Control.com adds engineering positions at Open Control Laboratory

Westborough, Mass. - Control.com Inc., the global online community for control professionals, has announced the appointment of two senior engineers at the Open Control Laboratory, Dr. Marc Bumble and Terence Creevan.

By Gary A. Mintchell, senior editor December 12, 2001

Westborough, Mass. – Control.com Inc. , the global online community for control professionals, has announced the appointment of two senior engineers at the Open Control Laboratory, Dr. Marc Bumble and Terence Creevan. The Open Control Laboratory is an independent testing facility dedicated to the advancement of interoperability in the industrial controls industry. Located at Control.com in Westborough, Massachusetts, the Lab tests and integrates open control products from many different suppliers to assess their ability to operate together in an open control environment. Control.com is using the knowledge gained from the Lab to develop a new generation of industrial control systems based on open controls.

Dr. Marc Bumble has been appointed senior software engineer at the Open Control Laboratory. An open software expert with over a decade of experience in communications, he will be responsible for working with low-level controls software, including operating systems and drivers. Most recently, Dr. Bumble worked as a software consultant on a variety of Linux/UNIX development projects for such clients as the US Department of Transportation, Dragon Systems, Ennovate Networks, and NASA Ames Research Center. Previously, Dr. Bumble held communications and systems engineering positions at Grumman Aircraft and GE Aerospace. Dr. Bumble has served as a computer science instructor at Pennsylvania State University and is the author of multiple open source applications, including software for road traffic simulation. He holds BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

Terence Creevan is senior controls engineer at the Open Control Laboratory. In his position, he will work with high-level software, including Human-machine interfaces (HMIs), Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), and connectivity to proprietary packages. Prior to joining Control.com, Mr. Creevan was the principal engineer and founder of systems integrator Integrated Network Technologies. There he served as Site Manager for GE Fanuc Automation North America in Taiwan during the installation of a system that included Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), SCADA, and shop floor controls. As Senior Process Automation Engineer at Oregon Steel Mills, Mr. Creevan was responsible for developing automated electronics for the plate steel manufacturing process. He also founded systems integration firm Automation Control Systems, where he worked with such clients as Boeing and Lamb-Grays Harbor Company. Mr. Creevan has over 15 years of industrial automation experience working with such technologies as embedded control systems, PLCs and ladder logic, graphical user interfaces, and data acquisition systems.

Both Dr. Bumble and Mr. Creevan will report to the director of the Open Control Laboratory, Dr. Peter Wurmsdobler. Dr. Wurmsdobler is one of the world1s leading authorities in the field of real-time Linux and its application in the controls industry. ‘In expanding the resources of the Open Control Lab, we1re looking for experienced automation engineers with an extensive background in software development,’ said Dr. Wurmsdobler. ‘We1re pleased to have found two engineers of the caliber of Dr. Bumble and Mr. Creevan. Marc1s extensive knowledge of open software development and Terence1s hands-on automation experience provide us with the additional resources we need to expand our open controls testing paradigm throughout the entire industrial controls community.’

Control.com is an online community of control engineering professionals. Home to the Open Control Laboratory, the Automation List, and the PLCArchive, the company hosts a growing technical knowledge base and variety of peer-to-peer forums that provide numerous opportunities for interchange in the control community. The company advocates the open control paradigm, where interoperability among different vendors’ products allows designers to create control systems with the products that work best for their applications.