Although he didn't answer any of Control magazine's questions, some of the questions posed to Darius Adamczyk, president of HPS, at his "chat" clearly weren't prepared softballs. Asked if moving the C-suite from London to Houston indicated a shift in priorities, Adamczyk deftly said that it made sense to be located closer to the global headquarters of so many of his customers, but (perhaps to avoid the implications of that move on HPS' relationship with Shell, which is closer to London than Houston by far) he noted that his customers were global, and HPS had to get global to support them. He noted that Brazil is one of HPS' top three markets to penetrate and dominate.
He didn't answer the question I asked about whether the introduction last week of the latest version of "Experion Lite" in Indonesia indicates a shift in product design to country or region based products, but I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't the case. It likely is a good move. The other question I asked was if he agreed with the notion that the cloud was robust enough for a SCADA offering, considering ABB's SCADAvantage-in-the-Cloud announcement just this morning.
Much of his talk was touting for HUG Americas, which takes place in two weeks. He noted that there would be major announcements in several major areas:
- Control Room of the Future: At HUG-Americas Honeywell plans to debut their version of "the control room of the future," which Adamczyk says will be based on a new esthetic of design and include such things as voice command.
- Cyber Solutions: New solutions for cybersecurity will be unveiled. Adamczyk said HPS has hired a new cybersecurity chief and has over 100 employees working on cybersecurity in industrial control systems. He said, in response to a question, that he believes the industry is not as cyber-aware as they need to be. He noted that the cost of a cyber assessment is "so miniscule compared to the cost of an incident" that he hopes all of HPS' customers will work with them to audit their cyber postures and solutions. It is refreshing to hear an industry chieftain saying clearly that the emperor's cyber-clothes are a bit skimpy.
- Collaboration: More collaboration tools, including the Honeywell Collaboration Wall, which will make control systems more intuitive, have better human factors, be realtime, and, according to Adamczyk, have world class solutions for customer problems, including the aging operator work force.
- Field Devices: Importantly, Adamczyk tee-d up expectations for a big announcement of more expansion into field instrumentation, as HPS seeks to undo the decades-long abandonment of field instrumentation that has allowed Emerson, ABB, Endress+Hauser and GE to move ahead of the traditionally strong Honeywell field device offering.
- Wireless: Inevitably, somebody asked if HPS was still committed to wireless (ISA100.11a) and Adamczyk forthrightly declared wireless to be a core part of the new product development process at Honeywell. "We often produce wired versions first," he said, "but wireless versions of those products are also developed and released next. The market is just larger at this point for wired devices."
- Safety: In response to a question, he said that HPS had "probably the best" integrated safety offering including physical safety, fire and gas safety, process safety and cyber security, and that much would be made of this at HUG in two weeks.
Adamczyk said that HPS was "flipping the service responsibility from the customer back to us." He said he wanted to take over customers plants so that HPS can provide total service, including migration services to his customers. No one apparently asked him about Honeywell's response to the fact that Azbil (formerly Honeywell's close partner in Asia and Japan, Yamatake) has decided to try to muck up Honeywell's TDC migration strategy by offering factory-built brand new TDC products, all the way up to complete systems. I confess I didn't think to ask him that, even if he was going to answer my question. I'm sure we'd all like to hear the answer, though.
It turned out that something I considered to be a softball question gave one of the most interesting answers. Asked what he thought was the most interesting thing he'd learned as HPS president in his first year was, Adamczyk said, "The speed at which the oil and gas and energy sectors are evolving. The US has become in just the last couple of years an net energy exporter with the availability of cheap natural gas, and this has changed the game. It appears that the US will be energy independent by 2020, and this is changing the investment balance of the world."
Honeywell's CTO, Jason Urso, will hold another "global media chat" during HUG Americas, according to Empie. That will, if Urso's style is any indication, be very long on tech and solutions. I can't wait.
