While that was not the formal theme of this year's Automation World, it surely was the undercurrent. Formally, the theme was "Countdown to Results," a play off of the Houston location with a keynote speech by astronaut Jerry Linenger and Wednesday’s dinner at the Johnson Space Center. Informally, it was not just about being back, but being ready to tackle just about anything.Before the customer portion of Automation World began, there were multiple days of internal meetings with feeder factory representatives, employees, representatives, distributors and other channel partners. These meetings highlighted the new products and market approach for the various business groups.
At the Sunday morning general meeting, Dinesh Paliwal (ABB President of Global Markets and Technology) used a detonator plunger to "blow-up" the walls separating the various divisions. Each person then received their very own piece of the wall, a brick with the ABB logo on it, to remind them that we are all working together and the silos that have plagued the organization in the past are gone.I was a part of the Process Automation group's presentations on Sunday evening and they did everything right. The past years haven't been too kind to this group and this was catch-up time. There were awards for the channel partners and the employees, from top producers to lifetime achievements.
So often in our business we forget that just a little recognition can go a long way. This group has it dialed in and they showed it to their people! Represented this year at ABB's Automation World were (18) internal business units, (4) communications partners, (10) media partners and (9) technology partners. The 40,000 sq ft of exhibits that housed this was indeed impressive. In the center of the hall was a café area where you could go and talk business with some of the over 2500 registrants from 36 countries.
A major improvement for this year was 400+ technical sessions offered to ABB's diverse customer base as well as multiple case studies presented by those very customers.The cost to attend the full 3 days of the conference as a customer or potential customer of ABB was just $500. A number of the seminars and technical sessions were divided into tracks that were based on your industry or your job function. As an example, if you were interested in field devices and fieldbus communications, there was a 15 session track that rivaled training programs for which you would pay $1000/day in the private marketplace.
The same could be said if you took the pulp and paper track, with up to 15 sessions dealing with application successes and technologies specific to that industry.Next year, the rumor is that ABB's Automation World will be in March in Orlando with 20% more exhibit space and even more training opportunities.ABB is back and boy do they know how to throw a party!
Report by Robert Gross of Gross Automation. Robert J. (Bob) Gross is the president and owner of Gross Automation in New Berlin, WI. At ABB's Automation World, his organization received both the Gold Partner status award and the #1 Controls Distributor award for their work as ABB channel partners. Gross Automation is also a technology partner with ABB through their importation and distribution of the Westermo/OnTime line of modems, ethernet switches and fiber optic controls. Bob is both an electrical engineer and an instrument rated private pilot. He can be reached by email at [email protected].