Visionaries just
don’t create great products or companies; sometimes they end up creating a new
market. Wonderware® founder, Dennis R. Morin,
was one such visionary entrepreneur. He created a whole new market segment
within the factory automation industry when he started Wonderware on April 1st
1987, a year after being laid off from Triconex®. [1]
In 2003, InTech, the
magazine of the International Society of Automation, listed Dennis Morin as one
of the 50 most influential innovators in the history of industrial automation,
along with the likes of Bill Gates and Peter G. Martin. [2]
As we start focusing on our
projects or priorities for 2016, we must take some time off to think about the
brand’s core values and what it takes to succeed in a slow-growth economy. Morin, in his 1994 Chamber of Commerce
interview, shared his thoughts and business philosophy beautifully.
Here are the excerpts from
his interview [1]:
“Keep trying. The reason that Wonderware is
successful is that I kept plugging away. This isn’t the first business I’ve
ever tried to do. But this is the first one that prompted anyone to ask what
the secret of success is.”
“Strive
for quality in every aspect of the business. We have an obsession with quality.
It’s pervasive. You must make quality a part of your cultural values. And
it’s not just quality of the product. If you have a lunch for employees, for
example, it should be a high-quality lunch with high-quality food. The
photographs on your walls, the documents you put together, the stationery, the
business cards, how your office looks – all should reflect quality thinking.”
“Don’t worry about competition. Think
about what you are doing, not what the other guy is doing. You remember that movie Cannonball Run? Well, this Italian driver gets
into a race car and rips off the rear-view mirror. That’s how I feel about
competition.”
“Don’t
fret about the economy, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The reason sales
go down, the reason GDP goes down, is because people expect them to go down. My
attitude about the recession and GDP and all of that? Quite frankly, I ignore
it totally. I don’t factor the economic environment into my business plans
whatsoever. I don’t like sitting around feeling like a victim of external
things beyond my control. ‘Grow thyself’. Growth
is not something that just happens. It’s something that is caused. Our
growth occurs because we make it happen. If you don’t make it happen, it ain’t
gonna happen.”
Between 1989 and 1995,
Wonderware didn’t have any real competition. Relentless focus on quality was
(and still is) the key driving factor that kept it ahead of the race. Story of
Wonderware is quite interesting and motivational. It has been recounted well in
the book "The History of a Safer World' by Gary L. Wilkinson. The name
‘Wonderware’ was supposed to be a temporary name, since Morin couldn’t think of
some catchy name. And the name stuck around. “Pinball Construction Set, an
early computer game, was the source of inspiration for Morin. It allowed players
to design their own pinball machines by placing flippers and bumpers where they
wanted.” [3]
Dennis Morin passed away
on the evening of December 31, 2012 after a vigorous battle with cancer. The company that Morin helped create is still
thriving as a Schneider Electric’s industrial software brand. InTouch, Wonderware’s
flagship product, is used in over one-third of the world’s industrial
facilities and still the world’s number one Human Machine Interface (HMI)
software. [4]
Wonderware brand now
boasts of an impressive range of supervisory HMI, manufacturing operations management and production information management solutions, with software products/offerings
like InTouch, System Platform, InTouch Machine Edition, Industrial Computers, Alarm Adviser, Historian, MES, SmartGlance, Wonderware Online, Skelta BPM, Recipe Manager Plus, IntelaTrac and Operations Integration
(OI) Servers.
References:
- The History of a Safer World: The true and amazing history of Triconex and Wonderware by Gary L. Wilkinson, 2013.
- Leaders of the Pack From the plant to academia, InTech's 50 most influential industry innovators.
- Animated Automation, May 21, 1995. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/1995-05-21/animated-automation.
- Wonderware Wiki Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderware
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