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Getting the Most from Production Assets

by Jim Cahill

ARC Advisory Group’s Larry O’Brien provides an excellent article entitled Briefing: Emerson’s Process Management’s Asset Optimization Business. He summarizes the services of the Asset Optimization business this way:

The AO business is divided into the two primary segments of Asset Reliability Services and PlantWeb Services, and the former encompasses Emerson’s traditional MRO services business, including services for control valves and instrumentation, as well as mechanical and electrical equipment. The Asset Reliability Services business covers testing, diagnostics, repair, calibration, and maintenance including spare parts and reconditioned equipment. Managing and executing plant turnarounds is also a core capability of Emerson.

PlantWeb Services are dedicated to the successful implementation and use of AMS Suite software and the predictive diagnostics technologies of Emerson's PlantWeb digital plant architecture. Emerson has PlantWeb Service engineers worldwide dedicated to tasks such as opportunity assessment and benchmarking, asset prioritization, technology implementation, training, and extending PlantWeb installations to other realms of operations and maintenance, such as machinery health management.

His conclusion:
Emerson is the market leader for PAM [plant asset management] applications, and they realize that they must provide a strong business value proposition for AMS to remain successful. The key to success for any PAM implementation is planning, planning, and more planning. This means offering a comprehensive set of services around AMS that allow users to get the most out of the application and put it in the context of a strategy for operational excellence and continuous improvement.
I caught up with Stuart Harris, vice president of marketing for the Asset Optimization business who visited with ARC to provide this update. Stuart pointed to the critical role of predictive diagnostic technologies along with services to deliver improved financial results. The Emerson team has documented many quantified results from customer engagements verifying that a more predictive environment does indeed deliver business benefits.

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July 31, 2006 in Asset Optimization | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

Greater Efficiency through RSS and Blogs

by Jim Cahill

I’m presenting a paper at our customer user group meeting, Emerson Exchange this fall. The presentation, Finding What You Need Faster via RSS and Blogs, will describe and demonstrate how reading RSS feeds, RSS search feeds, and blogs, helps me better understand what’s happing in automation and technology faster than I ever could by going out and visiting websites.

The premise is that this subscription-based method of collecting information flips the model around. Instead of going and seeking, I subscribe to what interests me, and new content comes to me for me to read (or listen in the case of podcasts) when I have the time to read (or listen to) it. Often this is on the weekend or when I’m sitting on an airplane.

In an earlier post, I cited a Yahoo study that said RSS adoption is quite low. I believed then and still do believe this due to the fact that most of us use Internet Explorer as our web browser. When we click on the little orange buttons we see cryptic XML code… hardly something that would appear to be useful in any way.

Our attempt to help people with the current hurdles of RSS adoption is the RSS Starter Kit. Or you may be a Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc. web browser user and have no issues at all.

If you’re a Microsoft user, these hurdles go away when Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook 2007 become available where RSS is native in the applications. No more cryptic XML-gibberish displayed. In preparation for the Emerson Exchange presentation, and to get a better feeling for Microsoft’s implementation, I’ve been running Microsoft Office 2007 beta and Internet Explorer version 7 beta. In fact this blog post is being written in Word 2007 which has added a blog post template which connects to the blog server software running http://www.EmersonProcessXperts.com. Microsoft has done a nice job in integration, where I can subscribe in the Internet Explorer and the RSS Feed is also added to my Outlook RSS Subscriptions folder where I can read the information offline, much like I can with emails. Once these products hit the mainstream, I think more people will see the benefits of the subscription model where their content of interest finds them to better do what they need to do.

If you’re planning on attending the Emerson Exchange, please do consider visiting my presentation. For those of you with blogs, bring your PCs or PDAs and live blog it, so I can get feedback on how to improve in future sessions. Also, if you have any examples of how you’re using RSS/RSS searches/blogs to your advantage add a comment or send me an email.

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July 28, 2006 in Miscellaneous | Comments (1) | Trackback (2)

Padding Your Project Timelines

by Jim Cahill

I read a fascinating piece about methods of estimating software project schedules. It was written by Shenling Yang, a senior software engineer for the DeltaV system. I bring it up here because many project managers and project engineers are faced with similar questions of how to best estimate project schedules.

Shenling starts by citing an InformationWeek magazine piece entitled, To Err is Human, To Estimate, Devine from several years ago which states:

A recent study of 100 companies found the average company completes only 37% of major IT projects on time, while only 42% finish on budget.

Shenling attributes much of this to the difficulties in gathering accurate estimates of software development effort. The quality of the estimates directly affects whether or not the project team can meet scope, quality, and schedule commitments.

A common method of estimation is the bottom-up, task level approach, relying on the judgment of the team members in performing the tasks. This method, coined “Expert Judgment” by Robert Hughes in an Information and Software Technology article is subject to human biases. There are many biases that have an impact on project estimates, and Shenling cites prudence bias as one of the biggest.

This bias is the accumulation of padding all the tasks which can result in overly cautious project schedules and uncertainties across the project schedule. In our nature there is a tendency to procrastinate or delay the start since of the task knowing this padding exists.

A better approach Shenling points to is project schedule-based padding to handle risks and uncertainties. A great analogy she uses is a local store with 5 checkout counters. If there are individual lines for each counter, your chances of getting stuck in a slow line are greater. If there is one line feeding the 5 counters your risk of “getting stuck” is reduced since the uncertainty of the speed of checkout at a particular counter is reduced.

To minimize the schedule risks of your project it’s better to apply the padding at the project level, and not at the individual task level. The overall project manager should clearly communicate this padding to all the team members in order to keep everyone on the same page and going in the right direction. Great words of wisdom, I’d say.

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July 25, 2006 in Miscellaneous | Comments (2) | Trackback (0)

Lifecycle Benefits of Foundation Fieldbus

by Jim Cahill

In April 1997, the first commercial Foundation fieldbus application was installed in a Canadian plant running a series of ethylene furnaces. Emerson technology experts including a process automation hall of fame member were on the scene in this new chapter in process automation.

Since that time, process manufacturers around the globe and across many industries have been realizing benefits in installation and ongoing operations from this digital communications technology.

The ARC Advisory Group is performing a survey on Operational, Maintenance, and Engineering Benefits Related to Foundation Fieldbus. They are particularly interested in responses from end users that have implemented Foundation Fieldbus in their plants.

If you’d like to participate, here’s the link to the ARC survey. I hear that the survey is open through the first week of August, so hopefully you can squeeze in a few minutes to answer the 15 questions. As a participant you’ll receive a free copy of the results.

I’m curious what the ARC findings will be, and will be sure to point you to any highlights the ARC folks freely share.

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July 20, 2006 in Digital Busses | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

Innovation, cGMPs, and PAT

by Jim Cahill

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing magazine’s On Pharma blog had an interesting post last week entitled Silencing Pharma’s cGMP high priesthood. The post pointedly asks:

We all know that cGMPs are essential to safety. But has the industry gone too far with them? Has pharma, in effect, created a high priesthood of cGMP that stymies creativity, and even common sense?

This post references a Pharmaceutical Manufacturing editorial by Emil Ciurczak who makes the argument:

But, in some cases, cGMPs: have become laws to follow without question. Just as many religious people may not really know why they perform certain ceremonies, many scientists today don’t know why they do many things. Ask them and you may hear an answer very close to "It is written!"

I ran this by Christie Deitz, a senior principal engineer in our Life Sciences organization that you may recall from an earlier post on executing S88 projects. Christie believes that this viewpoint has many subscribers and has some elements of truth to it.

She reminded me that this is on of the key drivers for the Process Analytical Technologies (PAT) initiative from the Food and Drug Administration. PAT, a risk-based regulatory framework, is one of the initiatives in the FDA’s GMPs for the 21st Century program.

The intent behind this initiative is to break down some of the barriers preventing pharmaceutical manufacturers from using current technologies to improve the quality of the products manufactured. An added benefit is that these technologies can also reduce the cost of manufacturing through improved cycle times and other process efficiencies. One example where this has happened is Baxter’s use of model predictive control to improve solvent recovery.

Another example where today’s technologies can help maintain high quality is Talecris Biotherapeutics’ use of smart devices and digital bus technologies like Foundation Fieldbus to monitor on-line analyzers and generate “GMP critical alarms” in real-time for anything out of tolerance.

While there is some truth to the statement in the On Pharma blog, many in the industry, including the FDA, are working to change the “cGMP high priesthood” mentality. And, many Life Science manufacturers are beginning to take advantage of the risk-based regulatory framework and are using current technologies to improve their manufacturing quality and improve their overall operational performance.

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July 19, 2006 in Life Sciences | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

Bringing Operator Training Right to the Operators via eLearning

by Jim Cahill

As we all seem to be more than ever pressed for time, improving our skills through training seems harder to do. eLearning has advanced to help overcome the obstacles of time away, travel and living costs, etc. by bringing it to us over the Internet—if we can squeeze a window of focused time required for effective learning.

Process manufacturers in their pursuit of financial stability have squeezed many areas of their businesses including their operations staff levels. This makes time away for training even more difficult.

I’ve discussed in earlier posts some of the innovations Emerson’s Educational Services has been doing to meet the needs given these trends. They recently announced the DeltaV Operator eLearning program to provide this training over the Internet for those who enroll to receive this training.

I caught up with Instructor Troy Nelson who put together this eLearning curriculum for Operators. He cited some interesting facts from a St. John’s University study on adult learning which said 45% of us are primarily hands-on learners (kinesthetic learning), 30% are visual learners, and the remaining 25% are audio learners.

With this in mind, Troy and the team designed the Operator eLearning curriculum with over 50 demonstration videos, interactive practice sessions, and interactive workshops to provide for various ways we learn. And audio runs throughout these sessions to cover those audio learners.

Troy also felt it was important to keep each lesson to about 15 minutes to keep the lesson focused and keep the participant’s attention. Even though the full curriculum takes a little over a day (or a long day for those motivated folks), each enrolled student has three months to access the material as often as they would like.

You can see a quick preview of an Operator lesson here.

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July 17, 2006 in Education | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

Emerson and Siemens Promote Interoperability

by Jim Cahill

The news of Emerson and Siemens working together to "exchange technology that will extend interoperability and end-user benefits" hit the business wire earlier this week.

The reaction among the small but growing band of bloggers in the process automation space soon followed.

AutomationWorld magazine's editor-in-chief Gary Mintchell wrote in his Interoperability Propelled post:

In both cases, this means more ability for customers of each to integrate more systems. Definitely a win for the customers. Competitors of each of these companies have long grumbled about them being pretty much closed companies when it comes to working with others. I guess this pretty well shatters some of that thought. Good to see them opening up.

Carl Henning over at the PTO PROFIblog wrote in his Wow! Talk about giving users a choice… post:

Emerson is known for supporting Foundation Fieldbus (FF) and Siemens will add support for FF to its devices.

Siemens is known for supporting PROFIBUS and PROFINET and Emerson will support those standards in its offerings.

I'd like to make a quick point that Emerson has a longstanding commitment to interoperability. The DeltaV system and many other Emerson products have supported HART, Foundation Fieldbus, OPC, Profibus DP, DeviceNet, AS-i bus, ODBC, XML, web services, and more recently wireless and many other important interoperability standards. A quick look at this fieldbus interoperability video circa 2001 demonstrates this longstanding commitment to interoperability. Also a quick Google search on Interoperability on the EmersonProcess.com site yields quite a few results.

I caught up with Duncan Schleiss, the marketing VP for Emerson's Process Systems and Solutions business which manages the DeltaV system about this latest announcement. His view is that standards are very important as it gives process manufacturers freedom of choice. The standards must facilitate innovation allowing each supplier to provide increased value to customers. With the innovation flexibility in the standard, the process manufacturer is the clear winner in being able to choose between suppliers yet at the same time being able to select products that have clear differences. It is this innovation that drives technology that improves process manufacturing productivity and adds the most value. So while standards are good, they must endorse and allow innovation.

A final point on difficulty in achieving interoperability from a very good AutomationWorld magazine article by Jim Pinto, entitled The Dichotomy of Open Standards:

End-users continue to ask for interoperability as a means to achieve vendor independence. But that is the exact opposite of what all the primary suppliers want. Standards turn proprietary products into commodities, with lower profit margins.

As Duncan points out, if the standard provides the flexibility to innovate to create value, it is something everyone-- both suppliers and end users alike can support.

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July 13, 2006 in Digital Busses, in Interoperability | Comments (2) | Trackback (1)

Abbott Documents Results Applying MES

by Jim Cahill

An interesting paper was presented recently at the Honeywell User Group (HUG) meeting as captured by Pharmaceutical Manufacturing magazine's On Pharma blog. The post, Abbott dispels MES myths (Notes from HUG II) is interesting for the $1.3 Million USD estimated annual savings from applying Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software.

Why I make particular note of this project is that it was accomplished with the help of Emerson Life Sciences expertise in deliverying ANSI/ISA-95 (S95) solutions.

I caught up with Principal Engineer, Josh Gangl in our Life Sciences / Food and Beverage industry organization who was involved in this project. The selected MES software, POMSnet, was integrated by Josh and the team with the plant's DeltaV Batch system.

As the On Pharma post notes:

For Abbott, the MES was a critical aspect of its pursuit of an integrated and paperless environment.
Josh described the challenge as connecting to manual processing pieces like manual operator instructions and procedures, executing weigh and dispense operations, and other non-automated procedures. These were connected with the continuous, batch, alarm, event, and operator actions performed in the DeltaV system to create an electronic batch record. In addition, batch definition and scheduling was done in the MES layer and integrated with the DeltaV system via campaigns.

As Abbott's David Kircher noted in the On Pharma post:

The customizations we did were related to integrations and custom reports, but everything else was out of the box.
This helped minimize the complexity of the integration effort yet still provide savings from reduced documented exceptions, reduced incorrect operator actions, and reduced documentation errors which contributed to the annual savings realized from the project.

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July 11, 2006 in Data Management, in Life Sciences | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

Optimizing Kraft Batch Digester Performance

by Jim Cahill

Pulp and paper manufacturers have lived in a period of time of extended price softness for their products. This as well as other market and economic forces have kept their focus on reducing cost per ton of production to help their margins. Pulpandpaper.net recently reported some optimism although not in the near term:

So far, prices for paper and pulp have not risen, in fact they remain weak in North America. But some firms around the world are beginning to get slightly larger orders from European buyers, market analysts said.
I spoke with Bryan Moss, a fiberline consultant in our Pulp and Paper industry organization. He advises pulp manufacturers to look at improvement projects as far upstream in the process as possible. The impact of these optimization efforts can ripple through the process in the form of better quality, lower energy usage, and reduced raw material consumption.

One area pulp mills have had success in reducing their cost per ton produced is in the kraft pulping process, specifically with their kraft batch digesters. The Pulp and Paper industry team has packaged their expertise to optimize the performance of the individual digesters and the controls common to all of them.

The process typically begins by working with the mill to understand the key performance indicators, areas where the mill is limited, and current operational performance versus target performance. An example of this data analysis includes a KPI on quality such as a Kappa/K#/P# scatter graph and it's correlation to H-Factor and grades.

BatchDigesterScreenAround the individual batch digesters are controls developed for the phases: chip and liquor filling, bring-up, cook, blow, relief and blowback, and the cooking model. Controls common to all the batch digesters are optimized including: chip system, liquor, scheduling, pulp quality, and steam limiting and smoothing. Smart alarming is added so that the alarm levels are appropriate for the operating phase of the digesters. Automatic production reporting provides the mill management with an information windshield to drive the process in the required direction, with reports available by blow, shift, day, month and annual summaries.

Results from the optimization process typically include a reduction in white and black liquor usage of 1-2%, reduced steam usage 5-15%, reduced batch cycle time 5-15%, and an increase in overall yield of 0.5-3%. Bryan adds that naturally these results vary depending on process constraints.

Bryan stresses that the key is to have an optimized solution which the operators trust to not override in manual mode. To accomplish this, the team provides history and analysis tools, training and education, and ongoing support. The design philosophy is for the operator to be no more than 2 clicks away from any information.

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July 7, 2006 in Kraft Batch Digester, in Process Optimization | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

Staying in Tune with Looptips

by Jim Cahill

A colleague passed along the June edition of Control magazine with a marking on page 34 in their All Around Loop Controllers resource guide section.

It had a Tuning Tips Newsletter section courtesy of Emerson's Educational Services group.

The page is put together by John Egnew, a Training Consultant and Instructor for Emerson Process Management. John's purpose with these loop tips is to provide a compilation of years of experience with loop devices and controller tuning necessary for keeping control loops operating at the desired performance levels.

At the time of this writing there are six loop tips including:

John invites requests for more information, so send him an email, or add a comment on this post, and I'll pass it along to John and invite his comments back.

The All Around Loop Controllers resource guide page also highlights Greg McMillan's Good Tuning: A Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition book which is available in the DeltaV Bookstore and Process Control Video Training also available from Educational Services.

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July 5, 2006 in Education | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)