Databases
Before I get into today’s topic I’d like to mention a software project I am working on. For those of you who have subscribed to my blog via Mastering The Machine or otherwise, I have already sent you an e-mail. …
Category: Me
Genba
Have you ever been to Genba? Let me take you to a mystical, wonderful land that far too many people overlook in their travels. Genba is a Japanese word that means “the actual (or the real) place”. To understand a …
A Change of Direction
For the past 20 years I have been involved in the automation and machine-building industry in one form or another. In 1996 when I had a lot more energy and less common sense, I started my own integration business that …
Motivation
Last week I discussed a little bit about a project I was working on. It involved evaluating a system that had a lot of problems, mostly due to human error and lack of attention to detail. The follow-up involved having …
Video
A friend of mine made this video for me for this site. Allie Small and I were in a rock band from 1983-1985, he now owns a company called Signature Media Group near Atlanta. We only recently got back in …
Death of a Website
Well, its not really dead, but after having a developer make a nice professional site for me last year for my business, I replaced it today with a WordPress site so I could manage it myself. In last week’s post …
Happy New Year!
Hard to believe, but its been almost two years since I started this blog! I really wasn’t sure what this was going to be when I started. I had begun writing my book in about September of 2010 as a …
Automation Fair
As part of my picture-collecting for the book I decided to attend the Allen-Bradley Automation Fair again this year. I have attended the last few years in Orlando, Chicago and Nashville; this year it was in Philadelphia. There are always …
Kaizen
A major element of Lean methodology is Kaizen, or “improvement”. The term can refer to a continuous process or to a planned improvement event concentrating on a specific target. From the Industrial Automation: Hands On manuscript: Continuous improvement, or Kaizen, …
Engineering Philosophy
Yesterday I had some time to kill while my car was in the shop so I brought my notebook with me to do a little brainstorming. My wife and I had discussed some of her work situation in the morning …