by Gary Mintchell | May 30, 2014 | Automation, Leadership, News, Organizations
I’m preparing for another trip to HUG—Honeywell User Group—but this time for the first time the conference will not be held in Phoenix. The members opted for San Antonio. That’s not the only change. Vimal Kapur has been named the new president of Honeywell Process Solutions this week. It seems like only yesterday, well 2012 I guess, when Darius Adamczyk was introduced as Honeywell Process president in place of Norm Gilsdorf, who had only shortly before replace Jack Bolick.
Gilsdorf had moved the headquarters to London from Phoenix causing a major turnover in senior staff. The HQ moved to Houston, and I see that it is staying there. This is a lot of turnover in a relatively short period of time. We usually think that stable leadership is essential to long-term growth. It will be interesting to see what they say about the changes.
The Honeywell release says Kapur is a near-30-year veteran of the process automation industry, with Honeywell for more than 25 years. He has held a number of key strategic business positions within Honeywell including vice president of Global Marketing and Strategy for HPS, and managing director for Honeywell Automation India Limited (HAIL). Prior to this appointment, he was vice president/general manager of the Advanced Solutions line of business for HPS.
Kapur graduated from Thapar Institute of Engineering in Patiala, India, as an electronics engineer with a specialization in instrumentation. He is Six Sigma certified for DMAIC and Growth.
He will be located in Houston, Texas.
by Gary Mintchell | May 21, 2014 | Automation, Events, News, Operator Interface, Technology
The PAS Technology Conference is in session May 19-21. PAS bills itself as the “Human Reliability” company, and indeed reliability broadly speaking was a conference theme. This is also a celebration of PAS’s 20th anniversary, and historical references were everywhere.
PAS Founder and CEO Eddie Habibi
He was the first of several who talked about first looking at assets as data, then relating to the actual physical asset. Data can be collected, organized, contextualized, and displayed to help operations and maintenance make a reliable plant and increase the company’s profitability.
Inspiration, collaboration, invention
Habibi concluded, “Opportunities are there for us as a company that brings software solutions to great customer relationships. Customers bring inspiration, collaboration, and invention. We’re excited about it, and we want to be here another 20 years.”
At dinner the night before, I had the opportunity to talk to two of the conference’s keynoters who are both with production companies. Keith Dicharry is director of Controls and Instrumentation at BASF and Andy Geddes is controls and instrumentation manager for Scottish Power (as in the UK). Both were eloquent in their descriptions about the engineer’s role in helping maintenance and operations achieve a reliable plant.
Dicharry said in his keynote, “If we increase the reliability of equipment, we will increase our profitability. The goal for increasing reliability is to increase access to data. I want a rotating equipment engineer in Germany to be able to talk to a rotating equipment engineer in the US about a compressor where they can both look at all the data sets and figure out why one works well and the other has problems on a conference call rather than a flight across the pond.”
Harvey Ivey, manager of instrumentation and control systems and field support at The Southern Company, told the conference the story about how he worked with operators and others to develop displays that would give operations situational awareness of the health of their processes at a glance. His work, and collaboration with PAS, led to the development of the PowerGraphix product.
Alstom, in another conference announcement, has done much research on improving performance resulting in an agreement for it to become a reseller of PowerGraphix to its customers.
Security partnership
The day’s final announcement involved another partnership—this time PAS and Tripwire—a provider of risk-based security and compliance management solutions. The partnership is part of the Tripwire NERC Alliance Network Program that has been designed to foster collaboration on critical infrastructure compliance and security solutions to help companies efficiently and effectively achieve NERC CIP compliance.
According to PAS, the integration between the PAS Integrity Software Suite and Tripwire NERC Solution Suite will provide mutual energy customers with automation software that reduces the time and resources required to collect audit evidence. The integration brings a consistent approach to the management and maintenance of secure configurations across a wide range of devices including Industrial Control Systems (ICS), SCADA, Microsoft Windows and Windows Servers.
by Gary Mintchell | May 15, 2014 | Education, Events, News
A Tale of Two Manufacturing Conferences
Reaching customers and prospects with a company’s message and involving them in educational and networking events evidently is becoming more difficult. Manufacturing technology trade shows—the staples of the 80s and 90s—are just about extinct. Some still exist, albeit in quite smaller form factors and with different twists.
Some vertical industry shows, such as packaging and oil & gas, still thrive. Others are on the downward slope.
The movement toward large single-company user conferences, spurred many years ago by Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair replacing its appearance at control shows, has spread like kudzu. On the other hand, I’ve seen a few of those start to shrink.
What does it take to get people out of the office/plant even though there are many benefits? What do you think?
The PAS technology conference is next Tuesday. Eddie Habbibi, CEO, sent me a slide with five reasons to attend a live event.
ABB is taking a different approach. Last year it announced that it would turn its annual Automation and Power World event into a biennial event. There must have been some pressure within the company to do something. On June 4, it is sponsoring an online education event Optimizing technology for the changing face of industry.
ABB says the digital conference agenda reflects results of ABB’s recent survey of customer concerns; Aging workforce, cost pressures and infrastructure. The event will take place live online on June 4 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. EDT. The conference grants exclusive access to ABB’s global experts as they share their knowledge and experience virtually, making the information available around the world in real time.
Online presentations will offer best practices and practical guidance on today’s most pressing business and operational issues in automation and manufacturing. ABB recently conducted a survey among customers to determine their top concerns. The most pressing issues within electric utility and industry were found to be an aging workforce, cost pressures and infrastructure. In fact, more than 70 percent of respondents identified an aging workforce as their chief concern.
From the press release: Participation in the live, digital conference provides networking opportunities with ABB subject matter experts and industry peers, as well as an opportunity to earn Professional Development Hours (PDHs).
The conference will feature 25 sessions and 60 speakers. All sessions will be archived and available for on-demand viewing so those who are unable to attend live sessions of interest can still benefit from the valuable educational content at any time following the events. Registration is free for industry professionals.
Keynote speaker, Richard Worzel, best-selling author of “Who Owns Tomorrow?” will address how the world is changing and what manufacturers need to do about it.
The conference is organized around six learning tracks:
- Reliability
- Asset management
- Safety and compliance
- Productivity
- Best practices
- Doing more with less
June’s event will focus on automation, with a second power-focused SmartStream Digital Conference scheduled for November 2014.
by Gary Mintchell | May 13, 2014 | Operations Management
I try very hard to watch definitions and be as accurate as possible. I’m not perfect, but I try.
An email came to my inbox today. “Safety as the 6th S.” Something about safety as part of a “Lean technique.” People (editors/marketers/others) seem to love writing about Lean as if they know what they are writing about without even trying to be accurate. It’s like the Wall Street Journal writing about manufacturing.
Lean isn’t a technique. I cannot explain the entire book on the subject, but try this on for size. Lean is a way of life, a way of thinking, a guide to managing a plant (or many other things–it’s not restricted to manufacturing). Two foundations to Lean are respect for people and elimination of waste.
Now, there are some things that have found to be quite helpful. “5S” comes from transliteration of Japanese terms that deal with organizing your workspace. A well-ordered workspace will most likely be safe. But that’s another issue. Then there are kanban, one-piece flow, takt time, kaizen events and many more. These are not Lean. But someone living the Lean way will use these tools to help them use the talents and intelligence of humans in the process of eliminating waste.
That, by the way, is why robots will not replace humans in well run plants. Robots lack the intelligence, ability to reflect, talent, and imagination to suggest improvements.
When you see people trying to stretch a point on these issues, be wary.
by Gary Mintchell | May 12, 2014 | Automation, News, Organizations, Security
With last week’s announcement that GE is acquiring Wurldtech, a march of consolidation in the industrial Cyber Security market continues. First Byres (Tofino) Security found itself at Belden. Then last month Industrial Defender announced acquisition by Lockheed Martin.
That is the way of the world for small companies. Sometimes you hit a market that can grow exponentially. But not so much in industrial technology. So, the exit is to find a good suitor.
That leaves exida standing, although it is considerably larger than the other three. And Waterfall. Both, though also are players in industrial safety, as well as security.
Here is the gist of the GE announcement.
GE announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Wurldtech, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company and leader in cyber security solutions. This move is one of several by GE to help protect critical infrastructure and advance cyber security efforts globally for key industries. Wurldtech solutions and services are used in complex environments such as oil refineries, power transmission grids or for individual assets like medical devices or smart meters.
Traditional information technology (IT) approaches for securing systems and data are challenging when applied to the operations technology (OT) world. Wurldtech solutions offer a strategic approach to cyber security that help to better protect the OT that connects people, data and machines–maximizing system uptime and mitigating exposure to vulnerabilities. This acquisition will help to enhance the reliability of Industrial Internet operations, according to GE.
Wurldtech Services
Wurldtech’s technology and professional services are designed to Assess, Protect and Certify. This strategic approach to cyber security is performed using:
- Achilles Test products to discover operational vulnerabilities in products and critical infrastructure and then assess the root cause
- Achilles Threat Intelligence product to secure OT networks with an industrial firewall
- Achilles Communications and Practices Certifications to evaluate device communications and best practices
Wurldtech will retain its name and operate as a wholly owned subsidiary to continue providing the necessary focus on services to its broader customer base. Financial terms were not disclosed.
I’m preparing for another trip to HUG—Honeywell User Group—but this time for the first time the conference will not be held in Phoenix. The members opted for San Antonio. That’s not the only change. Vimal Kapur has been named the new president of Honeywell Process Solutions this week. It seems like only yesterday, well 2012 I guess, when Darius Adamczyk was introduced as Honeywell Process president in place of Norm Gilsdorf, who had only shortly before replace Jack Bolick.
