Meeting of the Minds: World Batch Forum 2004

Nearly 150 top engineering professionals gathered in Lincolnshire, Ill., recently for the World Batch Forum (WBF). The annual event provides attendees some of the highest quality information on batch processing technologies, techniques, and methodologies of conformance to the ISA88 batch standard. Everyone CONTROL talked to praised the quality and the content of the conference.

On the first evening of WBF, CONTROL's Walt Boyes presented 2004's inductees to the Process Automation Hall of Fame. The awards were given at a dinner function that was quietly underwritten by Emerson Process Measurement as a service to the profession.  This year's inductees were Tom Stout, Ted Williams, and Terry Blevins. It was noted that having the three inductees on the platform together formed a mini-history of distributed control from the first refinery control system (Stout) to the seminal research into control systems at Monsanto (Williams) that later became ProVox, to the modern distributed control fieldbus system (Blevins).