by Gary Mintchell | Oct 6, 2017 | Automation, Workforce
Part of the media / analyst program at Emerson Global User Exchange 2017 was a tour of a manufacturing facility and state-of-the-art (or beyond) training center. The Shakopee, MN facility includes final assembly of pressure sensors, product design (which we didn’t see), and an Interactive Plant Environment training center. The latter itself is a $10 million investment. This is one of two (Charlotte, NC being the other) while a third is planned in Houston.
The Interactive Plant Environment training center includes a classroom and a production facility. The facility includes tanks and pipes, valves, sensors and instrumentation, water and air. No steam or corrosive chemicals, of course. It helps customers and students simulate real life process conditions through hands-on learning in a safe environment. The IPE boasts a breadth of Emerson products where students can increase skills and knowledge through real-life scenario-based labs. Students are taught an aspect of instrumentation and then given a work order. They don hardhat, safety glasses, steel-toed shoes and enter the “plant” to perform the work—whether it be trouble shooting or calibration or whatever.
Students have the opportunity to better understand best practices and troubleshooting techniques from the mentorship of certified Emerson instructors. It is as if they are immersed in a typical plant environment (minus smells and mud) where they can replicate the most common, as well as unexpected, operational scenarios.
This is a great example of forward thinking in the training field. It is also impressive that Emerson continues to make these investments. Emerson alone among its competitors at this time is showing momentum and growth.
The first thing we saw past the lobby was a Collaboration Center. Looking like a high-tech conference room, this Center enables customers to learn to manage remote operations and interact with experts located anywhere in the world. There is one display for video conferencing. Another digital wall includes capability to display a variety of information that people in the room can interact with. The displays may include weather maps with maps of facilities. Or perhaps a “heat map” of wireless installations. This should be a great productivity booster.
Production facility is an excellent example of Lean Manufacturing. We saw an excellent Kanban system as well as many other examples of the visual factory, 5S, and more. I just love seeing the spreading adoption of lean. It’s great for workers, as well as, great for the bottom line.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 26, 2017 | Automation, Wireless
Remember the wireless wars of about 10 years ago? No? Good.
But Emerson was the leader of the WirelessHART camp. One or two other companies led the ISA100 camp. The technologies are quite similar with just enough differences to make them incompatible. A movement to converge the standards faltered.
Then the entire issue went away. Just as I told them all at the time, the market will decide. And it did.
Both wireless technologies, and products supporting each, still exist. So, Emerson has released a new product to bridge the gap.
Emerson announced a new dual-mode wireless gateway which supports both IEC 62951 WirelessHART and ISA100.11a industrial wireless communications standards. This latest addition expands Emerson’s wireless portfolio and provides customers an easy way to take advantage of WirelessHART technologies from many suppliers.
“With our new dual-mode gateway, we’re excited to give ISA100.11a users an easy path to the improved operating performance they are seeking,” said Bob Karschnia, vice president and general manager, wireless, Emerson Automation Solutions. “WirelessHART has proven in 10 years of successful deployments around the world to provide the highest reliability and most robust self-organizing, self-healing network, for the lowest cost.”
With more than 31,000 WirelessHART installations worldwide and over 9.1 billion operating hours, Emerson leads the automation industry in wireless networking. Emerson’s wireless portfolio helps customers extend their automation ecosystem for improved operating reliability with sensing, monitoring and control technologies such as temperature, pressure, level, corrosion, flow, acoustic, gas and vibration, plus wireless adapters for valve positioners and digital valve controllers.
Serving as the backbone of a wireless infrastructure, wireless gateways and access points increase the amount of real-time information available to automation systems, applications and analytics tools to help organizations improve responsiveness and decision making. Critically, they must possess robust, “always-on” security to limit network vulnerability. When deployed efficiently, they can require the least hardware necessary to keep costs low while operating reliability high. Lastly, customers consistently seek ease-of-deployment as a key consideration.
A future release of Emerson’s dual-mode wireless gateway will be integrated into the Cisco 1552WU, a combined WirelessHART and WiFi solution for industrial hardened wireless, and will seamlessly integrate into Emerson’s industry-leading security and network management tools, including Emerson’s Plantweb Insight applications for Industrial IoT which help industrial facilities improve operations and maintenance by simplifying asset monitoring.
by Gary Mintchell | May 26, 2017 | Internet of Things
Dell EMS Internet of Things (IoT) group assembled a mini supply chain as its booth at the user conference Dell EMS World in Las Vegas in May. At the October Dell EMS World in Austin, these were put together as an ice cream factory and distribution, and the booth featured an ice cream machine. I sure could have used an ice cream by the time I got through all the exhibits.
The Dell IoT Gateway was the common denominator of the exhibit tying everything together.
The first station features construction. Here are a couple of guys trying out the DAQRI augmented reality helmets. I had the opportunity to try these in Hannover. A really cool application of AR.
They are looking at a combination of the construction (see the red “steel” framework) and drawings that show the layout of electrical conduit, HVAC ducting, and other details. As a construction worker, they can get a feel of where things go, as well as spot interferences the designer missed.
This station showed product on its way to market through sensing and communication from Nokia.
Below is a layout of the Emerson process manufacturing system.
They brought actual pipe, pump, motor, instruments, wirelessHART communication. No, it didn’t make ice cream.
This station featured IMS Evolve–an application that brings sensor data into the cloud and provides track and trace, as well as other analytics, assuring the safety of the food product through the supply chain from the point of view of proper temperature.
Don’t forget security! Here is a photo of a physical security video system from V5.
The Dell Gateway is an edge device capable of accumulating data from the disparate sources, performing storage and analysis at the edge then sending information to the cloud for further analysis. It seems that everywhere I go, the “edge” is the place where innovation is centered right now. This simple demo showed the power of the edge.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 28, 2016 | Automation, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management
Emerson Automation (formerly Emerson Process Management) is the latest automation company to thoroughly exploit the Industrial Internet of Things as it unveiled its digital strategy and reinvigorated Plantweb architecture at Global Users Exchange 2016.
Microsoft continues its deep penetration into industrial and manufacturing automation markets with a renewed commitment from Emerson. The companies announced at Exchange the Plantweb digital ecosystem and Connected Services are powered by Microsoft Azure IoT Suite.
Emerson is also broadly adopting Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT technology both in its DeltaV and Ovation control systems and in data gateways.
First introduced as the industry’s most advanced process control and safety network, Plantweb now harnesses the power of Industrial IoT to expand digital intelligence to the entire manufacturing enterprise, while also providing an architecture for on-premise applications. Plantweb provides a comprehensive framework to help manufacturers achieve Top Quartile performance in the areas of safety, reliability, production and energy. Top Quartile is defined as achieving operations and capital performance in the top 25 percent of peer companies.
“In 1997, Emerson revolutionized the automation landscape with Plantweb, the first field-based digital plant architecture,” said Peter Zornio, chief strategic officer, Emerson Automation Solutions. “Now, we are doing it again by harnessing the power of Industrial IoT to give customers the technology foundation for Operational Certainty.”
The pieces comprising Plantweb (see diagram) include (from the bottom of the stack): Pervasive Sensing; Secure First Mile; Insight; Advisor; Always Mobile; and, Connected Services. I’ll discuss a little of each of these below. Many are build outs of existing products and technologies, some are new products or services.
Pervasive Sensing
Emerson’s Pervasive Sensing Strategies expand the use of sensor and analytics technology into new operational performance areas through a new generation of low-cost sensors that are easy to install and maintain, take advantage of wireless communications as part of a secure, integrated industrial network and use new analytic algorithms to create insights into the performance of a plant’s assets.
Emerson’s expanding portfolio of pervasive sensing technologies includes capabilities in the areas of hazardous gas sensing, wireless corrosion monitoring, wireless medium voltage equipment monitoring, wireless gas monitoring, wireless non-intrusive surface-sensing temperature measurement, wireless power metering and pressure gauge measurement.
Wireless corrosion monitoring
Emerson’s Permasense Wireless Corrosion Monitoring is a permanently-installed technology that uses unique sensor technology, wireless data delivery and advanced analytics to continuously monitor for metal loss from corrosion or erosion in pipes, pipelines or vessels.
Designed to operate without maintenance for years, this monitoring technology reliably delivers high-integrity data even in the harshest environments, providing ongoing visibility of corrosion and erosion trends in real-time and direct to the engineer.
Wireless medium voltage equipment monitoring
Emerson’s IntelliSAW wireless medium voltage equipment monitoring systems offer real-time, continuous monitoring of electric power switchgear temperatures and smart grid monitoring, providing accurate temperature data for key points in a power transmission network.
Wireless gas monitoring
Emerson’s Rosemount 928 Wireless Gas Monitor is the world’s first integrated WirelessHART toxic gas detection solution. Maintaining remote sites like wellheads and natural gas metering stations is difficult and dangerous because workers approaching these sites may be exposed to unplanned releases of toxic gas. Due to the prohibitive costs to install and operate conventional gas detection systems at these sites, operators have been forced to rely on portable gas detection devices or, even worse, carry on with no gas detection at all. In all these cases, workers may run the risk of exposure when approaching these remote sites to perform maintenance.
Wireless non-intrusive surface-sensing temperature measurement
Emerson’s Rosemount X-well Technology is a surface-sensing temperature measurement solution that eliminates the need for thermowell process penetration when measuring process temperatures in pipe applications and removes leak points to reduce compliance costs and increase safety. X-well technology eliminates the need to drill device connections to get process temperatures, allowing users to avoid the risk of corrosion.
Wireless power metering
The Emerson SensEnable 56WM wireless power meter is designed to monitor voltage, current, power, energy, and other electrical parameters on single and three phase electrical systems with revenue-grade accuracy. The power meter delivers early detection of machine problems through continuous measurement of power consumption and power quality of submeters. Submeters are physical metering devices that monitor electricity, gas, water, steam, and other utilities.
Pressure gauge measurement
Emerson’s Rosemount Wireless Pressure Gauge delivers safer and more reliable readings, enabling remote collection of field data as frequently as once per minute. Accurate, wireless readings keep operators updated on changing field conditions remotely – reducing manual operator rounds and improving safety by keeping personnel out of hazardous areas and safeguarding against catastrophic events.
Secure First Mile
Emerson’s Secure First Mile is a set of architectural approaches and designs, enabled by a family of security services and robust, secure and flexible servers, gateways, and data diodes that ensures that data in existing OT systems can be easily and securely connected to internet based applications.
Using Secure First Mile architectures, a plant can transform its operational technology data into information technology data while ensuring outbound paths of information do not become inbound paths that expose its systems to harm.
As part of its Secure First Mile architectures, Emerson is using OPC Unified Architecture (UA) servers to export data from application databases. OPC UA is an industrial machine-to-machine communication protocol that can be directly consumed by Microsoft Azure, Emerson’s chosen platform for cloud computing. Microsoft Azure enables the building, deployment and management of applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. Its integrated cloud services include analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage and web applications.
To connect its field data aggregation products such as wireless sensor gateways, CHARM I/O cards, Ethernet I/O cards and RTUs, Emerson is using Windows10 IoT edge gateways. These gateways enable data to securely reach the Microsoft Azure cloud by translating operational technology protocols such as FOUNDATION fieldbus (FF) and HART to information technology protocols such as Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) & MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT). These gateways provide a high degree of security through data encryption and key management. In addition, as described, data diodes installed within the system act as physical barriers to incoming information, preventing outside access to a plant’s systems.
Insight
Emerson’s Plantweb Insight applications, which leverage Emerson’s Pervasive Sensing strategies, help users instantly make sense of plant data to drive overall enterprise profitability. It’s a single, lightweight, easy-to-install web-based platform that automatically and strategically interprets plant data through a scalable suite of applications.
Plantweb Insight features a user-friendly, intuitive interface capable of running on any device with access to a web browser (desktop computers, laptops, tablets and mobile phones). Pre-built analytics require minimal configuration, and its flexible software is operating system-independent, easily installing and integrating with existing infrastructures.
The power of Plantweb Insight resides in its collection of easy-to-deploy applications, each containing the embedded domain expertise and analytics that enable existing resources to immediately identify and resolve asset issues that historically were addressed by periodic, manual rounds or unexpected failures. These applications are designed to help users realize the most from Pervasive Sensing strategies at their sites.
More than a dozen total applications are scheduled for release, with each dedicated to a single, specific asset class. The first three applications are available now and future applications will be released at a rate of two per quarter.
Plantweb Insight is currently available with applications for steam trap monitoring, pump monitoring and pressure gauge monitoring.
Advisor
Emerson’s Plantweb Advisor Suite is a scalable set of software products offering two new applications, Health Advisor and Performance Advisor, in addition to the previously released Energy Advisor – all of which leverage the industry-standard OSIsoft Pi System’s highly scalable open data infrastructure that captures and shapes data generated by equipment.
“Together, Emerson and OSIsoft are creating a foundation for digital transformation,” said Martin Otterson, senior vice president of sales, marketing and partners at OSIsoft. “Through the combination of Plantweb Advisor Suite and the PI System, organizations will be able to rapidly achieve deep insights into their operations that in turn will help them boost productivity or develop new services.”These complementary applications are designed to boost operational performance by empowering a plant’s reliability, process and energy experts with critical information about equipment health and efficiency as well as energy consumption and emissions.
Using the Plantweb Advisor Suite, a plant’s essential assets are continuously monitored for potential problems with Health Advisor, operating efficiency of a plant’s equipment is tracked through Performance Advisor, and Energy Advisor maps and manages a plant’s energy consumption in real time.
Always Mobile
Always Mobile solutions deliver secure, instant access to critical information in intuitive views that prepare personnel at all levels to more effectively make business-critical decisions and operate their facilities.
AMS Asset View
AMS Asset View software is a dashboard and messaging application used to present asset health information on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. An application connecting into the AMS ARES Platform, AMS Asset View’s persona-based views ensure that reliability personnel know the health of their assets in relevant time and always see the alerts they need to see, and only the alerts they need to see, so they can focus on asset conditions critical to production.
AMS Asset View focuses on delivering asset health status and alerts in relevant time, using a push alert mechanism to provide notifications that are pertinent to a user’s responsibilities and the criticality of an individual asset.
DeltaV Mobile
The new DeltaV Mobile application allows process engineers, operators, and plant managers to quickly and easily view personalized watch lists and receive real-time alarm notifications.
Collaborative features enable users to more efficiently diagnose and troubleshoot abnormal process situations—whether they are on site or in a remote location.
Guardian Mobile
Emerson announces Guardian Mobile, a mobile application delivering visibility of critical data for control, asset, machinery, and device monitoring systems. An element of Emerson’s Always Mobile, Guardian Mobile enables users to access their system health score for all associated systems from anywhere.
AMS Trex Device Communicator
The AMS Trex Device Communicator is a handheld communicator for advanced diagnostics, configuration, and troubleshooting in the field, designed to improve the efficiency of the many tasks performed by maintenance technicians.
The Trex communicator supports additional mobile applications, such as ValveLink Mobile, which allows technicians to configure and test valves inline, minimizing the impact on production.
Connected Services
Emerson Connected Services are bridging that gap by harnessing the Industrial IoT to help its customers maximize the health, reliability and performance of plant assets and processes through proactive, predictive analysis that delivers actionable data. A key component of Emerson’s Plantweb digital ecosystem, the service offers remote, continuous assessment of a plant’s equipment and processes by Emerson experts to empower customers with the information needed to improve efficiency and avoid unplanned downtime. Emerson Connected Services utilize Microsoft Azure cloud services and data analytic tools that provide a scalable and secure cloud application environment.
Emerson Connected Services offer support across four main subscription-based service offerings in which experts analyze data from critical equipment to provide actionable insights so customers can align their maintenance and operational responses with their business strategies. These offerings currently include Control Valve Connected Services, Steam Trap Connected Services, DeltaV System Health Connected Services, and Machinery Connected Services.
These new services are an integrated part of Emerson’s Lifecycle Services offerings, enabling Emerson to provide customers with more effective and efficient access to its experts. Rather than physically sending experts to inspect and analyze data from critical equipment on a customer’s site, Emerson is able to bring the data to the experts, wherever they are located, with secure connectivity and cloud services. For the most part, users are leveraging the existing infrastructure in their facility making it easy to start small and focused, and grow the service to deliver more business results.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 27, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, News, Safety, Technology
Emerson Automation’s PlantWeb architecture has grown and morphed into a full blown Industrial Internet of Things platform. The redesigned and reinvigorated integrated architecture forms the foundation of Emerson’s new Operational Certainty initiative. This is the first of a few reports on the latest Emerson Automation news.
Steve Sonnenberg, recently elevated into the role of Chairman of Emerson Automation—the company formerly known as Emerson Process Management, introduced new Executive President Mike Train to the assembled customers and press at the 2016 edition of Emerson Global Users Exchange in Austin, Texas on Oct. 24. Train then introduced Operational Certainty.
The previous initiative was Project Certainty where the company strategists arrayed its existing and new products into a package that was designed to remove automation from the critical path of capital projects. These days capital projects are few and far between. Companies are scrambling to wring more profitability from existing assets. Therefore a new approach from Emerson that is obviously driven by its customers’ needs. Train says that this initiative will help wrest more than $1 trillion from operational losses globally.
Initiatives need benchmarks. Emerson introduced peer benchmarking on best practices to achieve Top Quartile performance in safety, reliability, production, and energy management. Top Quartile is defined as achieving operations and capital performance in the top 25 percent of peer companies.
The company is also launching a new Operational Certainty consulting practice plus expanded project execution methodologies and resources. Additionally, on October 24, the company will announce a new Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) digital ecosystem to provide the technology foundation for companies to securely implement Industrial IoT to achieve measurable business performance improvement.
A few examples of Emerson’s findings:
- In terms of safety, Top Quartile performers had one-third the number of safety incidents as compared to their average industry peers.
- In terms of asset reliability, Emerson found that Top Quartile performers spend half as much on maintenance compared with average performers and operate with an incremental 15 days of available production each year.
- In the domain of production, Top Quartile manufacturers spent 20 percent less on production-related expenses as compared to average producers.
- In the area of energy and emissions, the top 25 percent of producers spent one-third as much as the industry average on energy costs and had 30 percent less CO2 emissions.
