This Edition Sponsored by Fisher Controls
- Emerson Charms User Group with Introduction of DeltaV S–Series
- Emerson Refocuses on the Human Experience
- What Makes a Winner? 13 Telling Traits
- People Are Catalyst for EPC’s Quantum Leap
- Mobility, Agility in the Hands of Tomorrow’s Workers
- Emerson and Meridium Marry Asset Management Expertise
- New PID Algorithm Facilitates Wireless Field Control
Emerson Charms User Group with Introduction of DeltaV S–Series
This is a tale in three parts. The first is about the demographics of automation and the process industries; the second is about human–centered design; and the third part is about technology. Steve Sonnenberg, president of Emerson Process Management, introduced the new version of DeltaV by calling it "the product of a new type of product development: human–centered design."
Sonnenberg, and after him, Peter Zornio, Emerson’s Chief Strategic Officer, explained the research that went into the design factors that in turn led to the new incarnation of DeltaV. Sonnenberg noted the "perfect storm" of more technology, a retiring workforce, inexperienced workers, larger and more complex processes, fewer specialists and even fewer incoming workers.
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Emerson Refocuses on the Human Experience
Despite the worst economic downturn in more than 70 years, Emerson Process Management’s executive vice president and business leader, Steve Sonnenberg, reported that his company is reconsidering its technologies, focusing even more closely on how users actually use its solutions, and is releasing dozens of targeted products based on these reassessments. The results of this bravery might be some of the most ground-breaking and useful products ever introduced in process control and automation.
"Frankly, automation suppliers have not designed products built around the actual ways projects are executed and the ways plants are run," explained Sonnenberg. "Advancing products features are important, but designing products around how people use them is critical. I’m so excited about this week because Emerson Process Management is introducing one of the most important advances in process control in the past decade or more."
What Makes a Winner? 13 Telling Traits
"At the end of the day, I don’t care what field you’re in; it’s all about winning," said Pat Williams, senior vice president of the National Basketball Assn.’s Orlando Magic and author of 38 books on a variety of people and topics. Williams spoke to open the 2009 Emerson Global Users Exchange in Orlando, Fla. "In my business, the wins and losses are in the headlines every day. But in process engineering, it’s about the wins and losses too. I’m in the winning business. I’ve been in professional athletics almost 50 years."
Williams shared the 13 traits he’s documented as the qualities of winners.
"The first quality of winners is they have a dream," he said. "Without a dream, we tend to drift. We can dream forever. We can have the greatest dream ever. But if we don't put it into action, nothing is going to happen."
People Are Catalyst for EPC’s Quantum Leap
Is putting one block on top of the next, all there is to it? Not if you get people involved and start to use them to their full potential.
Construction tools and machines have modernized over the centuries, but many basic building methods–all based on labor, material and time–have remained pretty much the same since the pyramids, according to Peter Moore, vice president of Project Execution Services (PES) at Fluor. He is responsible for putting together teams at Fluor that work across functional groups.
"How are we executing projects differently these days?" he began. "Well, we’re learning that it’s more about people and processes and not so much just about technology. Technology is an enabler. However, if people don’t know how to use it, then technology is useless."
Mobility, Agility in the Hands of Tomorrow’s Workers
"Imagine a plant where maintenance technicians get their electronic work instructions and work orders, and take their parts box and their lunch pail out into the plant, work consistently and productively for a whole shift, and then come back to the shop."
That’s the scenario for the mobile worker of the future, according to Neil Peterson, wireless services marketing manager for Emerson Process Management.
How would this work?
"What we’ve done," Peterson says, "is to install a complete DeltaV package on the Panasonic U1 small–form–factor handheld computer. We call it a ‘Smart Wireless Mobile Worker’ solution. It actually runs the full DeltaV suite, but it is really designed to run DeltaV Operate as a DeltaV remote operator station.
Emerson and Meridium Marry Asset Management Expertise
You’d think that with 325 workshops and short courses, plus management sessions, industry forums, product roadmap presentations and networking opportunities, there’d be enough going on to keep everyone busy at the 2009 Emerson Global User Exchange this week in Orlando, Fla. But just to add to the festivities, Emerson also announced a marriage: Emerson Process Management and Meridium, a global leader in asset performance management solutions for the process, power, mining and discrete manufacturing industries, announced a partnership to deliver enhanced asset management capability to their customers in the process industries. By combining the power of Emerson’s PlantWeb predictive intelligence with Meridium’s advanced analytics and decision–support technology, customers now can manage and maintain their most critical production assets more effectively.
The child of this union is the new AMS Suite: Asset Portal 4.0 powered by Meridium. The new product provides real–time connection to other AMS Suite applications to enable analysis of diagnostic alerts and other asset health information.
New PID Algorithm Facilitates Wireless Field Control
"Yesterday, you couldn’t do PID wirelessly," says Randy Balentine, DeltaV product marketing manager at Emerson. "Today, that’s no longer the case."
What makes this possible, Balentine explains, is a new control algorithm. "We knew WirelessHART devices and the way they do non–periodic updates, and we understood how we could accommodate that in the PID algorithm and function block," he says. "We’ve held a PID steady in some of its calculations and not made ill-advised moves in the algorithm without an update. The proof and the technology are here at the Exchange." Two sessions will give a hands-on demonstration of the new PID algorithm in action.
Scott Broadley, president of Broadley James; Trish Benton, consultant at Broadley James; and Emerson Principal Technologist Terry Blevins will present "WirelessHART Benefits Single–Use, Disposable Bioreactor" at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 29, in Daytona 1 and again on Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 8 a.m. in Naples 2.
