WBF honors Brandl, Emerson for work on ISA specifications

World Batch Forum presented its Thomas G. Fisher Award to Dennis Brandl, principal consultant of BR&L Consulting and Dave Emerson, principal system architect for Yokogawa Corp. of America. They were recognized for their contribution to the ISA-88 and ISA-85 specifications. The presentations were made during the WBF 2007 North American Conference in Baltimore.

By Staff June 15, 2007

World Batch Forum presented its Thomas G. Fisher Award to Dennis Brandl, principal consultant of BR&L Consulting and Dave Emerson, principal system architect for Yokogawa Corp. of America. They were recognized for their contribution to the ISA-88 and ISA-85 specifications. The presentations were made during the WBF 2007 North American Conference in Baltimore.

Established in 2003 to honor former WBF chairman Thomas G. Fisher, the award honors individuals for leadership in the development, teaching and popularization of technologies, services and techniques. Recipients are also enrolled as life members of WBF.

Brandl and Emerson worked with the WBF XML Working Group to produce the Batch Markup Language (BatchML) and the Business-To-Manufacturing Markup Language (B2MML). They were recognized for their work, collaboration, leadership and dedicated service in the development of the ISA-88 Batch Control Systems and ISA-95 Enterprise/Control Integration standards committees.

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. “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.”