I was fortunate enough to be able to participate and speak at the “68th Annual Instrumentation Symposium for the Process Industries” January 22-24 at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
Each of the days of the symposium features a 2-hour Workshop session where 5 parallel tutorials on topics from Ethics to instrument basics, cybersecurity, and safety systems. Other presentations were typically 40 minutes in length. This year’s event also featured the first annual Instrument Reliability Network Symposium as a program track.
The Instrument Reliability Network focuses on safety systems beyond the determination through mathematics as a way to collect reliability information for the full safety system rather than the component approach favored by SIL calculations.
Overall it was a good event and very well organized, however my impression is that rather than an instrument symposium it is migrating towards a safety symposium, which only makes sense in light of the Reliability Network track and the dearth of automation safety conferences available. Presentations consist of paper and PowerPoint which is made available to attendees. There was also a tabletop style exhibit in the meal area with approximately 20 companies /organizations participating.
Plans are underway for the 2014 event January 28-30 hosted by the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center with information at http://instrumentation-symposium.che.tamu.edu abstracts due by April 30. Abstracts can be loaded to http://psc.tamu.edu/IS-phUploader14.php with password 2014InstrSym.
Ian Verhappen is a contributor and blogger for Control and Control Design. He has 25+ years experience in instrumentation, controls and automation. You can email him at [email protected] or check out his Google+ profile.
