101 Tips for a Successful Automation Career (International Society of Automation)

101 Tips for a Successful Automation Career (International Society of Automation)

Do you want to: Know more than your boss? - Sleep like a baby before a start-up (less crying in the middle of the night)? - Get back early from start-ups? - Have vendors ask what you think works best? - Become the "go-to person?" - Have your CEO smile at you? - Inspire your children to become automation engineers? - Get knowing twinkles in your eyes like the technologist about to retire? - Get asked what your key to success is? - Get invited by operators to special meals in the control room kitchen? - Create a worldwide recognition of the value of the automation profession? - Become famous and a regular guest on late-night TV? - Be remembered for all the right reasons? While this book cannot guarantee the above results, the content should provide an automation engineer with a proven pathway to career and technical success. Much of the automation field relies on experience, and many believe that experience only comes with gray, thinning hair and plenty of wrinkles. However, with this book, we invite you to fully benefit from two lifetimes of hard-earned lessons and to avoid many of the technical and career pitfalls the authors encountered along the way. With 60 years of experience in automation and control, Greg McMillan and Hunter Vegas have installed equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars and managed thousands of projects. We have seen (and sometimes made) many mistakes, and we wear the scars and gray hair as proof. Luckily for you, we're ready to share what works and what doesn't, so the next generation can learn from our experience. So... save your hair! Avoid premature aging! And most importantly, save yourself a lot of pain and suffering! We really wish we'd had a book like this when we were starting out. Gregory K. McMillan, CAP, has more than 50 years of experience in industrial process automation, with an emphasis on the synergy of dynamic modeling and process control. He retired as a Senior Fellow from Solutia and a senior principal software engineer from Emerson Process Systems and Solutions. He was also an adjunct professor in the Washington University Saint Louis Chemical Engineering department from 2001 to 2004. McMillan is the author of numerous ISA books and columns on process control, and he has been the monthly Control Talk columnist for Control magazine since 2002. He started and guided the ISA Standards and Practices committee on ISA-TR5.9-2023, PID Algorithms and Performance Technical Report, and he wrote "Annex A - Valve Response and Control Loop Performance, Sources, Consequences, Fixes, and Specifications" in ISA-TR75.25.02-2000 (R2023), Control Valve Response Measurement from Step Inputs. McMillan's achievements include the ISA Kermit Fischer Environmental Award for pH control in 1991, appointment to ISA Fellow in 1991, the Control magazine Engineer of the Year Award for the Process Industry in 1994, induction into the Control magazine Process Automation Hall of Fame in 2001, selection as one of InTech magazine's 50 Most Influential Innovators in 2003, the ISA Life Achievement Award in 2010, and the ISA Mentoring Excellence award in 2020. He has a BS in engineering physics from Kansas University and an MS in control theory from Missouri University of Science and Technology, both with emphasis on industrial processes. Hunter Vegas, PE, received his BSEE degree from Tulane University in 1986. Upon graduating, he joined Babcock and Wilcox, Naval Nuclear Fuel Division in Lynchburg, Virginia, where his primary job responsibilities included robotic design and construction and advanced computer control. In 1987, he began working for American Cyanamid (now Cytec Industries) as an instrument engineer. In 1999, he joined a specially-formed group to develop next generation manufacturing equipment for a division of Bristol-Myers Squibb. In 2003, he joined Avid Solutions, Inc. as an engineering manager and lead project engineer, where he works today. He has executed nearly 2,000 instrumentation and control projects over his career, with budgets ranging from a few thousand to millions of dollars.