Mea Culpa and Attention to Detail

One of the readers took me task over the last couple of postings - and rightfully so.  Since mid February I have been traveling extensively and pressed to keep this blog current while on the road.  In my haste to keep content flowing I made several posts that were plainly just sloppy.  Punctuation and spelling, like for many engineers, is not my strong suit.  I usually rely on Microsoft Word to help me proofread my material.  For the last couple of posts I just typed them into the blogging tool we use.  Unfortunately it does not alert me to potential errors like Word does.

So an apology is due - but it leads me to something we all need to focus on and think about going forward, particularly in the field of automation.  And that is Professionalism.  The digital natives entering the workforce today have grown up using SMS and its associated shorthand as well as the text-guessing tools on smartphones.  Sometimes the meaning of a text message can be totally lost due to the phone's attempt at guessing what you are really trying to type.  

As engineers we need to be vigilant and ensure that we don't fall into the trap of letting the system guess our intent, or in our haste to not double-check our work.  As engineers, especially those that manage others, we need to lead by example and set standards of Professionalism.  Going forward I'll do my part by double and even triple checking my content before hitting the post button.

Dan Miklovic is blogger contributor for Control's blog Manufacturing 2010. You can email him at [email protected] or check out his Google+ profile.