Gary discusses how organizations can be insidious in enticing people into ethical lapses referring to the current news about Toyota and the Pope. Industrial Ethernet market share is next up for discussion followed by reading for his May issue of Automation World article about creating a safety culture. He finishes with thoughts about an interview with auto industry analyst James Harbour and whether automation will completely replace jobs.

Gary discusses the need for education, company sponsored education, and talks about entrepreneur education at Stanford, Vivek Wadhwa writing at TechCrunch on why America needs to invest in its workforce, a Robert Scoble video interview and finally refers to a Seth Godin blog with a video on what a teacher makes.

Gary discusses power and energy in this update on sustainable manufacturing as a corporate strategy.

Thoughts on automotive manufacturing pondering post by Kevin Kelly, is large petrochemical peaking for a new reality in process, networking, Ethernet, wireless sensor networks and the Internet of Things.

Gary discusses the rising stock prices for some automation companies, leadership, SME getting high school students involved in manufacturing, sustainability as a manufacturing model and wireless control.

In news from the last couple of weeks, Gary discusses changes to the upcoming Pack Expo, the need for visionary leadership, upcoming conferences for WBF and MESA.

Gary discusses happenings at the 14th annual ARC Forum in Orlando. There were product announcements from many companies, an indepth discussion of the multi-year Invensys strategy that has led to the formation of IOM, WBF and OMAC and their separation from ISA and a few thoughts about wireless from the Forum.

Gary reviews several earnings reports from the automation industry and then reports from MESA International and Cambashi research on manufacturers improving financial performance and manufacturing performance using well defined metrics and automated data gathering. The latest edition of the popular Packaging Automation Forum is announced. Then a few thoughts on Toyota, Lean and entrepreneurship in automotive manufacturing.