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New Apps for Your Engineer's Tool Box

You can find Some really useful new tools for process engineers in Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. I found more than a hundred apps in the Apple store designed specifically for engineering calculations. Some are for single industries such as cement, metals, electric power and plastics. You can also find broader apps for engineering disciplines such as civil, electrical and chemical engineering.

Chitra Sethi, Managing Editor at ASME.org, thinks there is a market for a lot more engineering-specific apps. She reports finding five mechanical engineering apps for the iPhone that she recommends.

Considering the hundreds of thousands of free and low-cost apps now on the market, you might expect she would have found more. Certainly the productivity gains, portability and ease-of-use that engineering apps would afford suggest the demand for engineering apps will grow. She cites a TechCrunch report that predicts the mobile app market will be worth $25 billion in 2015.

You can find some apps now that are designed just for the process industries. We recently added K-Tron's popular K-Convert unit conversion tool to both the App Store and the Android Market. Designed especially for process engineers, K-Convert provides you with the unit conversions common in the process industries.

You can download the free K-Convert for your iPhone / iPad here at the App Store , or get K-Convert for Android here. For those who still favor a desktop version, the classic K-Convert for Windows PCs remains available here for download.

You can share your own favorite engineering apps by commenting here. And let us know if there is an engineering app on your wish list that you'd like to see developed.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

What Shanghai's Apple Store Tells Us about the Future of the Chinese Manufacturing Market

On Sunday I walked the length of the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Walkway, about 45 minutes round trip. Near one end of this upscale retail mall I came across a large crowd pressing its way into a huge Apple store.

It looked like the sort of crowd you'd expect the day they release a new iPhone model. The fist floor was filled with long tables set up with iPad, iPhone, and Mac demos. Downstairs was filled with counters where you could consult with technical associates about your Apple purchase.

Judging from the crowd at the store, and the number of iPhones and iPads I see on the street, in restaurants and on the trains, Apple’s growing influence is as big in China as it is in the US.

At the top of today’s business section of the English language China Daily, a headline proclaimed “Chinese manufacturers’ interest in innovation was fanned by Apple products, Shanghai Expo.”

In the story, China Daily’s Cai Jing reports “the popularity of the iPad and other Apple products has awakened Chinese manufacturers’ passion for creativity.” The news story also credits the recent Shanghai 2010 Expo as playing a role in boosting the area’s creative industry. Yang Jeiming, a product designer with his own company, says he constantly hears manufacturing clients tell him, “I want something as chic as an iPad.”

The article reports that Shanghai’s so-called creative industry employed 1.08 million people, mostly design professionals. These creative companies accounted for 10 percent of Shanghai’s GDP in 2010, according to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau.

Advertising and exhibition services achieved the highest growth rate (71.4 percent in 2010), followed by industrial design (25.2 percent). Higher growth is expected for both advertising and industrial design studios as a result of the economic problems in Europe and the US, which has prompted Chinese manufacturers to look to domestic markets to fill in for declining exports.

Wang Yang, a product designer in Shanghai, told the newspaper, “Since the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 2008, an increasing number of domestic manufacturers have asked us to improve the design and function of their product.”

A Drive for Higher Quality in the Domestic Market
Yesterday, I met with William Wu, General Manager of the Colormax equipment manufacturing plant in Wuxi, China. He has also seen an increase in business this year from Chinese manufacturers serving the domestic market. He said Chinese processors are purchasing higher-quality equipment, particularly loss-in-weight feeders, that can help them improve the quality of their end products.

Colormax is a K-Tron company that offers Chinese process industries an affordable combination of Western control technology and locally-produced mechanical components. Wu says China’s manufacturers are attracted to the higher Western standards Colormax follows in the quality of the equipment it makes, the level of service it offers and faster delivery times.

Quality in Food and Pharmaceutical Industries Through Automation
Today I met with William Tang, General Manager and Sales Director for China in K-Tron’s Shanghai office. He told me he is seeing a significant increase in interest from China’s food and pharmaceutical industries. “Quality through material handling automation is their priority,” he said, as they strive to meet higher government standards and win consumer confidence.

Tang said Chinese food and pharmaceutical manufacturers need to upgrade their material handling systems on a number of fronts. “They are replacing manual systems with automated conveying and feeding systems,” he said. “Automated conveying systems lessen the possibility of contamination,” he said, which is “a very important consideration.”

Tang said K-Tron’s gravimetric feeders are helping to upgrade the critical end-quality of Chinese food and pharmaceutical products, and the feeder controls provide validation of what went into the product.

Need to Earn Consumer Confidence Illustrated
The importance for Chinese manufacturers to win domestic consumer confidence was brought home to me in a very personal way when a Chinese friend took me to a nearby pharmacy. I wanted to buy a Chinese herbal remedy for cough and sore throat. I’m taking an antibiotic, but I’m leading workshops over the next three days and want to be sure I don’t lose my voice.

She recommended a bottle of heavy black syrup with 18 different herbs. The most important selling point, she said, is that the medicine is made in Hong Kong, not mainland China.

The remedy, by the way, tasted surprisingly good and seems to be helping. Wouldn’t it be a delicious remedy for the Chinese domestic industry, if with the help of Western feeding and conveying technology like K-Tron’s, China’s consumers start buying Chinese processed foods and medicines with confidence. And they are actually made in China.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Wastewater Gas Makes Hydrogen Fuel

Air Products began pumping hydrogen generated from a California municipal wastewater treatment plant into fuel cell vehicles this month. In addition to generating hydrogen, the project also creates electricity and heat for the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) in Fountain Valley, CA.

Methane gas from the facility's wastewater treatment holding tanks enters a purification system and then feeds into a fuel cell where it is reformed to hydrogen. This fuel cell produces electricity for use at the OCSD facility. Hydrogen not used by the fuel cell in creating electricity to operate the facility is further purified to vehicle grade for automobile fuel cells. According to Air Products, the process will produce enough hydrogen to fuel 25 to 50 electric vehicles per day, plus generate 250 kilowatts of electricity for the plant.

Hydrogen from renewable sources is required to be in the mix in fueling stations in California. The project received partial funding from the United States Department of Energy and involved the OCSD, Air Products, FuelCell Energy (a fuel cell manufacturer), the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, the California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Air quality is a major issue in this Southern California region, and emissions are heavily regulated. The project seeks do demonstrate how power, heat and a transportation fuel with no emissions can be generated from a renewable source. Other feedstock sources such as agricultural, food, and brewery wastes and landfill gas can also use this technology.

Air Products is a global supplier of hydrogen and has been a leader in developing hydrogen fueling stations with more than 50 patents in hydrogen dispensing technology. Air Products has long served the huge industrial market for hydrogen, where it is used in refining crude oil, in treating metals, and to hydrogenate oils and fats in the food industry. Other important uses are found in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and in the manufacture of semiconductors.

While many see hydrogen as the fuel of the future, it cannot compete economically today with the major hydrocarbon fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. According to the National Energy Education Development Project (www.need.org), hydrogen from electrolysis is ten times more costly than natural gas and three times more costly than gasoline per Btu.

In a two-page white paper on hydrogen (download the PDF here), NEED explains that industry produces most of its hydrogen in a process called steam reforming, where high-temperature steam separates hydrogen from the carbon atoms in methane (CH4). While the NEED paper calls this the most cost effective way to produce hydrogen, it points out the downside is it uses fossil fuels both in the manufacturing process and as the heat source.

Unless, of course, the methane comes from wastewater. Then you've got a whole new equation, which is what Air Products hopes to demonstrate in Fountain Valley.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

5 Drivers of Google's Engineering Ethic

"If we can't win on quality, we shouldn't win at all" Google's co-founder Larry Page told the company's new brand manager, Douglas Edwards. And quality at Google, Edwards was to learn quickly, rests solely with the brilliant engineers Google was hiring as fast as it could find them.

In his new book, I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, Edwards tells the story of Google's formative years, as it zoomed from an unknown late-comer to the search engine field to the dominator of search, email, advertising and many other online activities. While the book is more than an ode to the glories of brilliant engineering--there are lots of insider stories of human excesses and engineers run-amok--I found myself noting how frequently the Google story centered on its remarkably strong engineering ethic. I found five central characteristics that seem to me to be central to Google's engineering ethic.

1. Branded by Engineering
Though he was Google's brand manager, Edwards makes no claim to building the Google brand. "The brand was built on product, and the product was built by engineers," Edwards declares from the outset. The product that distinguished Google in seach back then and continues to keep them ahead of the competition today, is Google's PageRank algorithm, which was the first to look at in-bound links to a web page as a measure of the page's relevance to a user's search.

Google started in 1996 as a joint research project by Stanford grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They called their project "Backrub" and changed the name to Google in 1997, based on the mathematical term googol, a very large number (10¹⁰⁰). They moved the operation to a friend's garage and incorporated in September 1998. In 1999 they received $50 million in startup funding from two of Silicon Valley's leading venture capital firms.

2. Efficiency Valued Above All
"Efficiency, I would learn very quickly, is valued highly among those who live to make things better," Edwards observes. It was likely this nearly ruthless dedication to efficiency that made Google so disruptive to so many businesses, undercutting the less-efficient advertising model, for example, that had allowed newspapers and magazine to thrive for a very long time.

"Engineers rebel at inefficiency," Edwards writes. "Larry Page more than anyone I ever met, hated systems that ate hours and produced suboptimal results. His burning passion was to help the world stop wasting his time."

3. The Fast Change Imperative
This drive for quality and efficiency leads Google's engineers to another game-changing characteristic of their business model: fast, frequent small changes to their product that would enhance its value to the user.

"Our engineers made quick data-based decisions and implemented them. If the numbers said changing A to B would improve product X, why not do it now," Edwards asks. He sees this urgent mindset to change things now as the driving force of Google's success. "Engineers knew how to make things better, and every minute, every second we delayed improvements, users had to endure sub-optimal interactions with our site."

4. Build the Team
Urs Hölzle is a brilliant Swiss engineer who heads Google's engineering department. Edwards writes that Hölzle's greatest accomplishment was "building the team that built Google." One of the toughest lessons for many people--especially for those who have been highly effective at their craft, whether it's engineering, or selling or writing ad copy--is to leverage that skill through others. Edwards tells how Hölzle continually urged his staff to extend themselves through others:

"Your greatest impact as an engineer," he would tell them, "comes through hiring someone as good as you or better... because over the next year, they will double your productivity. There's nothing else you can do to double your productivity. Even if you"re a genius, that's extraordinarily unlikely to happen."

5. Grow the Company
Companies must grow to keep faith with their engineering ethic. It's not just about profits and satisfying shareholders. Sure, if you don't show quarter-to-quarter earnings growth, your stock gets hammered. But the Google story suggests another, more basic reason why companies have to grow. If you're not growing, you can't build a team. If you're not growing, you can't continue to innovate and push forward quickly with new improvements to your product. If you're not growing, there is little your engineers can do to build the higher quality that builds a higher brand value.

Google went public on August 19, 2004, and by March 4, 2005, Edwards departed Google, having hit "the startup jackpot." He no longer needed to work for the money, and it seems he no longer saw a role for himself at Google that was worth the struggle. He concludes that impatience remains Google's one big flaw: "impatience with those not quick enough to grasp Google's vision." Now that the company is so big and so dominant in so many areas of the Internet, their impatience is more likely to be perceived as arrogant and even sinister.

Yet Edwards admits that after Google he finds himself more impatient with "the way the world works." He asks:

Why is it so hard to schedule a DVR recording
Why aren't traffic signals timed to optimize rush hour traffic flow
Why does the customer service representative ask for your customer number after you"ve already keyed it in for the robot that answered the your call

"These are all solvable problems," he concludes. 'smart people, motivated to make things better, can do almost anything. I feel lucky to have seen firsthand just how true that is."

- "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edwards is available in hardcover at Amazon.com for $15.62. I downloaded the Kindle version for my iPad for $14.06.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

The Big Thirst: Can Industry Solve Our Water Problems Before It's Too Late?

Charles Fishman says we all think we know water, but we don't really understand water. In fact, our thinking about water, he holds, is sometimes dangerously wrong.

All the world's cultures and religions and languages are filled to the brim with images and stories of water. In the developed countries, clean drinking water is so easy to obtain and so cheap to use that we never give it a thought. Even in the desert, we can turn a tap and water flows freely into our glasses, fills our tubs and swimming pools, and waters our lawns and gardens and golf courses.

Fishman worries that this seeming abundance of water, and our resulting blindness to pricing and deploying water more efficiently, will likely lead to catastrophic water shortages.

Around the World of Water
Fishman seeks to cure our ignorance of water with a lengthy review of water facts and science, and a globe-hopping tour of water and how we use and misuse it in industrial, agricultural, commercial and residential applications.

In a visit to IBM's huge chip-making plant in Burlington, Vermont, we learn of the huge amount of super-pure water they must produce to create their computer chips. We see how they have learned over time to think of water as resource that can be managed much more efficiently, significantly reducing both water and energy costs. But even with all their savings this one IBM plant still uses 3.2 million gallons of water a day.

Industry and agriculture are prodigious users of water:

Fishman notes one ton of steel takes 300 tons of water
49 percent of water use in the US is for power plants
It takes 250 gallons of water per person per day to generate enough electricity for a single home
It takes five liters of water to produce a two-liter bottle of coke
In water-short Australia, a single wool processing factory uses 380,000 gallons of water daily
Also in Australia, a single farmer needs 6 billion liters of water to grow rice on his 10,450 acres

The good news about water is that it is never destroyed or used up. Fishman writes that we're drinking the same water today that the dinosaurs drank. The challenge is to use water efficiently, and to find affordable ways to make it available where it is most needed. Fishman appears to favor greater use of market pricing so that everyone has an incentive to use water effectively. He cites examples, such as the IBM plant in Vermont, where industry has been a leader in developing technology and procedures that help us use water more efficiently.

"Except for air and water," he notes, "…we pay for almost everything else in life that is essential; we entrust everything, from electricity to hospitals, to private companies." But Fishman worries a few pages later that "…it's also vital not to let business get so far ahead that we cede the future of water to commercial interests."

Despite his concerns about how far to trust business, Fishman seems most optimistic about industry's ability to create technical solutions that can maintain our lifeline to water. "Technology is making it easier to solve almost any water problem," he writes. He sees the real problem will be getting people and political leaders to recognize the problems, and understand and accept the technical solutions before it's too late.

As Fishman points out, "…running out of water is like slipping off the edge of a cliff—it's hard to be saved." Fishman wants us to save our water supplies before it's too late for the whole of civilization to be rescued.

- The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman is published by Free Press (400 pages). I bought it as a Kindle eBook on Amazon for $12.99.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Study Says Asia Leads Global Economic Super-cycle

With all the news of political upheavals, rising energy prices and natural disasters, it can be hard to believe that the recent spate of good economic news can last. Yet in the long run, a strong upward trend in the world economy may be the bigger story.

According to a 150-page study released by Standard Chartered Bank (PDF, 4.78 MB), the world is in "a sustained period of high economic growth, or super-cycle" that started in 2000 and is expected to last for another 20 years or more. Despite two global recessions (2001–2002 and 2008–2009), the report shows global output increased more than 50 percent in the last decade. By 2030 Standard Charter predicts the global economy will reach $300 trillion, up from $62 trillion today.

The report defines a super-cycle as a period of exceptionally high global growth, "lasting a generation or more, driven by increasing trade, high rates of investment, urbanization and technological innovation and characterized by the emergence of large, new economies, first seen in high catch-up growth rates across the emerging world." The report points to two previous super-cycles: from 1870 to 1913 and from the end of the Second World War to the oil crisis of 1973.

This new, 21st century super-cycle is expected to last until at least 2030.It is being propelled by emerging markets such as India, China, Indonesia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. "Hundreds of millions of people are likely to enter the global workforce," the study reports, "driving urbanization, high rates of investment and technological innovation. While earlier super-cycles were driven by the comparatively small populations in the West, the current super-cycle will involve 85 per cent of the world population."

Asia in particular is expected to see sustained and dramatic growth. The study forecasts that living standards, measured by real per capita income, will have increased nine-fold in China and India between 2000 and 2030. "Rising personal incomes will push billions of people into the middle classes and drive consumption which will spur domestic economic growth," according to the study. China is predicted to be the largest global economy by 2030, passing the United States. India is expected to be the third largest economy.

Standard Chartered was formed in 1969 through a merger of the Standard Bank of British South Africa, founded in 1863, and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, founded in 1853. The bank reports that 90 per cent of its income and profits come from operations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The Short Term Economic News
March was indeed a good month for economic news around the world, with capital equipment sales strong across the globe. U.S. government reports for March showed a continued upward trend in the economy and unemployment continued downward, though still high compared to pre-recession levels.

In March the Conveyor Equipment Manufacturers Association (CEMA) reported that 2010 shipments in North America were up 9.6%. CEMA estimates that shipments totaled $6.642 billion for 2010, an increase of $584 million from 2009 shipments of $6.058 billion. New orders were estimated to total $6.85 billion in 2010, up $1.14 billion over 2009, an increase of 19.96%.

Process Equipment Sales in the Short and Long Term
Economists have long considered industrial equipment sales to be a lagging indicator of the business cycle: the equipment business can remain strong for many months after a recession starts and remain in the dumps long after the larger economy has recovered. When it comes to longer-cycle trends, however, we might expect to see equipment sales—especially process equipment—to be a leader in sustaining a super-cycle. It will take a significant increase in material processing capacity to create a $300 trillion world economy by 2030.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

What a Shocking Experience!

Every once in awhile I come across something that is worthwhile repeating and sharing with others. usually some lesson regarding safety or how to improve a process, measurement or material sensing. In this case I ran across a white paper written by Michael O'Brien, Product Manager for Newson Gale, Ltd. with headquarters located in Nottingham, England (I wonder who the sheriff is? - I just couldn't resist that commentary). They have a location in Jackson, NJ as well. This was of interest to me, not just because of the safety aspect to protect against dust explosions (see a dust explosion story by clicking here) but because of the impact static discharge can have on level sensors.

Not all dust explosions are started by static electricity discharges, but it does happen and sometimes the source of ignition is not a certainty. The previously mentioned white paper indicates that "walking across a carpet can generate 35,000 volts on a person". When you combine this type of voltage potential on a highly conductive metal object the energy discharge can be above that which is known to create explosions in the presence of flammable vapors. This has even happened at gas pumps:

Static discharge can occur often during the processing, conveying, handling and storage of bulk solids. Consider a pneumatic conveying system which is used to move or transfer plastic pellet or resin from storage silos to machine hoppers. Since most pipe or tubing, and vessels are made from aluminum or steel the resistance to electric charge transfer is very low (aluminum is 2.82 x 10 to the -8 power; dang how do you make the -8 superscript in TypePad LOL). This means that static will discharge from these metals (your piping, chutes and bins) very easily!

Static discharge not only can create a hazardous explosion, it can also be the source of damage to sensors in contact with the material or the material bins and piping. Those sensors commonly affected are RF Admittance/capacitance units and the Capacitive Proximity Switch, both used often. The later tends to be more sensitive to the effects from static discharge because the former are usually manufactured with adequate protection against some level of static discharge.

So how do we address the problems associated with static discharge in an industrial bulk solid processing operation? The standards all seem to agree, as the aforementioned white paper points out, proper grounding of processing, conveying and storage equipment! The white paper points out that this is the single most important thing you can do to prevent static discharge caused explosions. By the same action you remove a possible threat to your sensors. How good does the ground have to be? Good. Less than 10ohms resistance between the metal components and ground. Static electricity must discharge quickly to the earth ground plane within the facility to protect your facility against hazardous dust explosions and to protect your sensors attached to this equipment.

Joe Lewis

Blue Level Technologies

Engineering Students Learn Joy of Local Tech

A team of Rowan University engineering students recently traveled to La Ceiba, El Salvador to install biosand water filter systems. The filters are part of a pilot program that serves ten homes in the small village, with more to come in future visits. The students are members of Rowan University's chapter of Engineers without Borders (EWB), which has some 250 chapters in the U.S., including 180 chapters on university campuses.

This story provides an important lesson beyond how these student-engineers found personal fulfillment in "making the world a better place." There is a larger story of how organizations are now able to focus on small, "local tech" projects as the way to get things done.
EWB-USA currently has more than 350 active projects in 45 developing countries around the world including water, renewable energy, sanitation and construction projects, such as a bridge across a mountain river. These projects are completed in partnership with local communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). All chapters work with communities for a minimum of five years:

"EWB-USA's unique grassroots approach requires that all program proposals come directly from the communities themselves. This increases the likelihood of success by ensuring that the needs addressed by our chapters are being identified and driven by the community. Every program begins with an assessment trip where the chapter performs a community needs assessment and works with the community to identify their priorities. During the following years the chapter returns to perform further assessment, implementation, training, and monitoring and evaluation trips. Throughout the program community members receive training on the maintenance and operation of their infrastructure and a financial mechanism is established to ensure long term economic sustainability."

You could think of EWB's approach to these small-scale infrastructure projects as "long tail engineering," following the online marketing pattern Chris Anderson described in an October 2004 Wired Magazine article and later in a book published in 2006. With its ability to share information instantly and at very low cost, the Internet has tipped the value proposition of engineered projects from mass solutions, brought to us via mass production and mass communication.

Now organizations can fund lower cost, local solutions, with easy to produce custom solutions that rely on targeted, very local communication. To get the benefits of economies of scale, mass solutions required large-scale, one-size-fits-all projects.

Today, the Internet makes it possible to share engineering expertise cost-effectively for customized, very small, truly localized projects.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

The Next Age: When the 21st Century Really Arrives

The calendar says we're ten years into the new century, but so far things haven't felt much different from 1999. That could change soon. There's a good chance 2011 will mark the true beginning of a truly new age.

It took two decades for the 20th century to get up to full steam, and for the "roaring 20s" to launch a new age. Known as the Jazz Age, the twenties set the stage for the technology-driven culmination of what historians call the Modern Age, an era of science and technology that started approximately with Johannes Gutenberg's printing press in 1436 and extended beyond the Postmodern 1950s and 60s, to include the Atomic Age, the Space Age, and the dawn of the Internet Age.

But since we're in the Internet Age, and things happen faster in Internet time, the 21st century's Next Age, whatever we call it, is likely to arrive sooner than expected. Here are just a few of the signs that the Next Age is here:

Moore's Law continues driving computing costs down, and that's driving everything smaller, lighter, faster, smarter and networked. Computers have gone from mainframe to mini to micro/PC to mobile. At Monaco Media Forum, Ericson CEO predicted 50 billion connected devices by 2020 and a truly "networked society." (See MMF 2010 Keynote on YouTube, "Internet 2.0: Mobile changes everything," by Hans Vestberg, President & CEO, Ericsson).

But it's not just people getting connected by the Internet. Where the numbers get really big--and really interesting to those of us in the industrial equipment business--is what has been called the Internet of Things. "The next big revolution that will happen is the Internet of things," Cisco Chief Technology Officer Padma Warrior said at the 2010 CTIA Wireless Trade Show in Las Vegas. She predicted 1 trillion connected devices by 2013.

Networked things in a process include sensors, which can monitor and report process status, actuators, which can trigger an action, and controllers. Actions based on an input from a sensor are turned into a command by a controller. An example from my world of process equipment would be a Smart Force Transducer (made smart by an on-board microprocessor) that sends a digital weight signal to a feeder controller (also dependent on a microprocessor), that controls the speed of a motor (the actuator) that turns the screws of a loss-in-weight feeder.

According to K-Tron CTO Jim Foley, one of the biggest gains yet to be realized by the Network of Things in the process industries will be in terms of feeder system support. "A big trend in industrial networking," Foley said, "has been the near-universal acceptance of Ethernet ." He said all the industrial network protocols are now able to run on top of Ethernet, which is very easy to connect to either within the factory or remotely. This offers the possibility of instant remote diagnostics and troubleshooting.

"We have the tools now," Foley said, "to provide remote support, and the advantages to our customers are obviously huge. The only thing missing is for processors to put in place the safeguards they feel necessary to grant our service people the access."

The Internet Age doesn't simply grow at an astounding pace: It keeps changing and morphing in entirely unpredicted ways. Its impact spreads from how we market and sell our products to how we service our customers. It transforms our society, our children, our employees and our customers.

When social media hit the Internet scene in the last decade, it so changed the landscape we gave it its own name, Web 2.0. Now, smart phones and their apps, followed closely by tablets and e-books, have once again transformed the Internet landscape. Today's Internet is more social than ever, highly search-driven, far more local in language and culture, and is moving far beyond the desktop. What does all this mean to industry?

In an article on CIO.com titled "The Internet of Things and the Cloud CIO of the Future," Bernard Golden, author of the best-selling "Virtualization for Dummies," wrote:

"The simple fact is that everyone — and that includes (perhaps especially includes) those of us in the technology industry — underestimates the growth of ever-cheaper computing devices. To quote one industry luminary, later hoisted on his own petard, Ken Olsen, "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." Olsen now is laughed at for such an attitude, but the fact is, for the reality of the market as he saw it at the time, it was completely appropriate. But he completely missed how the market exploded once the reduced cost of personal computing enabled entire new uses for computers…. Ken Olsen's example indicates that one is better served in keeping one's eyes on the horizon rather than the well-trod ground at one's feet."

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Illustration: Where there's smoke there's fire by Russell Patterson

My Holiday Gift List Starts with "i"

People have asked me what gifts are on my short list for those wanting the latest in technology. The short answer is anything that starts with "i" as in iPhone and especially iPad. The iPhone set speed records for its rate of adoption, and the iPad is proving to be even more phenomenal.

The business world's road warriors have led the charge. On every flight I take I see an increasing number of iPads as I walk down the aisle towards my seat. Before the flight they're checking last minute email, or getting the latest news. During the flight, they're watching a movie, reviewing a document or working on a presentation. You could do all these things with a notebook computer or a smart phone, but the iPad makes it so much easier and far more fun.

In September I talked with a lady at the Cincinnati airport, one of a half dozen or so using iPads as we waited for our flight. She's a corporate trainer, mostly working with small groups. With the iPad she can leave the PC and projector home, reducing both the weight and complexity of the equipment she must carry. Her company wasn't ready to spring for this new technology; so her husband bought her one for her birthday.

The iPad is one of those unique gifts that fits everyone of every age. I know a physician who is giving iPads to all five of his children, who range in age from 8 to 18. I'm giving one to my wife for Christmas, and I know several other men whose wives are getting the same. On Thanksgiving Day, my four-year-old grandson walked in the door playing "Angry Birds" on his mother's iPad.

It all started with the iPod, and with each new addition to its cool iTools, Apple has created what Seth Godin might call an iTribe. In his classic little book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Godin describes how today's successful organizations have leaders, not managers. Managers are cynics. Leaders have hope and infect their followers with hope. And magic. Every Apple iProduct has been filled with magic. The first time people hold the bright iPad screen in their hands, they say "Wow!"

That's why, like so many others, I put the iPad at the top of my gift giving list this year. It's magic.

Talent Drives Growth for Firms that Follow "Third Path"

John Hagel III had just 10 minutes to tell us how he's found a "third path" to growth. Hagel was the Keynote speaker at the awards ceremony for Deloitte's 2010 Greater Philadelphia Fast 50. The 10-minute limit was a self-imposed constraint Hagel placed on himself so the audience could get home in time to see the Philadelphia Phillies play the San Francisco Giants. It turned out to be the last game the Phillies would win this year.

I was at the Deloitte event with Bob Wisniewski who was accepting an award for K-Tron International. For the second year running K-Tron has been named to Deloitte's annual list of the fastest growing technology, life sciences and clean technology companies in the region. Though his presentation was cut short, Hagel's message resonated loudly for those who were present.

Hagel said it's not development of major new products or services (the first path) that's going to drive growth in the future. While innovation remains important and is a good starting point for growth, good ideas are quickly copied and improved upon and don't remain a competitive advantage for long. Major acquisitions (the second path) present their own challenges, and the business landscape is littered with big acquisions gone wrong.

The third path is what Hagel calls "leveraged growth," and he's quick to add that doesn't mean financial leverage. It's leveraging your company's capability to add more value for your customers. The path to more customer value, he says, lies in your company's talent development. This secret to future growth is at the heart of a major new book Hagel has written with John Seely Brown and Lang Davidson: The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion (link to buy book on Amazon.com).

You can learn more about Hagel's books and his ideas on his website, Edge Perspectives. If you sign up for the authors' newsletter, you can instantly download six e-booklets :

Pursuing Passion
Shaping Serendipity
Talent: The Dilbert Paradox
From Passion to Potential
Three Levels of Pull
Passion versus Obsession

I have not yet read the book but I did download and read the six booklets. In Booklet Three, Talent: The Dilbert Paradox, you can learn more about the authors' view on talent development:

"Putting talent development center stage… forces a reassessment of business strategy, particularly growth strategies. Companies that aren't growing rapidly often fail to provide a rich set of opportunities for their employees to develop. This occurs because slower-growing companies confront fewer new performance requirements and generally offer slower advancement opportunities than faster-growing ones. Slow growth companies are thus at a disadvantage in developing the talent of their employees. Over time, they will likely find it harder to attract and retain world-class talent.

"Consider Google's ability to attract top quality talent from slower growing technology companies. And notice how even Google has more recently been losing its own talent to still-faster growing companies like Facebook….

"At another level, the broad-based shift in many markets from product-based to service-based businesses also informs how well and how fast companies develop talent. Services typically offer the opportunity for richer and quicker market feedback loops and more rapid iterations on the design of customer offers than products do. As a result, companies with a higher percentage of services relative to product businesses will have a talent advantage."

Is your company taking the "third path" to growth? Do you work to develop your company's talent advantage? Are your equipment and systems suppliers adding value through their development and application of talented associates devoted to solving your process problems?

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Is it really "safe"?

Having spent the last 35 years of my life immersed in a wide variety of aspects in the process measurement and control industry I was recently asked for a recommendation regarding a level control device that would be able to control a bin filling operation and be "safe". What a soapbox I was handed.

The powder and bulk solids industry seems as though it lags in adopting some technology, at least from an instrumentation standpoint. However, it isn't just the risk averse nature of most powder and bulk processors, but it is that much instrumentation technology developed for use with liquids (80% of the overall measurement business in level measurement) does not cross over directly or seamlessly to powder and granular material level measurement. It takes time to adapt technology for the challenges of bulk solids.

The same exists in the area of instrument "safety". Driven by large legal and financial ramifications in the chemical and petrochemical area, as well as standards writing bodies such as the global IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), most "safety" related approaches are quickly developed and adopted in liquid oriented industries, such as chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical etc. So when asked, I summarize the four levels of basic safety regarding the function or output of a level measurement or monitoring device.

I recently posted to the Just Level Expert blog the following list. You might want to setup an RSS feed from that blog so you don't miss anything.

SAFEST: Material detection sensors certified to SIS and SIL according to IEC 61508 and 61511. Refer to this White Paper to explain more about this safety level. There are level indicators certified at this level, but primarily technology for liquid applications. It's an interesting subject if you are involved with process safety. Check it out.

SAFER: Self-validating level sensor technology that verifies its health and communicates it to you. This is only available with rotary paddle technology for solids and doesn't eliminate moving parts, the drive motor, and comes at quite a hefty price tag. Fail-Safe rotary paddle, RF and vibrating element devices are just as reliable and protect against many sensor failures, those that occur due to power disruptions.

SAFE: Material detection sensors that are FAIL-SAFE so the sensor output indicates an alarm if the power supply to the sensor fails. Rotary paddle units offer the highest value with this capability, but make sure you ask specifically for a unit that has a fail-safe output on power failure. RF and vibrating element sensors commonly provide this capability on a standard basis.

TAKING YOUR CHANCES: This is any material detection sensor that does not offer at least the SAFE level or above. This is common with some brands of rotary paddle bin level indicators, proximity sensors and also with tilt switches and diaphragm switches. Consider switching these out for the "SAFE" kind.

One final point, thinking about relying on your inventory level sensor for control? Don't! And don't take my word, listen to what the accident investigation report said regarding their findings and recommendations regarding the fuel depot explosion and fire late in 2005 that was estimated to cost 1 billion pounds (that's pounds sterling British currency). You can read about that in an editorial column from September 2009.

Got a question? Give us a call at 888-61LEVEL or 815-625-2224. Email us at bluelevel@blueleveltechnologies.com.

An Industrial Brand Nurtures Math and Science

When it comes to authentic branding, perhaps that earlier oil-spill icon, ExxonMobil, can teach BP a lesson. While the news this summer was focused on BP's massive spill, the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy completed its fifth year of what the Wall Street Journal's William McGurn called "summer camp for science teachers."

Teachers from third through fifth grades came to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ to learn how to become better teachers of math and science. About 2,600 teachers have attended the academy since 2005. Golfer Phil Mickelson is more than a celebrity name behind the project. According to McGurn, Mickelson has had a lifelong passion for math and science and even uses his understanding of vectors and probabilities to the advantage of his golf game.

McGurn has this to say about the future value of the academy:

Though there are few metrics about results, some outside research suggests that the training they receive is leading to increased use and frequency of math and science in the classrooms of academy alumni. Mr. Mickelson says it's a 15- to 20-year bet.

"It's hard to teach a subject when you don't feel good about it or lack confidence," [Mickelson] says. "We bring teachers on an all-expenses-paid trip… give them good instructors… treat them like professionals… by getting them excited about teaching science, we'll have more American kids excited about studying math and science."

Though 21 years have passed since the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in Alaska, it is safe to assume that this event is known far more widely than these math and science sessions. But consider the cumulative effect of 2,600 grade school teachers changing the life direction of countless students. Consider the children who have (and will in the future) become excited about math and science because a teacher attended this program. Consider what it means to our communities and our companies when our youth become proficient in math and science, even if they never pursue a career as an engineer or scientist.

The Mickelson academy for grade school teachers is one of eight math and science programs listed on the ExxonMobil website. In terms of public good, which do you think will pay the greater reward? BP's declaration of green energy or ExxonMobil's energizing commitment to making math and science accessible to more children?

I'm guessing technology knowledge is the bigger issue for companies in the long run. People who don't understand what you do, or how you do it, can't appreciate the extraordinary efforts you take to make the stuff they consume.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

An Industrial Branding Lesson from a Tar-Balled Oil Producer

BP's oil-slicked black eye is an environmental disaster spawning a public relations nightmare that could further undercut public appreciation for how industries contribute to the public good.

As BP demonstrated, smiley-face PR doesn't work in the long run. They are reported to have spent $200 million just in the first two years of their "Beyond Petroleum" campaign launched in 2000. Their new green logo, together with a concerted advertising and PR campaign, was aimed at transforming their public persona from oil producer (British Petroleum) to lovable provider of green energy.

The campaign won awards from the advertising industry, but even before their infamous oil slick, the company wasn't buying much love in certain sectors. Long before the mega-spill they were mocked by the public chorus for "greenwashing." A January 14, 2008 Ad Age article (BP: Coloring Public Opinion?) noted, "The ongoing campaign raises the question of whether advertising -- as much as action -- can change public perception of a corporation like BP, which is engaged in the often dirty business of finding and producing energy."

Post-spill, the BP name (and logo) have lost whatever green sheen their $200 million down payment might have bought them. Maybe in the long run BP did industry leaders a favor in teaching that industries, like people, can't buy love.

In BP's "Beyond Petroleum" Branding Strategy Became an Epic Failure (June 2, 2010) Jim Gregory wrote, "Branding is all about creating alignment of your company's business processes with its corporate culture. British Petroleum (BP) provides a case in point of a brand that got way out front of its business process and culture to produce tremendous exposure to risk."

Gregory is founder and CEO of CoreBrand, a global brand strategy and communications firm based in Stamford, Connecticut. The risk he cites might be termed the risk of the inauthentic brand. Bloggers warned long ago that you have to be committed to establishing an authentic voice in your online communication. For corporations that commitment needs to be backed by an authentic brand. As Gregory concludes, "Understanding one's brand in relation to its business and culture is critical for allocating budgets properly. More importantly, it should be a way of life for the management of any corporation."

How do you think industry can best portray itself in an environment ranging from indifferent to uninformed to hostile when it comes to anything industrial? If your company or industry has a success story to tell, send an email to don@porwderandbulk.com. We'll share your story here.

--About the art: the artistic take on the BP logo is by "mconner74" and is one of 1,231 entries submitted to a logo contest on LogoMyWay.com.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Want Better Inventory Accuracy? Know YOUR Stuff

Use of continuous level sensor technologies like wight & cable, radar, acoustic and others are almost always for inventory monitoring purposes when used with powders and other bulk solid materials. In these inventor applications the sensor is used to answer the question, "how much stuff do I have?". Using a continuous level sensor will generally make a measurement of the distance from the sensor to a point on the material surface with good accuracy. But this measurement does not really answer the question. Why? Because you bought or produced the material in inventory storage based on volume or weight.

Now you have to convert from distance or perhaps a material level at a single point to volume and then mass. But wait, your material surface isn't flat. Locating the level sensor for measuring distance at the optimum point on the material surface is a key variable to making your volume and mass calculating as accurate and precise as possible. You need to understand your material profile and work with the level sensor manufacturer to determine the best mounting location based on the best level sensing point on the material surface.

What about the material bulk density? Assuming a uniform bulk density throughout the pile of material in your silo may be inaccurate. Your material packs, therefore the bulk density at the top of the pile is somewhat lighter than that at the bottom. In addition, if you are buying this material from an outside source or if you produce the material in batches or lots, the bulk density may vary slightly from batch to batch. This also impacts the accuracy and precision of the calculated weight.

The most practical solution requires you to know your material profile and have a good average bulk density. Other solutions do exist, such as weighing the vessel/contents using a load system or using the latest technology that maps the material surface and accurately determines contents volume.

For additional information check out the below links:

White Paper Continuous Level and Inventory Monitoring of Powders and Bulk Solids

What You Know Can Make All The Difference

Surface Mapping

In addition, you can review an upcoming technical exclusive article in the August issue of Powder Bulk Solids magazine titled "The Problem with Measuring Levels". I'll update this blog with a link when this is available.

Joe Lewis