PAS Musings

Corporate Huddle Success

Last week, the senior management team of PAS went offsite for a 3-day strategy session and team-building event. 

This was the first-ever offsite management retreat for the company, and it was superb!  For three solid days, we focused on company strategy and management team building.

At the end of the three days, our management team sees so much opportunity in all of our businesses – Integrity, Alarm Management and System Integration – that most significant roadblock to success is just us.

We have great people.

We have the technology.

We have many, many satisfied customers

>> come out to our User Conference next month to confirm all of these for yourself!

And, let’s not forget…

We now have marketing machine engaged to capture new markets (like our surge in power last year).

In short, PAS is on a roll…

–        growing 39% in 2005

–        growing 44% in 2006

–        and forecasting organic growth of 67% for 2007.

But our past is no guarantee of future success 

So we need to keep on doing the right things for our employees and for our customers.

And, as many successful companies know, to keep listening to your customers, selecting the best of all feedback received, and executing on the best strategies to bring to most value to all… well, that’s hard work.

Therein lies our biggest challenge.

Not in our competitors.

Not in the markets.

Not in the technologies.

Just in ourselves.

© Copyright PAS 2007.  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!

Corporate Huddle!

No blog this week - the management of PAS is gone offsite for a corporate huddle - strategizing and planning our path forward to best serve customers and employees!

Back next week...

Organic is Better

These days, my wife is buying more and more organic foods from the grocery store.

Most of the time she has just been doing it “under the radar”, so my daughter and I haven’t noticed.

But recently, my daughter commented that the “lettuce” not only looked strange,  like weeds, but also tasted a lot like… dirt.  To which my wife piped up and said that the greens were organic, and yes, weren’t they tasting great…

We disagreed.

Dirt was for pre-schoolers, not high schoolers says the daughter.

I agreed.

But my wife didn’t. She just went on to say that our taste buds were so used to processed food that they just didn’t know what good, wholesome, natural food – - like these organic greens – were supposed to taste like anymore.

Give us the processed stuff, we said – it’s easier.

And even if it is healthier, we’d rather go down with a smile on our faces…

That got me thinking about what we call organic growth in business.

Organic growth is hard work and doesn’t always taste good. It’s easier to do it by buying “pre-processed” companies and just add them to the mix.

Growth by acquisition sure looks better and faster.  And it often tastes better to shareholders… in the short term anyway.

But Mom is right, organic foods are better for you.

It may not taste as good in terms of speedy results, but organic growth (as opposed to growth-by-acquisition) makes for a stronger company over the long term.

One with more profits, more loyal employees, and even better products.

So that’s what we’re about at PAS.

Organic growth.

No acquisitions to build mass, no purchased revenues, no misfit products, and no collection of mismatched teams the world over.

No, at PAS, we want to build a solid company with solid products and loyal employees. And in doing so, we will focus on doing those things we do best.

Customers thank us for it.

With 39% organic growth in 2005.

44% organic growth in 2006.

And 67% organic growth planned for 2007.

And our shareholders are thinking that it tastes pretty good, too!

© Copyright PAS 2007.  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!

My Router Gets Hacked!

Last week, someone hacked into my wireless router.  No damage was done, since I was back to Phoenix for the weekend as part of my 100,000 mile commute (only 182 days to go – more on that later!).

Nevertheless, I was disturbed because I thought I had set everything up securely and according to the directions included.

Apparently, the default security mechanism for the router was WEP encryption, which uses a fixed encryption code, kind of like the old-style garage door openers.  (Read more here)

And since someone had “cracked” the code on my old-style garage door opener to break into our garage and house(!) about 5 years ago, I was a bit more concerned that the neighborhood hacker in my Houston apartment complex might be tracking my every move online, capturing userid’s, passwords, etc to eventually steal my identity.  Yikes!

So, like I did for my garage door opener, I upgraded the security mechanism on my wireless router to a rolling-code that regenerates automatically to keep the wannabe thieves out.

>> You might want to check the security mechanism on your home network router and if you’re not already using WPA (for rolling code protection), you should upgrade from WEP tonight.

Why tell the story about WEP and WPA in my blog? 

I re-tell this story make a point – that for every good engineer following directions and implementing the automation technologies as suggested by the manufacturers, there is a hacker, a thief, a disgruntled employee, or well-intentioned “help” from non-experts or users with fat fingers (see a prior blog on that) which push the limits of our systems and bring about changes that are not desired or even intended.

And if we’re lucky, the change is noticed and corrected for.

If we’re not so lucky, the change lurks in the background – as a reset constraint value, alarm limit, controller mode or other.

Lurking around until the day when plant conditions require a certain reaction from that specific constraint, alarm or controller – a reaction that is no longer what it should be.

In the process industries, we rely on the automation systems to respond as planned.  Plant performance depends on it.  Reliability depends on it.  As does safety, and our jobs and… our families.

But many of you still operate your plants without being sure of the integrity of their automation systems?

Sure, we followed the directions and configured everything just so when we set up our systems… oh so many years ago.  And today we assume all is OK, even as we have made many small adjustments here and there – assuming all is still OK.

But how can we be sure?

By using Integrity – the software from PAS designed to be sure. 

Check it out online at www.pas.com/integrity.aspx or contact us (sales@pas.com or call +1-281-286-6565) to learn more.

Integrity. 

Don’t run your plant without it.

Like the comfort of being sure at home, your family depends you being sure at work too.

Remember that when you set your next budget.

© Copyright PAS 2007.  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!