One of the real treats for me is to speak with some of the great technologists we have here our Emerson Austin, Texas location. I caught up with Greg McMillan, a Control magazine hall-of-fame winner, and co-writer of the McMillan & Weiner series of humorous yet educational writings.
Greg provides his expertise to the DeltaV embedded advanced process control (APC) developments. He’s also just co-authored a book about to go to press on bioprocess modeling and control which will be available in the October timeframe. Several of Greg’s books are available in the DeltaV Bookstore. I’ll point out when this newest one becomes available in the bookstore or you can find it right now on the ISA website.
Greg has a way of making the complex understandable. I caught a sneak peak at the McMillan & Weiner August Control Talk column where Greg compares control concepts like loop dead time, open-loop and close-loop error, non-self regulating processes, etc. with the impacts of imbibing alcohol. Many of us can immediately grasp these control concepts when they hit so close to home. These analogies really help make difficult control theories easier to learn and retain.
As he has been doing for years, Greg will be presenting at the Emerson Exchange in early October. If you go (the Early Bird conference rate expires August 21st), make sure to check out one of his sessions. He’ll also be presenting in the next few weeks at Control magazine’s Automation Xchange where he’ll discuss talk about advanced control myths, case histories, and lessons learned. Some of these control myths Greg has shared in one of his columns so you can get a preview of his ideas.
This expertise in control in invaluable to future generations of control engineers and it’s great that Greg and many others continue to share their expertise with others.
