After all is said and done, articles and books have been the main method of advancing and sharing the technology for industrial process control.
I don't know of an undergraduate degree in process automation. Chemical, electrical, mechanical, and systems engineering programs offer an undergraduate course or two on process control. However, the typical university control course needs to spend most of the time on Laplace transforms, frequency response, and state-space to provide a theoretical understanding and groundwork for graduate courses. Outside of chemical engineering the focus is more on set point response and signal noise for servo mechanism and aerospace control. Consequently, the student doesn't learn about the critical characteristics of control for the process industry where nonlinearities, deadtime, valve stick-slip, unmeasured load disturbances, and incredibly long time frames are the cause of most tuning and control loop performance problems. Throw into the mix the unknown features of proprietary PID algorithms, and you have a script for islands of expertise. I personally like tropical islands so maybe this is OK. I could retire to one and conduct web based courses instead of doing cross word puzzles.
Courses may not be the whole answer considering that more than 80% of the details presented are forgotten. The PowerPoint slides often don't tell the real story. In my days, professors used the chalk board with only passing references to a book so my only record of knowledge is in notes long gone. Maybe the best way to make courses have a greater long term value is by providing labs for hands-on learning and refresher exercises, key memorable concepts, and resources for reference and further investigation. Audio should be combined with the presentation as exemplified by the slidecast of my Boston ISA presentation Exceptional Process Control Opportunities.
Considering that people don't have time to read books maybe courses and seminars and the structure of books themselves could provide better direction to areas of specific interest to solve problems. This is an argument for electronic books with interactive queries and demos.
For process automation, the articles and books written by practitioners are our best way of capturing and advancing the technology. Unfortunately users are not given the time or priority to write and most companies are reluctant to disclose information that could be considered to provide a competitive advantage for manufacturing. Consequently, suppliers of automation systems and services write most of the magazine articles and books on the practical application of process control. University professors write most of the journal articles and technical conference papers on the theoretical advancements in process control. The two groups don't talk much to each other. The use of industrial control systems for labs is one glimmering area of hope for the meeting of minds from universities and industry (see my last entry on "Exceptional Opportunities in Process Control - Expertise Development" and the June 1, 2009 entry "What I have Learned? - Bridging the Gap between Universities and Industry").
For me writing books was a way of organizing and expanding knowledge gained on the job. I found it allowed me to put technologies to bed (at least temporarily) so I could clear my head for the next area of expertise. My serious technical books in order of oldest to most recent publication date are: Axial and Centrifugal Compressor Control, Biochemical Measurement and Control, Continuous Control Techniques for Distributed Control Systems, Tuning and Control Loop Performance, Advanced Temperature Measurement and Control, Process/Industrial Instruments and Controls Handbook, Good Tuning - A Pocket Guide, Advanced pH Measurement and Control, Advanced Control Unleashed, Models Unleashed, New Directions in Bioprocess Modeling and Control, and The Essentials of Modern Measurements and Final Elements. My favorite book, which is a mostly serious collection of case histories written in a humorous way, is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Control Room. My mostly humorous books in order of oldest to most recent publication date are: How to Become an Instrument Engineer - The Making of a Prima Donna, Logical Thoughts at 4:00 am, How to Become an Instrument Engineer - Part 1.523, Dispersing Heat Through Conviction, The Life and Times of an Automation Professional - an Illustrated Guide, and The Funnier Side of Retirement for Engineers and People of the Technical Persuasion. The last two books were written solely for comic relief.
While I had to largely write the books on my own time (except for the last serious one), the companies I worked for were supportive in terms of approval and recognition. In the end I expect books helped me along with my heroes Shinskey and Liptak to be the first group of inductees into Control magazine's Process Control Hall of Fame.
I think the following message titled "Why Books" from Ted Stillwell who is of the same vintage as me concisely offers "memories of the way we were."
Because I learned process control on the job books provided the only formal learning environment. Starting with the first treatment plant, with a control panel that would not fit through the door, I began my knowledge quest about instruments and process control. Chemical Engineering published Process Automation a 14-Part Series. My first book purchase was Liptaks' Instrument Engineers' Handbook that I read commuting back and forth to the office. The process control companies offered a great training ground for young engineers. Highly experienced application specialists at these companies wrote most of the articles and books on process control. I have five books by Shinskey, the most recent being Feedback Controllers for the Process Industries (McGraw-Hill 1994).
There are a number of management techniques which have been developed to improve quality management. Quality process control is based on using statistical analysis to calculate and forecast the performance of quality processes. One must have a basic understanding of statistics to appreciate the thinking that goes in to quality process control. Statistics is a quite threatening branch of mathematics that deals with variability. It is very complex and few people have command in the subject. However some of the thought that applies to quality process control can be explained easily enough without resorting to the mathematics. It is used to forecast and control of the performance of a system based on measurements of the output from the system.
I have had had my kindle 2 for about a month and feel confident in giving it a positive review. The device itself seems a bit awkward to me, maybe because it doesn't fit well in my smaller hands and feels to thin to hold by a corner, but I also bought the Amazon leather case, which makes the kindle feel more like holding a book, and protects it from scratches and bumps.
The Kindle 2 screen seems odd at first because it looks so unlike any other electronic screen I have ever seen. Electronic paper is an apt description because it looks just like paper. I have already spent hundreds of hours reading from my Kindle and it feels just as if a was reading off of paper, and this is important for me because reading off of any other screen for more than a few hours gives me a headache.
Plugging the Kindle into your computer is easy, as is transferring mobi and prc files to the device. If you needed to you could easily save your books on you pc, a memory device, or a disk, but the kindle really does hold over a thousand books.
The library is easy to navigate you can just type and click the page number you want to go to, or if you don't know where something is you can just type and search. I love the search feature. I can search within any book I have in my library, which is especially great when looking for quotations or verses in a large volume. You can also search the dictionary and wikipedia just as easily.
I have found the built-in dictionary to unexpectedly useful, and have yet to flummox it. You can run a search for words in the dictionary, but if you want a word defined from a book you are reading you can scroll to the word using the 5-way controller and it automatically defines it at the bottom of the screen.
The Experimental features such as text-to-speech and the basic web browser I don't really use, but I will say that I have found the text-to-speech feature best when using it to read a newspaper or a manual, basically anything that does not require a lot of vocal variety.
The thing that surprised me most about the Kindle 2 is that I have actually found it easier to read than a book. I don't just mean that it is more convenient to carry around than a library, which it is, but that reading books on the kindle is more comfortable and efficient. You never have to worry about losing you page or cracking the spine of your book, you just push one of the next page buttons and the page changes just as quickly as if you had your finger ready to flip to the next page of a paperback novel.
As far as the book selection Amazon probably has the largest non-fiction e-book selection, with most new releases costing only $9.99, though many are more, though they seem to go down in price as time goes by. There are also thousands of books, from the public domain, which are available on Amazon and other sites including many of my favorite classics. I don't think you will run out of things to read on your Kindle any time this millennium.
The most important thing to me about the kindle is that it really does disappear in you hands, so that you can focus on what your reading not how you're going to read it.
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