Change is a Constant

A wise person once told me that the only thing you can count on is change – change is a constant. For some people, change is very difficult. Others thrive on it. It all depends on your personality. Easy or not, change is going to occur.

In the automation industry, change occurs very slowly – much slower than the rest of the world. This slow change is due to a couple of very good reasons. First, the majority of the automation industry is made up of engineers, who by nature are analytical and conservative. That’s not a bad thing. Remember, I’m an engineer too. Couple that with the fact that many automation professionals, at least in the U.S., are mature. Again, not a bad thing – I’m right behind you. But you know the old saying, “You can’t teach and old dog new tricks," right? Mature and conservative typically don’t mix well with change. Of course, there are exceptions and I personally know quite a few of them.

Second, the automation systems that engineers implement are complex and expensive. Since these systems produce products, the life blood of any manufacturer, they can’t afford to be down for any length of time. Plus, if these systems are not designed cautiously, there is a risk of losing life or assets if they malfunction. Once a system has been deployed and is working properly, nobody wants to change it – and for good reasons. As a result, new technologies are slow to be adopted.

So, what do we do with all that change that’s occurring around us? Ignore it? No, we can’t ignore it, or we risk losing our competitive edge – not just our manufacturing competitive edge, but our own personal competitive edge. No change comes without risk. We just have to be selective and mindful of the changes we accept.

This week, we ran across an interesting article written by Joe Feeley, Editor in Chief of Control Design Magazine. The article is called Change is Natural, which highlights the results of their annual study regarding how users are changing the way they get information. I’m pointing out this article because it confirms what we’ve known for years. Web-based resources are quickly becoming the number one way that users find information. And specifically, users are beginning to turn away from raw searches on search engines and are turning to portals, like the Product Portals on Automation.com.

According to the article, “It appears that the frustration of trying to do technical search via this type of search engine is growing...The respondents also agreed (48%) or agreed strongly (32%) that too many of the results have nothing to do with what they’re actually looking for.” This is exactly why we created our topic-specific portals.

The article goes on to talk about videos, podcasts, blogs, and forums and their slow adoption. If you stay in tune to the latest marketing trends, everyone is talking about how Social Media sites are the next big thing. Again, the automation industry is behind the times for the same reasons I stated above. It all comes down to demographics. The latest marketing trends are targeted to the younger generation. Just look at the users of MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and the like. They are all frequented by the younger-than-30 demographic. How many younger-than-30's are in the automation industry? Not many. And those that are less than 30 are probably not in the U.S.

We launched our professional networking site at My.Automation.com almost a year ago. We knew it would be slow going with our target demographic. I’m happy to report that the site now has more than 1100 members and is growing daily. It’s definitely taking time to build momentum, but it's happening. The most beneficial features for you include discussion forums and groups. Thousands of users attend various vendor-specific user groups each year. This site allows you to create virtual groups and have private group discussion throughout the entire year. It takes users to participate and make the site valuable. Without you, it’s virtually useless. We are investing time and resources into building this networking site because we believe the automation industry will ultimately benefit from it. Are you up to the challenge? If you would like to start a group, please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll walk you through the process.

Are you ready for change? I hope so, because it’s coming faster than ever before.

Share your thoughts in our Forum.

Enjoy the rest of this Automation Weekly!

Rick Zabel
Vice President, Publisher

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