Customer collaboration drives innovation, real-world success
As a global industrial technology leader, Emerson is driven to help solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Innovation begins and ends with customers, according to Vidya Ramnath, Emerson’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer (CMO), who helped kick off Emerson Exchange 2025 held May 19-22 in San Antonio, Texas.
Ramnath joined Emerson in 1994 as a manufacturing engineer for the Rosemount organization in Singapore and commented that in her nearly 30 years with the company her career has been dedicated to a customer-centric focus that remains a top priority as CMO.
Emerson’s engaged and focused global workforce is “propelled by bridging the gap between markets, unmet customer needs, and what our business can deliver,” Ramnath said. Emerson takes incredible pride in its strong relationships with customers, taking time to understand their unique challenges and needs to help them achieve their goals.
Listening to customers is “vital as we enter this digital-first future,” said Ramnath.
Emerson Exchange, a premier conference focused on industrial automation, brought together leaders and experts from across the industry to learn, share, and network in San Antonio. At Emerson Exchange, the company launched a new software-defined enterprise operations platform — dubbed Project Beyond — that it contends will fundamentally change today’s approach to industrial automation.
Customer needs shaping the future
Emerson’s Project Beyond, the industry’s first software-defined, OT-ready digital platform, seamlessly integrates and optimizes industrial operations and leverages innovations in software-defined control, data management, zero-trust cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.
“Project Beyond is possible only through the power of collaboration with those sitting right here in this audience,” Ramnath told the Emerson Exchange. “What an exciting time to stand at the forefront of innovation that is driving the next industrial revolution.”
Emerson has a long-standing history of helping its customers succeed in critical industries such as energy, power, life sciences, chemical, and mining, and brought that exact same disciplined focus to this year’s Emerson Exchange program, according to Ramnath.
The Emerson Exchange 2025 Advisory Council, chaired by Todd Kifer from Dominion Energy, is primarily made up of Emerson products and services users and “has been instrumental in shaping the agenda that addresses the challenges and the opportunities that you all encounter every day,” Ramnath said.
With the support of the Emerson planning team, the Advisory Council created nearly 300 sessions at this year’s Emerson Exchange covering a wide range of solutions and technology topics to empower customers to drive innovation and achieve their goals.
“We have the privilege of hearing from leaders who are at the helm of digital transformation in industrial manufacturing,” Ramnath said. “These trailblazers are not only embracing technology, but they are also redefining how they drive solutions to very complex problems.”
From oil & gas to life sciences
Two leaders who joined Ramnath on stage at the kick-off of the Emerson Exchange to provide their valuable perspectives were Lisa McEvoy from Merck and Tobenna Emecheta from Motiva Enterprises LLC, sharing their respective experiences with digital transformation and how automation is fast-tracking innovation in their industries. Ramnath highlighted the powerful customer stories from Merck and Motiva, showcasing how collaboration with Emerson drives real-world success.
Lisa McEvoy, associate vice president of digital manufacturing at Merck, called out the fact that Emerson is leaning into the life sciences industry and helping to drive insights essential to creating life-saving medicines.
McEvoy said that Merck’s collaboration with Emerson is a “true” partnership in its digital transformation and that the company’s “manufacturing success is a journey of innovation driven by shared purpose, dedicated sponsorship, and partnership.”
Merck, a global biopharmaceutical company with a manufacturing network covering more than 20 sites, is creating a digital foundation across its network to provide real-time adaptive scheduling, capacity forecasting, and end-to-end analysis of factory performance. With Emerson’s technology, Merck has increased production throughput for its existing assets and improved accessibility of key therapies to patients worldwide.
Tobenna Emecheta, senior manager of engineering and technology at Motiva, told the Emerson Exchange that the company’s digital transformation strategy was to become an industry leader in digitalization based on creating business value through proven and cutting-edge technologies.
Houston, Texas-headquartered Motiva refines, distributes, and markets petroleum products. Motiva’s Port Arthur, Texas manufacturing complex includes North America’s largest refinery with a total throughput of 720,000 barrels a day, the country’s largest base oil plant, and an integrated chemical plant.
“When Motiva decided to retrofit its Port Arthur refinery for the 21st century, they called on Emerson to upgrade eight of their facility’s process units,” Ramnath said. “Motiva made significant progress towards top quartile performance by being able to immediately report reliability problems.”
Motiva’s Port Arthur facility has more than 6,000 control valves and failures have the potential to be costly and impact overall reliability and safety. To address this challenge, Motiva partnered with Scallon Controls and Emerson to create a Valve Asset Improvement Team, focused on identifying, evaluating, and resolving recurring or complex valve issues.
Working together, the team was able to tackle challenges with problematic valves and process conditions through the collaboration of experts and utilization of innovative technology, including Emerson’s Wireless HART vibration monitors.
