by Gary Mintchell | May 27, 2011 | Automation, Safety
I’ve been reading several reports this morning about the pilots’ actions during that Air France flight 447 disaster. I’m also putting this in context with the talk First Officer Jeffrey Skiles gave at a user conference (I cannot find my original blog post) who was one of the pilots on the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River.
Skiles talked in detail about the training flight crews undergo and how they are trained in how to act, what to say, who’s in charge, and so on. This was related to what we need to do in process automation especially with our operators to provide great training with simulation, appropriate visualization into the processes and explicit procedures on how to act with each type of incident.
According to reports coming out today, the Air France crew did not react to the situation with the same coordinated and procedural actions exhibited by the US Airways crew.
This shows the need for vigilance, preparation and constant training for our plant personnel. Never let up.
by Gary Mintchell | May 25, 2011 | Automation, Operations Management
I missed the Tuesday session of WBF’s annual conference, so I missed John Berra’s keynote (which, I’m told, was excellent) and the other presentations. On the plus side, I am recertified as a high school soccer referee assignor in Ohio. Story of my life–more places to go than ability to get there.
There’s an excellent turnout for this year’s conference. Great examples of using ISA88 and thinking up front leading to faster startups and better operations and documentation.
John Blanchard, principal analyst with ARC Advisory Group and WBF vice-chair, presented the two annual awards at the beginning of Wednesday’s session. The Guido Carlo-Stella Award, presented to “professionals who have excelled in the field and/of who have been an inspiration and mentor to all in the process industry,” went to Asish Ghosh, a retired engineer, who, among other things, jointly authored first major book on batch control. The Thomas Fisher Award presented to “individuals who have demonstrated notable leadership in the development, teaching and popularization of technologies, services and techniques in the field of process manufacturing” went to Dave Chappell.
Jim Porter, president of Sustainable Operations Solutions LLC and retired VP of Engineering and Operations at duPont, presented the Wednesday keynote on “Smart Plants: Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage”. His favorite quote, “Human beings who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” — Douglas Adams.
Some comments that Porter made that capture the importance of his thoughts:
“DuPont has understood how to control its plants, that’s one reason it’s successful.”
“The US is the number one manufacturing nation, but over half of the total value of US exports consists of intermediate goods, manufacturing depends upon imports.”
“The business case involves economic viability and national security. No economy on the face of the globe has been resilient without a manufacturing base.”
“Smart manufacturing is a dramatically intensified knowledge-enabled industrial enterprise in which all business and operating actions are executed to achieve substantially enhanced energy, sustainability, environmental, safety and economic performance.”
Smart manufacturing includes these activities:
- go from investment in facilities to investment in knowledge
models integrated into operations
distributed intelligence
self-aware (autonomous) systems
interoperable systems
Smart Process Manufacturing model uses the concept of lanes of activities. Lane 1 details data to knowledge. Lane 2 takes knowledge to operating models (mapping business outcomes). In Lane 3, takes the process from models to key plant assets to enterprise application. This Lane also can be explained as distributed intelligent manufacturing leading to resilient plant operations. Lane 4 describes moving from local to global, whild Lane 5 is integration of people knowledge and models to competitive KPIs.
Creating revitalization of the 21st Century industrial community is the goal. And Porter’s final challenge, “We should all be leading smart plant business processes and technologies development and deployment.”
by Gary Mintchell | May 25, 2011 | Automation
Siemens develped an online game simulator to “challenge plaers to increase productivity, sustainability and overall health of an industrial plant. Plantville has reached more than 57,000 visitors and boasts nearly 12,000 players from more than 130 countries in two months.
A sampling of the visitors engaged in Plantville:
• 500+ universities and schools
• 57,300 unique visitors on Plantville.com
• 11,800 players
• 8,600 companies
• 139 countries
by Gary Mintchell | May 23, 2011 | Events, Operations Management
I had read the book by Cisco’s CTO, Inder Sidhu, “Doing Both,” (see posts here and here) and was hoping for an interview for Automation World magazine. Then, oops, Cisco had some disappointing financial results and many of the initiatives Sidhu described seem to have been shelved as the company seeks to return to its core focus.
Apparently Cisco is going ahead with a manufacturing-specific event as part of its annual user conference. The theme of the one-day event, especially tailored to bring together manufacturing, controls, operations and IT executives and professionals, is ‘Industrial Intelligence’, converging industrial automation systems based upon standard IP networks with business applications including voice and video to more responsively and cost-effectively manage industrial operations globally.
Held in conjunction with Cisco Live, Cisco Industrial Intelligence Day takes place on July 12th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Cisco says it will pack the day with information, training, and industry best practices.
A few highlights:
Learn how Industrial Intelligence brings production closer to IT and converges industrial automation networks with business systems to improve the efficiency, safety, agility, and utilization of your production assets.
Receive training in architectures specific to industrial automation from Cisco and alliance partner Rockwell Automation including wireless and wired technology advancements, availability, security, sustainability and energy management.
Engage Industrial Intelligence and IT Networking thought leaders from our partners and the industrial analyst community via a live panel discussion plus join a community of manufacturing executives and IT and Control professionals deploying and operating Industrial applications and networks.
Experience and see “hands-on” demonstrations of Industrial Intelligence solutions and technology and interact with experts at the World of Solutions Expo at the largest Cisco user conference, Cisco Live. Registration site is here.
by Gary Mintchell | May 23, 2011 | Events, Organizations
Tomorrow I am heading to Delaware and the annual WBF Forum. I’ll be leaving Columbus after a mandatory meeting of the Ohio High School Athletic Association where I renew my assignor certification. OHSAA doesn’t recognize people who work (outside of schools that is), and give you just one chance a year.
So, I’ll miss Monday evening’s Hall of Fame dinner (and John Berra’s induction) and most of Tuesday’s conference. But that doesn’t mean I won’t catch Berra’s keynote address, “Sharpening the Tools–Small Victories Mean Big Improvements.” It kicks off at 8:45 am, and I’ll be supposedly listening to people tell me what I’ve been doing for the past 23 years–but I hope to be listening to Berra at this livestreaming link. You can, too.
If you can’t make the trip you can catch this keynote and Wednesday’s by James Porter, also at 8:45 am on “Smart Plants: Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage.
Otherwise, hope to see you there.
