The Zornio Effect

Zornio continued his firehose presentation by pointing to the new products Honeywell has recently introduced, is introducing shortly, and will be making available by the end of this year., including OM Pro, Shadow Plant, POMSnet, Asset Manager R310, Profit Suite R220, and of course, Safety Manager 100, which, he noted, was the first IEC61511 SIL3 SIS. In Experion R210, he said, Honeywell's emphasis was on Cybersecurity, and looking at security, both digital and physical, in a holistic manner. He described several important features of the release, including migration from GUS to Experion with enhanced toolkits. Two of the most important features, it seems to me, were the integration of procedural operations and the creation of CABs (Custom Application Blocks-- "roll your own" function blocks you build in Visual Basic.Net). Zornio said, of CABs, "This is an example of the benefit of open system environments." Zornio then introduced the C300 controller system. It is funny-looking. Where everybody else has a straight, block design the C300 is slanted, with a rounded top end. But there is method to this madness. Zornio said that it was designed based on the learnings of Honeywell's integration group. "It looks different. It is a radical departure from traditional rack design. Why? We're the largest system integrator in the world, and we've been listening." According to Zornio, the vertical design saves considerable space, and since the C300 system has been designed with NO BACKPLANE!!! it is incredibly easy to wire, and has no failure point at the backplane. But the coolest thing (pun alert) is that the slanted design permits convection cooling so that the cabinet can be sealed in most environments, without providing fans or air conditioning. Zornio went on to describe the rest of the C300 family, including the Control Firewall. "Not only the switch that ties modules together over our patented Fault Tolerant Ethernet, but also it is a highly discriminatory firewall that only allows control messages through." As near as I can see, this new design is well-thought-out and represents a huge step forward in field cabinet design capability.