PAS Musings

What I Learned This Past Year

Here’s a sign of too much travel:  Southwest Airlines sent me a birthday card this year. 

It’s been just over a year since I started this 100,000 mile commute thing. 

After next summer, the youngest of our kids will be off to college and – if I’m a nice guy and make up my Grand Canyon mess-up – then my wife will move out to join me here and the long-distance commute will be over.

Here’s three things that I learned in the past 13 months commuting on Southwest Airlines:

1)     Be Nice.  Being nice always helps make the commute go by more quickly, especially on Southwest airlines, where the open seating on the airplane seems to encourage the passengers to talk more than they otherwise might. 

2)     Dress Nice & Wear Stripes.  When I wear a striped shirt and dress smart, I generally get invited to “pre-board” with the wheelchairs, babies and others needing extra time.  This only works when I dress nice, though.  Being 6ft-8-in (205cm) tall, getting on the plane early is important so this is a key rule for me.  After all, there are only 7 seats that fit me and my legs.

3)     Book Often & Early.  On Southwest, each ticket is valid for a year and can be applied to any other flight in case of cancellation.  This means I might buy tickets to go home on Thursday and Friday and then just use one of them and re-apply the funds from the other.  At any given time, I will have some thousands of dollars in my Southwest “bank account” – I like the flexibility and they like my business.

I learned a lot more on the job at PAS, and would need to write volumes to express it all, but here is a snapshot of some of these learnings:

1)     PAS has Great People.  In addition to the various Super-Geniuses around the organization, there are lots of highly-talented and highly-motivated people at PAS.  Just over 100 of them, at last count.  And working with winners like these makes even a commute like mine go by fast.

2)     PAS has Winning Technology.  I continue to be amazed at the range and depth of the technology at PAS – from the “Hidden Wizards”, to Alarm Management, Tools for Captain Integrity and more… PAS has about as broad a range of solutions and technology as a company this size can hold.  Opportunities abound.

3)     PAS is still a Relative Secret.  Our aim of 50%-plus growth for this year is about to become reality, and a good deal of that is due to our “getting the word out”.  PAS has had too few customer relationships in the past and all of that is changing now.  As our marketing efforts build, the future for the company (and my commute) look brighter by the week.  Why stop at 50% for 2007???

All in all, my first year at PAS has been a huge success and lots of fun – thanks to great people and superb solutions… and Southwest Airlines, of course!

If we haven’t met yet, we will… PAS is on a roll and we’ll be by your place soon.

Watch for us, or contact us today.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Avoiding The Grand Canyon

Recently, I posted an entry about how my wife signed me up to hike down the Grand Canyon with her, and included this picture indicating my desire to make this trip:

Today, she tells me the trip is off.  I am relieved, but only temporarily.

Here’s the story, with some bonus insight offered as to how it relates back to our control engineer friends…

Last week, as I was getting ready to leave the comforts of home in Phoenix for the joys of apartment life in Houston (all part of my 100,000 mile commute), I smashed my little toe right on the storage chest.

I’m sure that the chest moved ever so slightly since last time… and now, as I spun about to leave the room – BLAM!  SMASH!  CRASH!!

Ouch!

After having issues getting my foot into a shoe all week (maybe the toe is broken?), my wife decided I wouldn’t be ready for the 5,000-foot descent into the canyon planned for next week.

Grimacing on the outside, I agreed and smiled on the inside (sort of).

But like all things of this type, the problem didn’t go away – it just got delayed.  We’ll go down the canyon just as soon as I’m better she says…

I smile and agree.  After all, what else is a husband to do?

Now I have a sore toe and later still need to make the hike.

>> As a side note, the one bright spot in this is that my non-hiking friend Jim tells me he’s glad that I bashed my toe – it saves him from having to smash his hand with a hammer to avoid the hike… 

So how does this relate to the control engineer?

First – my documentation was not up to date.  The chest in my bedroom may have moved an inch but I didn’t know. 

This is like the engineer without up-to-date documentation and is unaware of changes made to the database/system/application by others – and then when he makes his next update – BLAM! – he suddenly finds that what he assumed was there is not, possibly crippling a key application, triggering a safety system shutdown or instigates who knows what kind of disaster?

Second – the commitment to hike the canyon with my wife didn’t go away – it just got delayed – possibly to a much more inconvenient date that is hotter or colder or wetter or generally worse than the original plan.

Similarly, the engineer’s dislike for backing up the control systems or real-time applications and his preference for other tasks doesn’t help anything.  Backups can be avoided and dismissed as unimportant – until they are needed.

And just as my reprieve from hiking the canyon is temporary, our engineer friend will also one day face the consequences of not taking care of the details.  Hopefully, lack of documentation or backup won’t lead to disaster by disconnection or deletion of that one critical signal that he thought was no longer used...

You might think that this won’t happen at your plant – but then that might be because those to whom it does happen don’t talk about it (for obvious reasons of self-preservation).

The conclusion – certain tasks may be nasty, but they still need doing.

For me there is no alternative.  I will hike the canyon (or find a new wife).

For the engineer, there’s Integrity.  Automatic, up-to-date documentation and backup for control systems and the rest of the real-time infrastructure.

Better not to operate your plant without it.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

The ASM Factor

The Alarm Management solutions offered by PAS, among others, are intended to help customers best handle unpleasant situations in plant operations.

Alarm Management helps minimize or even avoid these unpleasant situations, and works hand-in-hand with Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) solutions, as defined by The ASM Consortium and others like UCDS. 

Like Alarm Management, ASM is a big deal for many companies includes as key adherents companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Celanese and ConocoPhillips, among others. 

And now, the founder of the ASM world, Mr. Ian Nimmo, has graciously agreed to  participate with PAS in the promotion of Alarm Management as a means to reduce overall incidents in process plants world-wide.

This tying together of the ASM world with that of Alarm Management is BIG NEWS – these solutions complement each other perfectly.

ASM helps minimize the number of abnormal situations that occur.

Alarm Management helps minimize the impact of abnormal situations that do occur.

And now the world-renowned Ian Nimmo – president of UCDS and key FOUNDER of the ASM Consortium – teams with our own world-famous author, speaker and Principal Alarm Management Consultant, Mr. Bill Hollifield, to deliver the best-ever Alarm Management workshop.

Mark your calendar for December 7-8 to attend this melding of the ASM and Alarm Management world and sit at the feet of these giants to learn more than you thought possible in just two days!

See you there!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

The Grand Canyon & Integrity

Just last week, my wife informed me that she made reservations at Phantom Ranch, down at the bottom of th e Grand Canyon for November 28.

Biking, not hiking, is more my sport – but since she was gracious enough to join me for a 4-day bike ride through Germany, Austria & Switzerland this summer, I cannot now refuse her invitation for a 2-day stroll down the Grand Canyon.

Hiking the Grand Canyon requires preparation.  The nearly one mile of elevation change is akin to climbing three times the height of America's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago, in a single day.

And since the plan is to hike the more strenuous Kaibab Trail, some preparation is in order…  hiking boots, walking, gym time and more gym time… whatever it takes to get in as best a shape as I can in the flatlands of Houston…

Facing the Grand Canyon, I face two choices – ignore or prepare.

Control engineers across our customer base face the same two choices - ignore or prepare - each day regarding the protection and backup of their automation systems.

And, based on recent participation by PAS on various industry panels, most control engineers favor the “ignore” option when it comes to managing change and/or backing up their automation systems.

It's just more fun to build new control schemes...

Although their IT counterparts are all over change management and backups for the company’s business systems (people need to get paid, they say), the control engineers by and large say that they have no daily change management or backup process for the automation systems for which they are responsible (even plant production may be jeopardized by their failure).

The control engineer’s attitude is like me assuming that I can ignore any preparation for hiking the Grand Canyon – which of course if obviously foolish and only asking for trouble.

So… as much as my body may not want to prepare, I will force myself to do so – by telling myself again and again that the time invested in exercise and preparation is necessary to avoid both disaster and embarrassment (the latter being especially important since my wife already hikes 2-3 miles per day on the mountain near our home in Phoenix).

Similarly… our control engineer friends need to remind themselves of the danger of not enforcing a daily change management and backup process for their automation assets.  Not doing so can lead to disaster and embarrassment.

Although nobody disagrees with the need, it just seems so hard to do – after all, backups and change management are the LEAST exciting part of the job, right?

Which is exactly why we at PAS have developed the Integrity Change Management software – to allow the control engineer to automate the backup and change management processes for any automation assets, and focus on the more exciting bits of the job – increasing production with new control schemes and more.

Jokingly, we have introduced the control engineer’s hero as Super IntegrityMan.

Now if only there was a way to still satisfy my wife’s requirement of my hiking with her and not have to endure all that preparation and pain.

Super CanyonMan – are you out there??

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Halloween = PAS Family Event

Last Friday afternoon PAS was swarmed by little children dressed in their Halloween costumes as Superman, Batman, Mermaids, Princesses and other characters.  Lots of nice children…

Halloween is one of those times that we use to bring extra focus to the extended family at PAS. 

At PAS, we believe it’s important to share our workplace with children and spouses and, in some cases, the grandparents, too. 

An open workplace works well for everyone.  The extended family gets a chance to see where father or mother goes all day, who they work with and what they do.  And, in the case of Halloween, the employees get to have great fun by decorating the office and handing out candy and other goodies to little goblins. 

Having a job is about more than a paycheck or career, after all.

A great workplace offers growth opportunities, challenges our curiosity and brings out the best in us.  But it also must foster a culture that promotes balance between our professional and personal lives. 

And in the digital workplace where the problem solving doesn’t stop even after you get home, it is good to be able to bridge the two lives since the lines that separate them is becoming ever more invisible.

Having the kids dress up and come see mom or dad at work helps bridge work and  home life, and even more importantly, helps remind us all why we work and that we are more than an engineer, manager or other. 

Next on the list of special events is the Thanksgiving pot luck followed by our annual holiday dinner, which is a major late-into-the-night event with music, door prizes, dancing and ample fun. 

Who knows?  We might even do the arm-wrestling competition again!

PAS is not only successful but also a fun place to work…

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!