Control News from Europe May 2008

Milestone

The agreement, which was concluded between Egyptian Oil Minister Eng. Sameh Fahmy and Invensys CEO Ulf Henriksson, is designed to facilitate transfer of technical knowledge and expertise both to Egypt’s practising engineers and to the country’s new engineering graduates, thereby generating a deeper understanding of process control in the oil and gas sector. “This joint venture is an important milestone in the expansion of the Egyptian oil and gas industry,” said the minister. “Invensys Process Systems have clearly recognized the significant market potential in Egypt, and as a partner we will benefit substantially, not only in the field of technology transfer, but in job creation and local manufacturing.”

“This best business practise model enables profits to be shared with our customers while creating genuine partnership,” explained Henriksson. “We are committed to building a world-class modern facility which will include a versatile staging area, workshop and warehouse capable of handling the largest automation projects. Naturally we hope that our significant local presence will help enlarge our installed base in the country and promote the growth of high technology demand.”

Something of a milestone passed by Invensys’ Wonderware business unit with the claim that the number of its software licenses deployed by customers around the world has passed the half million mark. Moreover it also claims that a third of all the world’s plants run Wonderware software solutions, based on the fact that its software licenses have been sold to more than 100,000 plants or facilities worldwide, accounting for 33% of the world’s 305,544 plants with 20 or more employees. “To our knowledge, no other industrial software company has achieved this type of success as evidenced by the number of software licenses and customers,” said Wonderware director of product marketing Steve Garbrecht.

Past and present Invensystas will have near choked on their breakfast corn flakes last Monday when the face of former CEO Rick Haythornthwaite stared out at them in triplicate from the centre spread the business section of their Daily Telegraphs. Since passing over the reins to “a very able successor” in 2005, Haythorn-thwaite has built up a bewildering portfolio of interests ranging from non-executive chairman of Mastercard to chairman of London’s Southbank Arts Centre. What’s his recollection of his four years at Invensys? Few would disagree with his initial comment that “Here was a company in big trouble,” but they might have more difficulty with the rest of his narrative: “In 2001, Invensys was in financial free fall . . . I and the team systematically and methodically rescued it to the point that we were able to refinance it in 2004 … I thought I’d have it turned around in three years, but it took five. But it’s now a normal company – a boring company – which was always our aim. I’m very proud of that.”

You can digest the full article, including how our hero defused board room antipathy by the use of puppets—or was that managed subsidiaries through the appointment of puppets?—by going to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/07/ccprof107.xml

ISaGRAF adds RTOS support on Windows platforms

Rockwell subsidiary, or perhaps sub-subsidiary, ICS Triplex ISaGRAF has added support for TenAsys’ INtime real-time operating system to its IEC 61131 / IEC 61499 automation software development environment. INtime is a, if not the, leading RTOS for real-time applications on Microsoft Windows platforms and provides deterministic, hard real-time control, leveraging the powerful capabilities of Intel Architecture processors.

“Our ability to dedicate one core of a multi-core processor exclusively to the INtime kernel and ISaGRAF runtime engine, while the remaining cores run Windows, is unique,” said TenAsys vp of sales and marketing Kim Hartman. “It provides ISaGRAF developers with a reliable and deterministic Windows platform for microsecond level accuracy and repeatability.”

Using the ISaGRAF Development Toolkit with INtime, high-volume equipment manufacturers can build robust embedded systems, transforming controllers into top of the line PLCs, DCSs or RTUs. They can also access such features as data quality, millisecond time stamping, event sequencing, trending, alarming, processor synchronization, GPS support and redundancy.

Yokogawa America president and CEO Dave Johnson added a little extra spice to his welcome speech at this week’s Yokogawa North America User Conference in Houston by announcing that Yokogawa has acquired Analytical Specialities, Inc. (ASI), the Texas company which pioneered the application of Tunable Diode Laser (TDL) technology to on-line process gas analysis and whose instruments Yokogawa has been marketing in Europe under its own name. The innovation was described  by Yokogawa’s Dr Sam Langridge at the UK launch last August (INSIDER, September 2007, page 6) as “the first significant development in the field since the introduction of zirconia technology in the 1970s. ”  Yokogawa, it seems, has treated the  European exercise as something of a dry run and, based on its success, has now decided to go ahead with the acquisition of the whole company. Former ASI president Trevor Knittel becomes general manager for laser technology in Yokogawa’s analytical business unit. Yokogawa reckons the market for TDL based analysers will be worth $150m by 2013 and expects to be market leader—what else?—with a 20% share.