Brandl, Emerson receive Thomas G. Fisher award

Dennis Brandl and Dave Emerson honored at WBF for work on ISA-88 and ISA-95.

By Plant Engineering Staff May 14, 2007

WBF presented the Thomas G. Fisher Award to Dennis Brandl, principal consultant of BR&L Consulting, Inc ., and Dave Emerson, principal system architect, Yokogawa Corp. of America . They were recognized for their contribution to the ISA-88 and ISA-95 specifications. The announcement and presentations were made during the WBF 2007 North American Conference, held April 30 – May 3 at the Tremont Plaza Hotel in Baltimore.

Brandl and Emersonntrol Systems and ISA-95 Enterprise/Control Integration standards committees.

Designed to reduce operating costs and ensure off-the-shelf applications work together, BatchML and B2MML have been widely adopted in process manufacturing and provide implementation-ready forms of the standards that can be used to accelerate projects, enhance integration of information, standardize interfaces and provide configurable interfaces. BatchML is an XML schema implementation of the ISA-88 Batch Control System standard and B2MML is an XML schema implementation of the ISA-95 Enterprise/Control Integration standard.

“What they have done together makes it only proper that they receive this recognition at the same time,” said Lynn Craig, president, Manufacturing Automation Associates, and a WBF Trustee. “They worked together in the development and propagation of XML schemas based on the ISA-88 and ISA-95 standards. Their work, focused on bringing together many different information transfer approaches, has been outstanding and they embody the intent of the distinguished Thomas G. Fisher award. Only two other individuals have ever been recognized with this coveted award.”

Established in 2003 to honor Thomas G. Fisher, a former WBF chairman who greatly improved batch manufacturing standards and methods, the award recognizes outstanding leadership in the field of manufacturing process operation and control. It is presented to individuals who have demonstrated notable leadership in the development, teaching and popularization of technologies, services and techniques. Recipients are also enrolled as life members of WBF, entitling them to automatically renewed individual memberships.