days. This is in spite of moves by Network Rail, who have tried to help suppliers by reducing payment delays to as low as 28 days, after recognizing the effects of the recent decline in work available. Invensys Rail said the move was designed to align their policy with the standard Invensys company policy.

● Eriks has acquired Valtor Offshore A/S, based in Esbjerg, Denmark, one of Europe’s leading valve and actuator distributors and service providers to the offshore oil and gas industry. Valtor Offshore
has a high level of application knowledge and excellent reputation in servicing the North Sea and the international oil and gas industry with a wide range of valves, actuators and valve automation solutions, for the construction of oil and gas production installations, and for maintenance applications.

This issue also comments on the Emerson event in Berlin (see also our blog Conquest of complexity advances!) and Control's  Automation Vendors’ Top 50 "the most authoritative and consistent
source of data." An interesting statistical fact given in this issue is that "stories about the Alfa Laval activities attract the highest numbers of Google search led visitors to Nick Denbow's INSIDER blog website." There is also a piece on "the advertising spend for 2011!"

Altogether, as we have always said, Industrial Automation Insider is a must read publication for the Automation Professional especially if they want to find out what way things are moving in the "First World!"

Automation publication changes hands

Hardly had we heared the news of the changing of the guard at Industrial Automation Insider (IAI) on the European side of the Atlantic than news reached us of another change this time on the North American continent. Nick Denbow has just taken over from Andrew Bond at IAI in England and now we learn that the leading Automation publication in Canada, Manufacturing AUTOMATION magazine, has been acquired from CLB Media Inc. by Annex Publishing & Printing, a business publisher based in Simcoe, (Ont CDN).

As Bob Dylon might say, "The winds they are a changing..." but it appears that no big changes are envisiged. Mary Del Ciancio, the editor and Klaus Pirker , who's the publisher - "are excited to join the Annex family, and look forward to continuing to execute our mandate of being the go-to resource for Canada's manufacturing and industrial automation community." according to a statement on the website.

"Over time, nuances of the transition will begin to emerge, but concerning our products and commitment to you - our readers and partners - it's full steam ahead. Annex has proven itself a forward-thinking, strategically driven publisher of business publications in Canada, and is well-positioned to take Manufacturing AUTOMATION to the next level."

Several other publications from the same family were also taken over by Annex. It wull be interesting to see how they will mesh with the motley of publications already in the Annex stable like The Bakers Journal, Canadian Chiropractor and the fascinating Manure Manager, though to be fair they do have some technical publications too in the water and environmental areas.

It is good that the future of important automation publications, wherever based, are assured as a vital part of the discipline of instrumentation, control and automation. And it is good to see that publishing houses like Annex are willing to invest in the future especially in these changing times.