Like Putting Out Fire with Gasoline

It works either way. Say you’re an engineer and you’ve been implementing Ethernet for a lot of your control system communications. Then corporate tells you that getting manufacturing data moved into its enterprise systems is becoming a crucial competitive necessity. In order to accomplish this, you will have to work closely with someone from the information technology (IT) group. “Whoa! Hold on,” you think.

But what if you are that IT person to whom the manager comes and says, “We need to work more closely with manufacturing to help them with their networking and data modeling. So we need someone for a new Manufacturing IT position, and you’ve been chosen.”Even after more than ten years of joint projects, far too often, the two groups still don’t mix well. This issue of Automation World’s Industrial Ethernet Review looks at how some companies and people are beginning to work things out. When engineering and IT join forces, the company becomes stronger, more responsive and more efficient. But it takes top management commitment and an understanding of how the two sides differ. Remember, you're on the same team.

FOLLOW-UP WEBCAST

The information featured in this month’s publication will be expanded into a Webcast on Nov. 9 moderated by Automation World Managing Editor Wes Iversen. We are still lining up speakers, so if you have experience developing these engineering/IT relationships and would like to present, send Wes a note at [email protected] to be considered. You can view our previous Webcasts in the series on security and Ethernet I/O by going to www.automationworld.com/webcasts.