Honeywell’s PR person has been a regular in my inbox for the past few months. I have two news releases from different areas of Honeywell, but each relevant to the cause. One fits within the current trend toward cloud partnerships that extend value to customers. The other advances gas metering—eliminating a source of waste and cost.
Honeywell and Microsoft
The integration of Honeywell Forge and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service will provide closed loop maintenance for building owners and operators.
The integration allows customers to access operating data that includes workflow management support so that workers in the field will be able to access critical data that will help them prioritize, analyze, and solve problems more quickly.
The first area of focus will be in automating maintenance for building owners and operators. To optimize their buildings’ energy, performance and comfort, they often need to pull data from a variety of sources that are not normalized and inform remote and dispersed workforces. Facility managers must determine what problem to fix, when to fix it and who to assign to the job, which can be very difficult without having the necessary asset know-how and work order management capability.
“Honeywell’s partnership with Microsoft will deliver new value to our customers as we help them solve business challenges by digitizing their operations,” said Que Dallara, president and CEO, Honeywell Connected Enterprise. “Working with Microsoft, Honeywell will bring solutions at scale – powered by AI-driven insights and immediate access to data – that will help our customers work more efficiently than ever before.”
Dynamics 365 Field Service allows companies to remotely detect and address potential issues early to avoid unnecessary downtime or operational inefficiencies by analyzing IoT data and to improve proactive service offerings through AI-infused IoT alerts and work orders. Leveraging Microsoft’s cloud will enable Honeywell to quickly bring new offerings to market while helping customers meet regional security, privacy, and compliance requirements.
“To achieve resilient operations and sustainable growth, businesses need to partner to fully unlock the opportunities of cloud, AI and IoT technologies. By integrating Honeywell and Microsoft services, companies turn IoT data into critical business insights and actions to optimize operations and deliver new customer value faster,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president, Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business.
Working with Microsoft, Honeywell is already delivering the following Honeywell Forge SaaS solutions that will address what customers need now to return to work and, in the future, to operate safely and efficiently, including:
- Digitized Maintenance – Offers a panoramic view of the performance of facilities and assets using near real-time analytics. This provides important information about critical equipment issues before they become big repair or even replacement problems.
- Energy Optimization – A cloud-based, closed-loop, machine-learning solution that continuously studies a building’s HVAC energy consumption patterns and automatically adjusts to optimal energy saving settings without compromising occupant comfort levels.
- OT Cybersecurity – Honeywell Forge Cybersecurity provides continuous threat detection with minimal disruption of services. The robust software solution simplifies, strengthens and scales industrial cybersecurity operations across the enterprise.
The companies are also exploring more ways to bring innovation to customers by integrating Honeywell Forge solutions with Azure services such as Azure Digital Twins and Azure edge capabilities. Using edge computing, customers can run AI, machine learning, and business processes directly across plants, warehouses, machines, and appliances for quicker actions without the need for a constant internet connection.
Honeywell Metering Software App
Honeywell announced the release of Measurement IQ (MIQ) Optimize – an enterprise-wide solution for monitoring meters, gas chromatographs, and other measurement assets. The new software solution collects and analyses diagnostic information from devices across different sites for a real-time overview of metering health. The MIQ Optimize solution can provide an early warning of measurement concerns, so that operators can prioritize and address meter issues having the most impact on their business.
MIQ Optimize allows users to detect increasing measurement uncertainty more quickly, helping avoid failures and downtime, reducing engineer site visits, and extending calibration periods. The solution also includes recommended actions to ease troubleshooting and maintenance – identifying the most likely causes of meter issues and suggesting remedies. The software supports Honeywell meters and gas chromatographs as well as devices from other major manufacturers.
“Measurement IQ Optimize provides the first vendor-agnostic, enterprise-wide view of the health of metering operations. From a single pane of glass, users can identify their key sources of measurement uncertainty, the value at risk and what they can do to reduce it,” said Max Gutberlet, offering manager, gas software and solutions, Honeywell Process Solutions. ”It’s a powerful tool for directing condition-based maintenance programs and dramatically reducing the cost of lost and unaccounted gas through mismeasurement.”
The solution allows gas distribution businesses and others to address the millions lost every year to undetected meter inaccuracy. Uncertainty of just 0.5% in ultrasonic gas measurement can add up to a cost of approximately $1 million per year. With real-time monitoring, operators can detect issues before these losses accumulate; while enterprise-wide management of meter uncertainty can drive improvement in fiscal metering margins.
