Communities

When I was at Emerson's Micro Motion facility in Boulder last week, I had a chance to meet product line business manager Tonya Wyatt. She recently did a quick video for the Micro Motion Online Community to announce a new transmitter with multi-variable digital (MVD) technology.

What's neat about the 4:33 video is how Tonya explains the background for the Model 9739 transmitter with MVD technology based on customer feedback. The existing transmitter, the RFT9739 has the analog electronics. It been used by process manufacturers for 20 years. The MVD technology, based on digital signal processing (DSP), improved the transmitter by doubling the turndown ratio, or measurement range of operation. And, as with most things that have moved from analog to digital, accuracy was also improved and greater noise immunity provided more opportunities for operation in electrically noisy environments.

Tonya shares the feedback that even with the improvements, many process manufacturers did not want to upgrade because the form factor of the RFT9739. At 1:30 in the video she describes the feedback that everything in this form factor is front accessible, the unit is wall-mountable, and its ruggedness is a good fit for truck applications

In spite of the popularity and longevity of the RFT9739, Tonya explains the realities that hardware manufacturers face in electronic parts obsolescence. With Moore's Law inexorably driving the price/performance curves of electronic components, it's a challenge to find new components to fit a design conceived long ago.

At 2:24, Tonya shares the results of the questions they asked customers given the reality that the RFT9739 could no longer be made at some point in the future due to parts obsolescence. Process manufacturers wanted the MVD technology for the improvements in diagnostics, accuracy, turndown ratio, and noise immunity, but they wanted to keep the form factor that was friendly to work with. They also did not want to have to change the conduit connections or rewire and be able to upgrade in place the analog electronics over to the MVD electronics.

At 2:50, Tonya highlights that this listening went into the design of the Model 9739 transmitter with MVD technology. For existing installations, an upgrade replaces the power supply and electronics without disturbing the wiring.

Two thoughts come to mind after watching this video. The first is that as the Micro Motion Online Community grows, more of this dialog between process manufacturers and Micro Motion marketing and technologists will occur on a daily basis to improve designs across all of the products. Ideas can be put out, discussed, argued over, and improved through this public communications medium.

The second is that these quick YouTube videos help convey the whys in product developments better than most other traditional forms of communication. What do you think?

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Update: Eoin Ó Riain reports on the 9739 transmitter over on his Read-out Instrumentation Signpost blog.

I'm checking in over at Emerson's Micro Motion Community today to see how the growth of this community is coming along. In the post, Communities to Find Answers and Solve Problems, I shared some statistics on the size of the Micro Motion community. There has been growth in members, friendship bonds, posts, comments, videos, and more since last report.

A view of the What's New? Page shows quite a bit of activity over the past two days. And the timestamps show that participation is happening around the clock, so likely the community is either global or there are a number of night owls who love Coriolis flow and density measurement late night discussions. My guess without digging into it is the former.

A good example of a recent post:

I need to know if anyone has information about Coriolis in Flow Measurement of Heavy Oil Petroleum 9 to 11°API, with high viscosities.

Emerson's Pat Page, a member of the Micro Motion sales team responded:

We continue to have success in measuring heavy API gravity crudes. If you would like to see performance for a particular application, send me the flow details and we can provide flow calculations with pressure drops and accuracy.repeatablilty data. [email address]. Need to know what the flowing viscosity and temperature will be.

One of the things you'll notice as you look through the various forum discussion threads is high participation from the Micro Motion team. This is one of the success factors for communities centered around products and applications. In some threads, process automation professionals have offered strong opinions on what they don't like or believe is missing from a product. This feedback and ongoing connection between customers and the Micro Motion team is just what Micro Motion president Tom Moser was seeking in his February Intech magazine Executive Corner article, Online collaboration: A win for all of us. In the article, he cited an Aberdeen Group study, which noted:

...organizations realized a 93% improvement in their ability to capture consumer insight that drove a new product or service development. In addition to contributions to new product development, these organizations achieved an estimated 63% customer service cost reduction and 82% improvement in identifying and reducing risk to their brands.

Although this community centers around Micro Motion Coriolis flow and density measurement, the videos area currently has 9 videos including videos showing Rosemount pressure measurement devices and DeltaV SIS safety instrumented systems. Applications often span many products and technologies, and videos are great way to quickly show how technologies can be applied to solve problems.

I saw a first peek of this community at the 2009 Emerson Exchange from Mike Tongwarin, who leads this community. It has come quite a ways from its official launch in November 2009. The community will continue to grow if the current ingredients remain intact. These ingredients include the members continuing to find value in the questions they ask and the answers they give, the Micro Motion team continuing to have strong senior management support, and community managers like Mike continuing to inject energy and enthusiasm to foster wider and deeper participation.

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I've mentioned in a recent post about the power of on-line communities to connect folks on a peer-to-peer basis to quickly find answers. Here's a recent example from the DeltaV Digital Automation System LinkedIn group.

A new thread, Cabinets Number estimation., was started a few days ago. The engineer who began the thread asked:

I have an estimate of 500 I/Os count for my DCS. How do I estimate the number of marshalling/system cabinets required for this? This is being implemented by Delta V standard Cabinet size of 800mm width x 800mm depth x 2100mm height with front and rear entries.

A consultant responded within a day that it's a function of the mix of traditional and bussed I/O and how you engineer your AC and DC voltage distribution. Next, an Emerson project manager, Luuk Somers weighed in noting that the use of WirelessHART devices can lessen the cabinet footprint needed. He also noted the CHARM I/O in the imminent DeltaV release could also have an impact.

Emerson's Andre Dicaire, a DeltaV product manager responsible for the DeltaV hardware, succinctly stated how electronic marshalling could simplify the cabinet estimation process:

Actually, the answer is now easy. Select the Cabinet type and divide into the total I/O to determine the number of standard Electronic Marshalling cabinets needed.

Siraj indicates he plans to use DeltaV standard cabinets, front/back entry. These cabinets are based on Electronic Marshalling with CHARM IO. This cabinet supports 576 I/O channels, of any mix. There are 6 CHARM IO cards in the cabinet, each card supporting 96 channels. The channels are individually characterized with the needed signal types by the installed CHARM. In addition, each channel can be assigned to any one of up to 4 controllers. This means you can start with one controller, and if needed add up to three additional controllers to handle your control logic. You can reassign any signal without touching the wiring.

Also, you can re-task any channel if the project changes a signal type, such as upgrading a limit switch to an anlog sensor. Install the sensor and change the CHARM. The wiring need not change.

Early on, you only need the I/O count. Once the I/O types are known, you can order the CHARMs. In the meantime, you can start the installation of field wiring knowing that any signal can land on any channel.

OK, You should separate any high voltage type signals from low voltage instrumentation, since most plants require AC level signals to be segrated. So, divide the signals into these two voltage levels, calculate the number of cabinets by dividing by 576 (or 288 for front only access).

Yes, you can still design the system with traditional I/O cards, and wait until the engineering is more advanced so you know how many controllers you need, where the I/O must be landed and then plan the field wiring. Or you can look at Electronic marshalling to decouple the field wiring from the control strategy/controller designs.

Within the span of a couple of days project engineers, consultants, project managers, and product managers shared their expertise on a peer-to-peer basis to address a question that faces most project engineers. This is especially important in this rapidly advancing world of technology in which we live.

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As this blog's Communities category will attest, I'm a big fan of these. Once they reach a sufficient number of members, they become quite valuable from a peer-to-peer help standpoint. Two DeltaV examples are in Facebook and LinkedIn. At the time of this post's creation, the DeltaV Facebook group has 1,127 members and the DeltaV LinkedIn group has 1,668 members.

In both communities, you'll see how-to Q & A's, application Q & A's, integration Q & A's, and much more. Recruiters looking for DeltaV expertise also post opportunities in these communities.

Here's one example that brought all this to mind. I follow the DeltaV LinkedIn community more closely because I get daily summary emails of posts that have been made over that period. If I think a product manager, industry expert, application expert, etc. around Emerson can help, I forward the email their way.

The DeltaV Facebook group does not have this email capability (at least to my knowledge), nor a direct way to subscribe to an RSS feed. With RSS, the posts flow directly into my Microsoft Outlook 2007 RSS reader. I started a post long ago, RSS Feed of Group Discussion Board? to see what the best way to be notified of new posts might be.

Mike Boudreaux, whom you might recall from many process safety and social media-related posts, suggested Page2RSS. Here's an example of the page it creates (and its associated RSS feed) when pointed to the discussions page in the DeltaV Facebook group. This worked OK but did not provide detail of the content of the posts.

This morning, I saw a new comment to this thread by Andre Levy, a member of the DeltaV Facebook community. He created a Yahoo Pipe that allows you to enter the group ID (21266817522 for the DeltaV Group) and it creates an RSS feed for the discussions page. This RSS feed gives the subject, the first name of the author, and the content of the post in its feed.

It's a perfect example of peers helping peers solve an issue. In this case, it was my issue. If you find this solution useful too or have other brilliant ideas, share your thoughts on this thread.

While you're there, you just mind find some other valuable things, like a DeltaV Backup Application, developed by Jason Villamil, who is a member of the John H. Carter team. John H. Carter is one of Emerson's local business partners in the Louisiana and central Gulf Coast area.

If you have an interest in the DeltaV system, consider joining one or both of these communities, and/or look for the DeltaV tweets in Twitter.

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Update: I asked Andre Levy if I could give credit to him in this post and he gave me the OK. I've updated the post above to include him. Thanks for the Yahoo Pipes logic to create the DeltaV Facebook discussions RSS feed, Andre!

Update 2: Andre provided an updated RSS feed, http://feeds2.feedburner.com/fbDeltaV . I've updated the links above with this new feed. Thanks again, Andre!

In our world where email inboxes and sent items folders overflow with both spam and valuable information, it grows harder to find what we need. The trend to rely on our professional networks to find answers and solve problems continues to grow.

In my role at the surface of the Emerson organization, I subscribe to many of the automation communities in LinkedIn to get a feeling for the issues being discussed and how Emerson experts might help. Some of the ones I follow include:

• DeltaV
• ISA
• Automation
• Automation & Control Engineering
• Automation Engineers
• Automation World
• CONTROL Global

It's not an all-inclusive list, just some I follow and ones in which I receive daily summary emails. These groups have varying degrees of participation and mostly are not being led by active, focused community managers.

From an automation supplier-led community standpoint, the Micro Motion Community is a good example. The community has grown to 763 members, has connected 1742 friendship bonds, has 275 posts with 124 comments, includes 6 videos, and mentions 21 events to date. The community has strong support from the Micro Motion organization and is led by online marketing manager, Mike Tongwarin.

Mike has posted two of the videos, Micro Motion Launches Online Community and Micro Motion SMART Meter Verification. The latest smart meter verification video is hosted in YouTube but also viewable within the community. I imagine more will continue to be added over time.

The community also has a blog area where community members have posted a few blogs. Some of these posts include Greenhouse Gas compliance, Vapor Recovery, and a kickoff Let's get started! post.

As with most communities, growth occurs over time if the people who visit find value and share the site with their peers. It boils down to whether the particular community helps find answers and solve problems more quickly than by other means.

I know that Mike and the team are committed to add the necessary energy into the Micro Motion Community to make sure the experience for those who visit is indeed valuable. I also look forward to sharing more on-line communities around Emerson Process Management as they bloom.

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The president of Emerson's Micro Motion Coriolis flow & density measurement business, Tom Moser, has a great article in the Jan/Feb edition of ISA's Intech magazine. The executive corner article, Online collaboration: A win for all of us, is a strong call to action for process automation suppliers and process manufacturers to take advantage of social media (a.k.a. Web 2.0) to improve listening, research & development, and the way we learn and interact.

Tom frames the opportunity:

Today, as consumers, we have the opportunity to evaluate, share, research, and comment on any product or service online. Consumers can change the course of a new product introduction and influence what companies will develop and sell to us in the future. While this might put us outside of our traditional comfort zone, one thing is for certain--we all need to accept it and embrace it.

Through social media applications like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, RSS searches, etc. companies can immediately improve their listening skills. Tom describes in an Aberdeen Group report on listening to online conversations, that organizations:

...realized a 93% improvement in their ability to capture consumer insight that drove a new product or service development. In addition to contributions to new product development, these organizations achieved an estimated 63% customer service cost reduction and 82% improvement in identifying and reducing risk to their brands.

With these types of ROI figures, it's understandable how social media initiatives in business-to-business (B2B) companies have moved beyond the organizations' grassroots levels into the executive management levels.

Tom notes that the tools themselves are not costly. What does consume resources is the organizational commitment to the time required to regularly track, participate, and use the flow of information that improved listening provides. Taking advantage of the insights that users of your products and services share can be the differentiation your company offers versus your competition to grow your business.

Beyond better listening, Tom enumerates other benefits such as closer connections, tapping ideas/solutions more easily, better best practice sharing, faster access to information, improved personal development, and more.

I highlighted in an earlier post, Join the Micro Motion Online Community, how the Micro Motion team is fully embracing Tom's ideas with an on-line community around Coriolis flow and density measurement. If you have these measurement devices or have the interest to learn more about the technology, this community is a great place to ask questions and learn from experts.

In the article, I couldn't agree more with Tom's closing thought:

Social media is dramatically changing our behavior as end consumers. In the B2B world, it is time to fully leverage the capabilities that Web 2.0 enables. We will all win.

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Update: Welcome, readers of the What's Working in Marketing blog! We appreciate any thoughts you have on collaboration.

Part of an organization's willingness to bring their talented folks to the surface, is the organizational commitment to this as a strategy for it to be sustainable. Emerson's Aaron Crews eloquently shares his thoughts on this subject in his post, Social Media Marketing and Sustainability.

One place I see great promise in a sustainable community is the new Micro Motion Online Community. Its focus is to be your online resource for Coriolis flow and density measurement. Not a repository of documents like traditional websites, it's a community to connect people with similar interests in these measurement technologies and expertise. I had a chance to get a sneak preview from Emerson's Mike Tongwarin at the Emerson Exchange.

When I received the email last Friday that it had officially launched, I asked Mike and Lee Rumbles if they had more background about the effort that I could share. I thought I'd include their response in its entirety:

There's really one main reason we created the online community - Customers. Our Customer Advisory Board told us several months ago that one of the key developments they would like to see is an online way to connect with peers, share experiences, build their knowledge and grow their network. This group was clear in their desire to have a forum to act as a knowledge base for sharing knowledge, giving them the ability to self-help through their issues. This high-ranking request was right in line with our commitment to online activities and our growing emphasis on connecting with customers, users, prospects and students on the web.

Micro Motion has spent the last couple of years increasing our internet presence and have noticed that our customers are receptive to those efforts. We've had a spike in web visits and an increase in online requests for documentation, quotes, and general questions among others. This trend towards technology can also be seen by our shift to replace paper manuals to CD manuals, which also is in line with our environmental goals, as well as our web focus.

The Micro Motion Online Community offers a Forum as its main focus with other value-added features we continue to develop further including a Knowledge Wiki. We encourage our members to post their questions or customize an answer based on their knowledge and experience.

The social aspect of the community also plays an important role and one that we hope connects our customers not only to us, but also to each other. We hope this community brings users together to share experiences and knowledge and also builds their networks. Some of the social features include the discussion forums, starting private or public groups, chat room, and the ability to make friends.

We are already making changes to the site based on recommendations and suggestions received. The beauty of the online environment, of course, is the flexibility it offers for continuous improvement - something Micro Motion believes strongly in. Of course, the success of the Online Community is users. We currently have 575 members and it's their involvement and activity that will drive success!

I'd say a community with 575 folks already is off to a great start. If your plant has Coriolis flow and density measurement, you might consider visiting and joining this community.

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