How to Access ISA Technical Content

You Have Questions? ISA Has Answers.

Serving up member-generated technical content related to standards, certifications, training, control, safety, cybersecurity, systems integration and other key topics is something the International Society of Automation has been doing since the society began. Whether you need technical explanations or professional development advice, ISA has answers.  

ISA’s InTech magazine has a long, proud history of providing in-depth technical information to instrumentation, automation and control professionals. ISA’s Instrumentation Technology magazine — launched as the ISA Journal in 1954 and renamed InTech in 1978 — was expanded when ISA bought Programmable Controls magazine in 1989. In subsequent years, ISA expanded its content offerings further by launching its web presence at www.isa.org (1994) and purchasing Automation.com (2015) for industry news and new products, newsletters, ebooks and other resources.

The ISA Interchange blog has been around for more than 15 years. Upgraded in 2019, it has hosted a wide range of subject matter experts over the years. One of its longest-running components is the "Ask the Automation Pros" series. Monthly, ISA Fellow and 2010 ISA Life Achievement Award recipient Greg McMillan collects submitted questions and solicits responses from automation professionals. Using over 50 years of process automation experience and calling on the professionals he’s met within ISA, McMillan answers questions like, “How can we compute startup tuning for new control valves?” or “How to best migrate from obsolete to modern instrumentation and control systems?”

The newest way to access ISA expertise is Mimo^SM, an AI-powered large language model educated on ISA content including back issues of InTech, standards, training materials, technical reports and more. Mimo has learned about industrial automation and operational technology cybersecurity from studying years of ISA content available on Pub Hub, the ISA member-only content portal. This means Mimo can access files and information not normally available widely or publicly.

Mimo also provides sources for its answers, so users can go straight to the article, standard or report from which Mimo has drawn its answer. This makes Mimo a richer and more relevant resource for automation professionals than ChatGPT or similar services. If you are not an ISA member, or if you aren’t logged in, you’ll get a short and to-the-point answer. For more details and source files, log in to your member account or join ISA.

As an automation professional, you have questions. ISA has the people, the publications and the resources to get your questions answered. 

This article was originally published in the October 2024 edition of InTech.