A little while back, I half-jokingly wrote a Facebook post that simply said, “You ever have one of those days that makes you feel like saying, ‘You ever have one of those days’?”

Nothing truly major had gone wrong; it just really was one of those days. A bunch of little stuff wasn’t working out the way it was supposed to, and it was adding up to be a real downer. The comments were my friends’ usual assortment of snide remarks and “Office Space” jokes about having “a case of the Mondays,” so at least it ultimately cheered me up.

We all have those days because we all have those times when a bunch of little stuff is getting under our skin. But then we have those other days, where we don’t joke or complain about having “one of those days” because something has gone seriously wrong. 

Although your bad days and mine probably have different challenges and different levels of excitement (note that exciting isn’t always fun), we do have a similar resource that can help us out: Wayne Labs, Food Engineering’s senior technical editor. 

For me, Wayne is a great resource because of the sheer amount of coverage he provides. In addition to his Engineering R&D column and the Manufacturing News section, he also writes monthly features that are loaded with good technical information and real-world expertise, drawing on both his experience covering the food industry and his background as an engineer. If I ever have a technical question, he’s my first call, and if I ever need something handled quickly, he’s my first call on that too.

But what Wayne offers you is help with planning for those really bad days and how to respond to them. He writes about those topics fairly frequently, and this month you’ll find his article on how to handle internet outages. It’s a follow-on piece to his article from last month, which dealt with how to ensure your automation system would be recoverable in the event of a power outage or other kinds of complications.

Both articles share Wayne’s depth and breadth of knowledge on serious, consequential topics. Any modern manufacturing operation is dependent on both automation and internet (or at least network) access, and losing one or the other can be catastrophic. In each case, Wayne did a great job of drawing on insights from industry experts about how to prevent or recover from outages, as well as sharing great information on what you need to know when it comes to designing and protecting those systems in the first place.

Outages are a part of life, although hopefully not a common one. Thanks to Wayne, you have some new ideas to help prevent them if at all possible, and to recover from them if not. 

We can’t tell you how to prevent every possible bad scenario from happening, as much as we’d like to. But thanks to Wayne, we can provide the best information possible on how to prepare, plan and recover, and we’re proud to do so.