Emerson Process Experts

I mentioned submittal of two social media-based abstracts to the Emerson Exchange in an earlier post. Each year, the Emerson Exchange board members receive way more submittals than they can accept, so anyone who wants to present has to keep their fingers crossed.

The good news is that one of the two was accepted. Deb Franke and I will be presenting:

Feeding that Inner Geek

Join Deb Franke and Jim Cahill in a conversation on using the internet, high-tech gadgets, and social media technologies that will enable you to be more productive and effective in all that you do, especially in your working career.

We picked this title because it was the title one of the most visited blog posts on this site to date. And with the Emerson Exchange's hundreds of sessions to choose from, we wanted a title that might stand out.

The goal is to build on presentation we did last year, Getting the Most Value from the Internet: How New Web 2.0 Tools and Techniques Can Help You Innovate.

Social media tools continue to proliferate as people learn the value they can bring. Two examples that we did not discuss last year are Twitter and Friendfeed. Friendfeed is new and Twitter is rapidly growing. I have been looking into the utility of Twitter for people with interest in the DeltaV system, to connect and communicate directly with one another. As learning occurs along the way, I'm sharing tips with our nascent DeltaV Twitter community.

The common thread with these social media applications is that they connect people with other people who have similar interests. Our hope is that one of these interests is around our world of process automation.

One final note, we have the honor of being one of the blogs mentioned in the new book, Groundswell. Written by Forrester Research principal analysts, Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li, it helps you and your business clearly formulate your strategy with respect to social media. I just finished the book the other night, and in the spirit of the groundswell, put my review of it on Amazon.com. Hint… I liked it.

Tags: emerson exchange | web 2.0 | social media | groundswell |

May 2, 2008 in Education, in Emerson Exchange | Comments (2)

In my days as a young automation engineer putting in power, control, and safety systems on offshore oil and gas platforms, I had the "opportunity" to see improperly terminated motor leads burn up during a startup after power was supplied to them from a variable speed drive. So, it was with great interest that I listened to a presentation during the Emerson Exchange by Wally Vahlstrom and Cliff Kirby in Emerson's Electrical Reliability Services organization. I could have used their expertise back then to prevent that sinking feeling I had when I smelled smoke.

Their presentation, Early Detection of MV Cable Problems Improves Overall System Reliability, described how failures can occur and steps to diagnose impending failures.

Cable terminations and splices are the area where most prone to deterioration and failure since these are typically assembled by hand. The junctions account for 80 percent of the failures. Typical problems include nicked insulation, incorrectly connected or no drain wire, physical abuse, and environmental contamination–all of which can produce partial discharge (PD). Also, voltage transients caused by lightning and other sources, and manufacturing defects can create reliability problems.

Cables themselves can also fail caused by many things including manufacturing defects, damage caused by installation or physical abuse, metallic shield corrosion, water migration, and even cable test methods like DC Hi-Pot methods which can damage older cables. Typically, the cable will pass the test, but fail after AC power is reapplied after some period. There are many suspected reasons for this but one may be that 'space charges' develop in the insulation during application of the DC test voltage.

Wally discussed a form of deterioration known as water trees found in extruded dielectric cables. These trees are water-filled micro channels that develop in the insulation of cables operating in a wet environment. The patterns that form resemble trees that have lost their leaves. Water trees can continue to grow under operating voltage until they bridge the insulation. This often leads to cable failure.

Cliff discussed some of the US standards and guides for testing cables in the field. IEEE 400 warns against testing the cable using DC Hi-Pot methods on older medium voltage cables, especially in wet environments because it accelerates failure. Other test methods described by the IEEE 400 standard include AC Hi-Pot, Partial Discharge, Very Low Frequency (VLF), Dissipation Factor (Tan delta) and Oscillating Wave (OSW).

The Electrical Reliability Services team uses on-line partial discharge detection methods to test the reliability of the cable system. It is the only test of the ones mentioned that can be performed while the cable is energized and in service. This testing method is a non-destructive, non-invasive predictive maintenance tool that assesses aging cables. This test is also used to test for workmanship in new cable installations, given the 80% failures occurring around the handmade terminations and splices. Ah yes, this is what triggered my memory of those smoking motor terminations!

A spectrum analyzer, RF analyzer, and U-shaped sensor are used to identify partial discharge. This testing can see about 500 feet each way down a cable.

Cliff showed some installations with corrosion in other areas outside of the cables including medium voltage switchgear. Typically, this is caused by non-operational space heaters in the switchgear. These space heaters prevent condensation that causes this corrosion to occur.

Cliff recommends a site assessment be done which can be performed over time. What to assess should be based on criticality, past failure rates, and environmental conditions to prioritize how and where the partial discharge testing is done.

Update: I've removed the picture and associated text for the picture I incorrectly attributed to IEEE.

Tags: electrical reliability | medium voltage | cable termination | voltage transient | water tree | DC Hipot | AC Hipot | Partial Discharge | very low frequency | dissipation factor | switchgear |

April 14, 2008 in Asset Optimization, in Electrical Reliability, in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0)

Last week I did a post about pipeline surge pressure relief and a technical guide about this written by Emerson's Daniel business. They are known for gas and liquid fiscal flow measurement solutions for the oil and gas industry.

I received a nice follow up note from Dave Seiler about a Latin American refiner who was fighting turbine meter maintenance problems due to large concentrations of foreign materials in the pipeline liquid flow. The problem was so acute that they actually had to install two meters in parallel so they could switch between meters while the other was being maintained.

The refinery engineers worked with the local Daniel team to replace the turbine meters with a 6-inch liquid ultrasonic flow meter. These do not have moving parts, unlike the turbine meters, which were being impacted by the particulates in the flow.

I didn't know much about the ultrasonic technology in flow applications, so I googled around and found a Hydrocarbon Processing magazine article reprint, Use liquid ultrasonic meters for custody transfer, in the Daniel area of the EmersonProcess.com website.

Dave is a co-author of this paper. The article does a great job of simplifying how the ultrasonic technology works. It also includes the math on how the ultrasonic flow measurement works.

My analogy, fresh from a rafting trip down the Guadalupe River, is to imagine that you're floating down the river with an ultrasonic transducer on one bank, and another on the other bank a little further downstream. Ultrasonic pulses are sent between the two transducers in each direction. The pulse traveling across the river from the upstream one to the downstream one will obviously travel faster since it's going across the river with the current. And of course, the reverse is true; it takes longer to travel across the river going upstream against the current. With the formulas in the article and enough perseverance, you can calculate the river's flow rate from these time differences. For the 3D world of pipe flow, the authors' explain:

The resulting time difference is proportional to the fluid velocity passing through the meter spool. Single and multiple acoustic paths can be used to measure fluid velocity. Multipath meters tend to be more accurate since they collect velocity information at several points in the flow profile.

Now back to the story… after the installation of an ultrasonic flow meter, the refiners saw that the meter was reporting low flow rates when the product in the pipe switched between gasoline and diesel.

The local Daniel service technicians collected maintenance logs using their Customer Ultrasonic Interface software (CUI) and sent it to the support team in Houston for detailed analysis. The team verified that the meter was working correctly for both liquids. They deduced that the flow was being diverted somehow during the transmix, or product switchover, where both products are flowing through the pipe until the switchover has been completed. This was possible because of the meters ability to accurately measure both flow rate and speed of sound of the liquid passing through the meter with extremely high accuracy.

The refiner verified that this is what indeed was happening where this transmix was being routed away through a smaller pipeline for further reprocessing. With the age of the refinery and the retirement of experienced operators, the current operators had not been able to see this transmix operation occurring in their process. The refinery engineers were impressed that the team in Houston could deduce this from their analysis of the data.

The refinery engineers involved in this project are presenting a workshop at this year's Emerson Exchange in late September. If you face similar challenges, you might want to catch this one.

Tags: flow measurement | ultrasonic flow meter | pipeline liquid flow | turbine meter | transmix | Emerson Exchange |

April 11, 2008 in Custody Transfer, in Emerson Exchange, in Measurement, in Pipeline, in Refining | Comments (0)

In one of those hallway conversations, Chuck Miller reminded me of a workshop at last year's Emerson Exchange. Chuck, well known for his safety instrumented system and safety compliance expertise, co-presented with a process manufacturer on the topic of cyber security in the control domain.

Automation systems have gone through quite a change from the '70s and '80s to our current decade. The architecture changed from proprietary data highways separated by gateways from operation stations, and separated from the enterprise local area network by another gateway—if they were connected at all. Using the ISA-95 (S95) model to describe the various levels of the architecture, the automation systems evolved where Ethernet/IP addressing is used between levels one and two, and between levels two and three. This move from proprietary technologies to commercially available technologies means that the issues with cyber-security must be considered and addressed.

The presenters defined risk as likelihood multiplied by consequence. Likelihood was defined as threat, vulnerability and target attractiveness multiplied together.

The process manufacturer described their risk assessment/reduction process. It included a risk assessment phase, risk reduction workshop phase, development of a risk reduction plan, and implementing that plan. Two key tenets of this process were that only the site personnel had the knowledge to assess the risks to their plants and their systems and that each site would use a risk assessment tool to develop a site risk profile. ISA-SP99 can help in the elements involved in this risk assessment.

Security levels were assigned based upon the consequences of a successful attack. Considerations included the level of hazard associated with the process or product, the location of the plant, and applicable federal critical infrastructure processes. The last consideration impacts the target attractiveness part of the risk equation.

They discussed the areas of the automation system that need to be addressed including the control of network access, user access and physical access. A key point is multiple layers of protection must be considered. Their analogy was a medieval castle protected by a moat, then by a drawbridge, then by a portcullis, then by murder holes, then by the outer walls and finally by the keep. Not all these layers of protection made castles impenetrable, but certainly extremely difficult to "hack into".

An automation system has points of entry that must be addressed by the security plan. These include the connection to the plant network or other external networks, modems, CDs, floppies, USB devices, equipment on the level-one control network between the controllers and PCs and underneath from the I/O subsystems.

One example, the control network, should require that no devices other than the controllers and PCs running operator, engineering, and applications be permitted to connect. Also, controller firewalls can be added between the PCs and controllers. These function to protect the controllers that are installed on the secure side of the firewall against message flooding and denial of service attacks. This firewall is in addition to the router/firewall above the PCs between the automation system and level 3 applications.

In the case of this process manufacturer, this router/firewall was managed by the operations organization. They created a DMZ above the automation system, which contained an anti-virus server, data server, and historian server. Above these was another router/firewall, managed by the IT organization, which connected to the plant local area network.

The presenters also discussed anti-virus strategies, security bulletins, and disaster planning. They summed up the presentation with elements that should be in the plan. These include:

• Assess the risks
• Define the critical systems
• Mitigate for (at least) the high cyber security risks
• Test the plan on a regular basis
• Train the users in the plan
• Get stakeholder signoff

This whole security risk assessment process is not easy, but like process manufacturers' safety risk assessments, is critical. For other automation system cyber security considerations, take a look at best practices in cyber security that is written around Emerson's DeltaV system.

Tags: cyber security | SCADA security | Emerson Exchange | ISA-95 | S95 | ISA-SP99 |

March 20, 2008 in Cyber-Security, in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0)

My colleague Deb Franke and I have again submitted abstracts for the Emerson Global Users Exchange, which will be in Washington D.C. September 29 through October 3. Our topics are both on the use of social media technologies, with one being a hands-on session. Last year we did a Web 2.0 discussion, which we archived here.

Now, there is no guarantee that the presentations for this year will be accepted, since they are chosen by the Emerson Exchange Board of Directors, which is a mix of process manufacturers, Emerson, and Emerson local business partners. We'll find out in April if none, one or both have been accepted.

One of social media applications I've started to use is Twitter. You basically have 140 characters to say whatever it is you want to say at the moment. Think of it as instant messaging, except that anyone in the world can follow your posts. My twitter page is twitter.com/JimCahill.

I was prompted to write about this when I saw Gary Mintchell ask the question on his blog today, Any manufacturing twitterers out there? I responded, and if you have a Twitter account, I hope you'll respond, too so that we can begin to build a circle.

The Twitter application seems to be gaining momentum. Participants at the recent SXSW Interactive conference here in Austin used it extensively. People used it to say what they were doing or planning to do, to ask questions of their circle, to answer others questions, etc. With only 140 characters to work with, you have to be brief or use something like TinyURL to squeeze down the size of a long URL at which to point. You can post from your mobile phone and if it has mobile web capabilities, you can view posts from Mobile Twitter.

I bring all this up because I think there would be applicability for automation professionals. Not only might this be useful at trade shows and events like the Emerson Exchange for impromptu gatherings and updates, but also in your daily course of work.

For example, if you have responsibility for working with a particular automation system and you have an application question, you could post it and see if your circle knows the answer. Of course, this only works if the circle, or extended circle, grows sufficiently large. Unlike instant messaging, the circle expands beyond who is in your list, i.e. friends of friends. This expanded circle is one of the benefits of these social media-based applications.

Please let me know if you give it a try and establish an account so I can follow you. I'd like to see how this might be used in our industry, so I can share some of these findings in the possible Emerson Exchange presentations, as well as future blog posts.

Update: This was too good not to share. Thanks to local Austin author and About.com Entrepreneur Guide, Scott Allen for pointing out this great Lee LeFever YouTube video explanation of Twitter (with apologies to those with repressive IT departments):

I of course found out about this video from a Twitter tweet from Scott.

Tags: social media | twitter | emerson exchange | web 2.0 |

March 18, 2008 in Emerson Exchange, in Miscellaneous | Comments (2)

Emerson's Mike Schmidt, a principal safety consultant in the Refining and Chemical industry center, presented Beyond 2oo3: Multi-sensor Architecture in SIF Design at the Emerson Exchange. You may recall Mike from an earlier post.

Mike discussed several cases and applications where more than three sensors are used in safety shutdown applications. Redundancy was his first example where more than one sensor is being used for the exact same purpose. An example is separate temperature sensors installed on the inlets to multiple reactors, perhaps because of fears of common cause failure. In fact, all three of these sensors measure the same thing. The inlet temperature is coming from the same header, so it is the same for all three new sensors.

Separate hazards are those serving unrelated purposes or are at independent points in the process. There is no redundancy here. The only possible architecture for the sensors is to have three separate instances of one-out-of-one (1oo1) voting.

Mike built the case of three tanks with three inlet temperatures sensors coming off a common header and said it could be argued that the three could be considered redundant. However, three sensors on the tank outlets could not be considered redundant since they are monitoring for separate hazards.

When evaluating fault tolerances, it is important to consider the number of success paths. Parallel paths provide redundancy where serial paths with multiple elements have single points of failure. If you have three identical temperature sensors in parallel, it is like having a path with three in parallel in series with common cause failure. Using different types of sensors greatly reduces this common cause failure to provide much lower probabilities of failure on demand (PFD_AVG).

Mike discussed the case of a packed-bed reactor. These may be instrumented with ten or more temperature sensors to provide a temperature profile. The safety trip will be based on an abnormal profile. With advanced logic solvers, it is possible to perform the calculations necessary to reduce several measurements to profile parameters that can be used to trip a safety instrumented function (SIF). The profile is 1oo1 voting, but a rule might be that 8 out of 10 temperature sensors must be working to be considered a valid profile, so the PFD_AVG is based on 8oo10 fault tolerance.

A separate issue to consider from a safety mitigation standpoint is multiple sensors for localized problems, like hot spots or leaks. Considering packed bed reactor hot spots, it sounds right to say we do not want to trip the reactor based on a single temperature sensor fault. Although this may sound right, Mike explored the math behind determining the PFD_AVG. The example here is for an array of sensors installed to detect a hot spot within the packed bed, but it could just as easily be an array of analyzers around the outside of a piece of equipment installed to detect a leak of flammable or toxic gases.

He discussed the concept of the temperature sensors located next to the failed one. The sensors are primary for their respective zones and secondary for their neighboring zones. The key is to set up a separate safety instrumented function for each zone, which contains the primary sensor and the neighboring secondary sensors. This allow the reactor not be treated as a single SIF where any one sensor failure can trip it.

The math works out that no matter how many transmitters, and surrounding zones, the PFD_AVG calculations are based on primary and one secondary, even in the case of multiple secondary zones. The voting is one out the number of surrounding zones plus the one primary zone, and the PFD_AVG is always based on 1oo2 fault tolerance. No credit is taken for any of the additional secondary sensors in the PFD_AVG calculations.

Mike summarizes these concepts by saying the number of sensors required for a SIF can be optimized to achieve the necessary coverage and the required redundancy. Using more than three sensors for redundancy does not really help. It may be necessary for coverage based on the geometry of the vessel, but not for increased redundancy.

Tags: safety shutdown | process safety | redundancy | fault tolerance | common cause failure | safety instrumented function | SIF | logic solver | sensor |

September 26, 2007 in Emerson Exchange, in Project Services, in Safety | Comments (0)

John Dolenc, a principal consulting engineer in Emerson's advanced applied technology organization whom you may recall from earlier posts, presented Estimating Benefits from Process Automation at the Emerson Exchange.

John began by discussing what types of activities are performed during a process automation modernization feasibility study. Project justification is one of the most difficult steps to complete.

Start with looking at the plant as a financial asset. Perform a financial balance across a process unit in the same manner as performing a material and energy balance. Capital enters a process unit in the raw materials, net utilities, operating expenses, and maintenance expenses. Value is added within the process unit. Capital flows out in primary and secondary products as well as the waste streams. After identifying the financial streams, identify areas that need improvement and determine whether better process automation can help.

Capital projects are justified by either increasing the revenue of the plant or by reducing the costs to manufacture the products. Revenue may be increased through increasing production capacity (if additional product can be sold), and increasing the yield of more profitable products while reducing lower grade product and waste streams. Look for capacity increases through being able to run closer to constraints by reduced process variability. Can you reduce unproductive time such as grade changeovers, off-spec blending and downtime for cleaning through better process control? Can you reduce cycle time for batch processes by better control of reaction conditions and eliminating wait time for operator actions?

Another method of increasing plant profitability is by working with the marketing and sales force to understand what your customers' value about your product. Can price be slightly increased if the product consistently meets specification and delivery schedules and emergency production is provided when needed?

Reducing costs are a big area of value creation. Some areas to look for cost reduction opportunities include increasing feedstock yield, reducing energy consumption, better use of direct and indirect labor, and limiting off-spec material, abnormal events, demurrage and maintenance.

These are the opportunities for automation project financial justification. So what are some benefit estimation methods you can employ? John mentioned the best operator method, data reduction method, and percent limit violation as three methods of estimation. The best operator method considers historically identifying key performance indicators at their optimum point. What are the "best operators" doing to make this happen? The key is to look for how to automate these best practices. Your project justification is the difference between operating at the "best operator" condition versus the historical average condition.

John went through an example of looking at batch cycle times, throwing out outliers caused by extenuating circumstances, and digging into the process automation that can be done to move from the average cycle time to the best cycle time.

He discussed the other methods, data reduction method and limit violation methods. With the latter, conceptually the results of the automation project are to reduce overall variability. This means you can run closer to your process or specification limit. This means operating set points can be set closer to these limits, thus reducing costs such as product giveaways and excess energy usage. The presentation includes some of the statistical methods to build your financial justification. John offered a rule of thumb that you would reduce standard deviation by at least 50% by improving overall control performance.

John summarized his presentation with these key points:

• Justification is difficult, but necessary to receive approval for automation projects
• Historical data collection is vital
• Build a base case
• Some "prediction" of results is necessary

Tags: estimation methods | feasibility study | capital project | best operator method | data reduction method | percent limit violation | control performance |

September 25, 2007 in Education, in Emerson Exchange, in Modernization | Comments (0)

I've highlighted the topic of plant turnarounds (planned downtime for maintenance) a few times in the past. Back from the Emerson Exchange, here's my take on the Smart Turnaround workshop. For continuous processes that run for years, this turnaround provides opportunity to update, fix, repair, and replace a host of plant assets including instruments, valves, electrical distribution equipment, connectors and cabling, and the overall performance of the process.

The Emerson presenters looked at the advanced planning that can be done from these various perspectives. From these diverse areas of expertise, diagnostic testing helps develop a turnaround plan that prioritizes critical asset work, defines the scope of work, develops the schedule for the work, and identifies the parts and people required to best get this difficult work done.

Chris Forland an operations consultant whose work I've highlighted in earlier posts kicked off the session discussing some of the challenges of the turnaround process. A big one is finding problems you didn't expect while in the turnaround. These unexpected problems cause extra charges and delays. Chris discussed ways that Emerson turnaround specialists can help with the detailed planning to make sure the work is efficiently performed during the turnaround. He noted that less time to plan mean less flexibility as the turnaround date approaches. Other challenges included maintaining compliance with safety and regulatory compliance, working with budget constraints, reducing process variability, losing experienced personnel due to infrequency of turnarounds, and pressuring of short turnarounds due to sold out condition of produced product.

Scott Grunwald, a turnaround business manager in the Instrument & Valve Services business, recommended that with the valves and instruments, you start by building the plan based on the benefits to be achieved the roles of all participants in the maintenance activities, and the prioritized list of activities and anticipated timelines. The process starts with a walk down of the facility. Next, FlowScanner is used to measure internal valve conditions to identify problems to address during the turnaround. When it's time for executing the turnaround, only valves needing significant work are removed. Other valves are repaired in place.

The team often brings an on-sight mobile trailer that is a self-contained workshop to rework the instrument and valves right on-site. This helps to expedite the repair process.

Looking at turnarounds from an electrical reliability perspective, Steve Metzger described the goal--to prioritize and focus the resources by pre-diagnosing troubleshooting, followed by the planning of the repair services and parts required to get the lead times properly. The key is to do as much pre-work as possible, fix what's possible, and remove it from the scope of the turnaround to lessen the pile of work to be done.

On-line partial discharge testing before the turnaround detects cables with degrading insulation that could cause short circuits and unexpected downtime. This testing helps determine which cables are OK and which need to be replaced during the turnaround.

James Beall, also highlighted in earlier posts, summed up the goal of a Smart Turnaround--to identify the items you can fix in advance, and prioritize what can't be in the turnaround plan. James and the variability management consultants look at the control performance and opportunities to reduce process variability through better tuning. James gave an example of a mixing temperature control loop where the deadtime was nine minutes between a change in setpoint and response the temperature was changing. The problem was not in the loop tuning but rather in the lag caused by the temperature transmitter being located 250 feet from where it should have been. Finding this early in the process allowed this installation mistake to be scheduled and fixed during the turnaround.

Chris closed this presentation with how you can look at the return on investment to help justify the experts required to make the planning and execution of the turnaround a success. It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario since you don't know what type of ROI this turnaround planning can create without having the experts come in to begin the process of identifying improvement opportunities.

Chris has developed a model based on turnaround experience with typical costs from each of the aspects of turnaround planning and typical costs for the maintenance activities. This model is in an excel spreadsheets so that the assumptions can be easily changed to fit the unique aspects of each process manufacturer. Both cost avoidance and increased revenue from improved plant performance is calculated, each based on the size of the process and amount of equipment considered.

By taking a comprehensive planning approach, and getting an early start, turnarounds do not have to cause quite the number of gray hairs that they have traditionally been known to cause.

Update: Mitzi Amon, director of marketing for Emerson Electrical Reliability Services team adds that the prioritization is accomplished by performing online diagnostic testing prior to the turnaround to determine what electrical equipment needs to be serviced during the turnaround. This helps clearly define maintenance work scope during the turnaround and what can be done prior to the the turnaround.

Tags: turnaround | electrical reliability | partial discharge testing | variability management |

September 20, 2007 in Asset Optimization, in Chemical, in Emerson Exchange, in Plant Equipment, in Refining, in Variability Management | Comments (0)

I really enjoy getting the chance to present to at the Emerson Exchange. This year, I teamed up with Emerson e-Marketing manager, Deb Franke, to discuss the emergence of Web 2.0 applications and technologies. Deb and I have teamed on many initiatives over the years, including nagivating the path to make the Emerson Process Experts blog a reality.

Our presentation was entitled, Getting the Most Value from the Internet: How New Web 2.0 Tools and Techniques Can Help You Innovate. We have embedded voiceover notes in the presentation and separately in a presentation transcript.

Both sessions of the presentation were very well attended, even surprisingly, the 8 am Thursday morning session. These late-week, early morning sessions can get dicey given the catching up process with friends and acquaintances which have been known (I'm told) to carry on into the wee hours.

The premise of our discussion is that the web has been changing from a one-way monolog (Web 1.0) to dialogs or many-to-many conversations (Web 2.0). We explored two paths, information consumption and information production. From an information consumer standpoint, Deb discussed ways to be more efficient in finding the information you need to be more effective and innovative. The presentation includes short screencasts (no audio) showing how to subscribe to RSS feeds using Google Reader and how to get a jump-start in subscribing to all the automation feeds on my blogroll on the right side area of this page.

I discuss the information production path, discussing ways to un-trap the wisdom that is often locked in our email inboxes and sent items folders. One of the applications described is Del.icio.us, which also has a screencast demo.

In the spirit of contributing to those who could not attend, we've captured everything we discussed as well as the questions and answers from both sessions. These are available on an Emerson Exchange Resources page on this blog. We also include participation tips if you're ready to share your expertise with the world. If you have questions after seeing the presentation and other materials, join the conversation and add a comment.

For those planning to attend next year's event in Washington D.C., keep me posted on your Web 2.0 experiences, and perhaps we can jointly present.

Tags: Emerson Exchange | Web 2.0 | RSS | OPML | Del.icio.us | screencast |

September 18, 2007 in Education, in Emerson Exchange, in Screencast | Comments (0)

As I did with the recent Live at the Emerson Exchange post, here is a roundup some of the posts from the final few days of the event.

Walt Boyes and the ControlGlobal.com team, provides a day three recap including an interview video with Lubrizol and Emerson technologists on embedding batch process analytics into the DeltaV system in real time. And the Sound Off blog has more on thermocouples and power plant modernization.

Gary Mintchell does a podcast that includes his impressions on the Emerson Exchange. This part begins at 8:50 seconds into the podcast. Gary discusses the keynote presentations from David Farr and John Berra, the press announcements on the smart turbomachinery health monitoring and its integration with automation systems like the DeltaV system to perform controlled shutdowns. He also discusses the wireless and Cisco partnership press announcement.

Peter Welander provides a day four recap that highlights the PlantWeb feedback process and how it is used to improve the product components of the PlantWeb architecture.

Dave Harrold of the AFAB Group offers another view on the value of the knowledge in the "graying workforce." He writes:

Most of the worthwhile knowledge among most of the gray haired individuals still working in the instrumentation and automation industry is the stuff they have learned in the past five or so years.

While I do agree that I have collected a lot expertise that is now not too valuable to others (older operating systems come to mind), I do think that we more "seasoned" professionals can recognize some approaches that may work better than others may. This wisdom can save quite a lot of wasted time and effort for less experienced automation professionals.

Whew, what a week! There was so much exchanging of wisdom by end users, Emerson local business partners, and Emerson technology and marketing folks. The queue is full as I look to share some of their expertise with you in the coming weeks.

Update: The ARC Advisory Group has nice summaries of the wireless and turbomachinery protection press announcements.

Tags: Emerson Exchange | process analytics | turbomachinery | PlantWeb feedback |

September 16, 2007 in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0)

I'm in a standing-room-only session of Emerson's Marshall Meier's Web 2.0 in the Plant presentation. I'd mentioned this presentation in an earlier post. It's great to see the interest by the user community in this topic.

Marshall opened it up by discussing cool technologies that are coming on-line that you can use in your job in the plant. He defines Web 2.0 being about interactivity of the web sites, ease of use, and collaboration.

Marshall discusses the social bookmarking site, Del.icio.us and how you can easily tag content that interests you and discover what others have tagged. His example was tagging the ControlGlobal.com site. He next showed how you could explore what others who had tagged the same site, also were interested in. It's a way to discover new content from those sharing the same interest as you.

Really simple syndication or RSS was the next area he covered. He showed Bloglines.com as a web-based application to manage your RSS subscriptions. I was pleased to see Emerson Process Experts in his subscription list.

Next was a quick review of Wikipedia and the wealth of information it contains by the contributions of people around the globe. YouTube.com provides user generated video content.

Google Maps is an example of dynamic page content which size, scales, drags without having to reload the page.

Next was a quick demo of Flickr, a photo sharing site which also has tagging and RSS subscription capabilities.

After this quick tour, Marshall focused his presentation on how these could be used in a plant. Here's a few thoughts he suggested. Store your plant procedures on a Wiki. Bookmark procedures with a social bookmarking website. Another thought was to bookmark to links within your web-based process control and asset management applications.

Another idea Marshall had was add training videos on an internal video sharing/uploading site. He then opened up the floor to ideas from the audience. Collaboration using wikis seemed to be a popular discussion area. Given the technical expertise that automation professionals posess, this seems to be a natural path to explore.

Tags: Emerson Exchange | RSS | Web 2.0 |

September 11, 2007 in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0)

This week I'm in Grapevine, Texas just north of the DFW Airport for the Emerson Exchange. In addition to the posts I'll be doing this week we have some esteemed bloggers including:

• Automation World's Gary Mintchell
• Control Engineering's Peter Welander
• Control magazine's Walt Boyes
• Intech's Greg Hale

There are more I'm sure and I'll do my best to keep track of them.

You can too by subscribing to this Google Blog search or Technorati Search, searching on the phrase "Emerson Exchange".

Update: Here's some links to good recaps of day one:

• Peter Welander's day one recap
• Walt Boyes' recap of David Farr's and John Berra's presentations.
• Gary Mintchell's recap on the keynote presentations and the press announcements.

Update 2: Here's the ControlGlobal.com day 1 wrapup including a video interview on a PAT-based bioreactor model partnership between Emerson and Broadley-James.

Update 3: I'm tremendously impressed with the editors/bloggers attending this event. My fond hopes for posting more often is tempered by the fact that it's very difficult for me to distill the wisdom I listen to in these sessions and make it understandable. The editors seem to do it with ease. I'll be cleaning up many partially written posts in the coming days and weeks as I review them with the presenters so that I can hopefully convey some of their wisdom.

Check out Peter Welander's day two recap, Gary Mintchell's wireless and asset optimization recap, Greg Hale's Cisco and keynote recap, and Walt Boyes' engineering revolution, Cisco announcement, and asset management. And, here is ControlGlobal.com's day two recap.

Tags: Emerson Exchange | RSS subscription | process analytical technology | PAT |

September 10, 2007 in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0)

As reported in the DeltaV News RSS feed recently, Automation World magazine's C. Kenna Amos wrote an article, Getting Projects Approved. I know from my days as a systems engineer, that financially justifying a capital project was not nearly as fun as executing the project. Most engineers enjoy the action of seeing their work come to life more than convincing others to approve the capital to get the project going. They also are not typically versed in the language of financial analysis.

The article captures the wisdom of Emerson's Doug White, a vice president of advanced automation services. Doug and his team often assist process manufacturers in ways to help quantify return on investment for automation and advanced automation projects.

In the article, Doug notes:

The project has to be very attractive to be funded, because it will compete with others. The project has to show a clear and compelling return on investment.

Easy enough, but the trick is how to do this. Doug recommends that engineers work with the financial group to understand their selection criteria for capital projects. Basics for most projects include cash outflow analysis and when the return on investment begins. This is the basis for the payback calculations. Also, the capital proposal should include key non-quantifiable benefits often found in health, safety, and environmental (HSE) considerations.

The closer you can tie your proposal to key organizational initiatives, the more the proposal will be noticed more than others will. When it comes to presenting your proposal:

Begin by first defining the problem, then telling them why your project is important and giving reasons why it needs to be done, he emphasizes. Then—and only then—go into financials, beginning with the most likely scenario.

Doug has captured much of his experience in a whitepaper, Calculating ROI for Automation Projects. It comprehensively goes through the components of return on invested capital and how to calculate each component. Give this whitepaper a thorough review and you will be better prepared to have that conversation with the financial group.

For those of you going to the Emerson Exchange next week in Dallas, make sure to catch Doug's short course, How To Find The Economics For Process Automation Investments that will be held Tuesday at 2:15pm and repeated Wednesday at 8am. Here's the abstract for this presentation:

This session presents realistic approaches to automation project economic analysis and justification. The viewpoint is that of the business financial analyst. Specific areas where automation affects the business results are identified and quantified.

Tags: capital projects | automation modernization | ROI analysis | project justification | project payback |

September 4, 2007 in Education, in Emerson Exchange, in Modernization | Comments (0)

In an earlier post, I had mentioned that my colleague Deb Franke and I will be presenting at the Emerson Exchange (September 10-14, Dallas TX.) The topic is how new Web 2.0 tools and techniques can help you innovate (presented twice--Wednesday 3pm / Thursday 8am.)

There must be something to this topic, because I discovered that we're not alone. Emerson's Marshall Meier, a project manager for Foundation fieldbus projects involving Rosemount FF transmitters, is presenting the topic, Web 2.0 in the plant. You can bet I'll be at one of his two sessions (Tuesday 10am / Wednesday 8am.)

Marshall indicated the goal of his presentation is to introduce the audience to various Web 2.0 technologies, and give them some ideas on how those technologies could be used in a plant. Here's his submitted abstract:

In 2006, Time Magazine said YOU were the Person of the Year. "You" being one of the millions, maybe billions, of people in the world who are building Web 2.0. The web is no longer read-only medium, rather an interactive environment where the users both generate and consume the content. This workshop will introduce you to some of the most interesting Web 2.0 technologies out there.

Marshall plans to cover the definition of Web 2.0, various examples like RSS, social bookmarking, wikis, video sharing, maps, and photo sharing. These will include possible applications in plants. He'll be looking to have a very interactive session to explore other potential uses for these people-connecting technologies.

Marshall also shared that like me, he's a huge fan of RSS for its ability to bring information to him based on his interests.

Tags: Web 2.0 | Emerson Exchange | RSS |

August 17, 2007 in Education, in Emerson Exchange | Comments (1)

The Emerson Global Users Exchange, or Emerson Exchange for short, is coming up once again. This year it is a month earlier than normal, September 10-14. I wanted to give it a mention here so you can make your plans to attend. On-line registration is now open. Two benefits of acting early are that you can save over 25% on the conference fees through July 30th and you can reserve your room in the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center and not be in an overflow hotel near the DFW Airport.

Like in years past, I expect that late night, spirited discussions will happen around some of the Gaylord Texan watering holes. It's much better if you don't have to leave the hotel to return to your room if you join in these.

I'll have an opportunity to present for the second year in a row, this time with Deb Franke who was instrumental in helping me get this Emerson Experts blog approved and launched. Our presentation is entitled, Getting the Most Value from the Internet: How New Web 2.0 Tools and Techniques Can Help You Innovate. The synopsis:

Explore the personal impact of the internet's latest communications technologies, dubbed Web 2.0. This session includes:

• A basic overview of each technology, its benefits and steps to give them a try
• Lessons learned from individuals and organizations already using Web 2.0 applications
• How to enhance your reputation by sharing you sharing your expertise through blogs, wikis, and tools

The presentation will cover some of the ways the internet is changing the way we consume and produce information and how we can use this to our advantage. It is becoming easier than ever for us to discover expertise via search and to make our expertise available. Given there are all kinds of innovations happening on a daily basis, we'll focus our discussions on what we have personally used and find valuable. We hope you'll join us.

Please add a comment or send us a note if you are using any of the tools dubbed Web 2.0 and find them valuable. We're always looking for good ideas to improve our presentation!

Also, check out this spreadsheet of over 300 workshops, short courses, and industry business forums that will take place. There is definitely something for everyone. Later this summer as the times and rooms are set and available on the EmersonExchange.org site, you'll want to map out what would be most valuable to you to make the most of the exchange.

Tags: Emerson Exchange | Web 2.0 |

June 29, 2007 in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0)

I'm playing catch up this week after returning from a very successful Emerson Exchange meeting last week. I'm thankful that the board accepted my presentation, Finding What You Need Faster Via RSS and Blogs. One of the points I made is that we all have quite a bit of expertise that we can share.

Events like the Emerson Exchange allow us to come together one week out of the year to share this expertise with one another. That leaves an opportunity for 51 other weeks. Blogging is a way to share your expertise year round and to invite others to join in the conversation through your blog's comments.

It was fantastic to receive an email from Dave Harrold of the AFAB Group that he was inspired to share his wisdom with us in the blogosphere. Dave has vast experience as an automation engineer, with one of Emerson's local business partners, as a senior editor with Control Engineering magazine, and now as a freelancing writer.

Check out his maiden post, AFAB Group in now blogging and consider subscribing. I've also added Dave to the right-side blogroll as another member of our growing community of process automation and process industry bloggers.

As I also mentioned in the presentation, if subscribing via RSS is something foreign to you, spend five quick minutes with our RSS Starter Kit.

Now, back to catching up!

Tags: Emerson Exchange | RSS Starter Kit |

October 9, 2006 in Emerson Exchange | Comments (1) | Trackback (0)

Todd Ham and Dan Lorenzo from Emerson’s Life Sciences Industry center presented a workshop entitled, Large Project Execution. The focus is on sharing best practices for successfully executing large projects.

They define a large project as 10 or more engineers with more that 5000 engineering hours. The project schedule is typically measured in years and tends to have high visibility with upper management.

Far and away the most important aspect to success is the team leadership. Team leaders should possess technical expertise, managerial competence, and the ability to attend to problems early. Many different styles of leader can be successful, but setting upfront expectations is critical. Dan cites a balanced leader that is knowledgeable, but non ego driven, is willing to make and stand behind tough decisions, knows when to defer to the team, and provides an environment for the team to explore new ideas. This leadership style gives the project its best chance of success.

The next important step is to create a common message to breakdown the project complexities, to provide a clear, cross-functional set of objectives, and to help everyone understand their roles in achieving these objectives. Todd made it clear this is not “rah-rah” motivational sayings on wall posters, but rather a clear vision such as a world-class biotech facility.

The makeup of the team is very important. Most teams have a mix of experience and inexperience and personalities. It’s important the leadership be engaged, reinforce the common message and direction, and deal with people issues head-on and early. Build a team with a balance of skills and personality.

Project indicators that things are going well include new ideas being suggested, measured progress being made, and people on the project generally seem happy. On the flip side, indicators that things are not going well include people acting differently in the presence of team leadership, the leadership being unaware of major issues, and people hoarding information and knowledge. It boils down to reinforcing practices that are yielding good results.

Finally measure and monitor what makes sense for the project. Items that are measured will get better. Too many metrics can do more harm than good and not move the project forward toward the intended objectives.

Tags: project execution | project management | leadership | life sciences |

October 5, 2006 in Emerson Exchange, in Life Sciences, in Project Services | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

In addition to the many presentations and demonstrations Terry Blevins and Greg McMillan have been giving this week, they have also gotten out some more jewels on their ModelingAndControl.com blog. Greg has also been showing fresh off the press copies of his new book, Bioprocess Modeling and Control: Maximizing Process Analytical Technology Benefits.

Terry offers up a Basics of Advanced Control post including the overview from his award-winning Advanced Control Unleashed book. He notes that the proceeds from this book go to "universities, consortia, and educational programs to promote and enhance the development and use of advanced process control."

Greg tackles the issues associated with measuring pH in his post, Techniques to Improve pH Measurement Performance. He includes his thoughts on improving pH electrode performance and his unique humor on the top 10 signs of a rough pH startup. I like seeing his natural sense of humor coming early in the life of this blog. Keep it coming!

It's great to see this wisdom put out in blog posts and books. Check out their posts and add your wisdom in the comments section.

Tags: Emerson Exchange | Modeling | Control | Process Analytical Technologies | PAT | pH measurement | advanced control | APC |

October 4, 2006 in Education, in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

Here at the Emerson Exchange we’re now into the workshops where process automation professionals, Emerson technologists, and Emerson industry, project, and application professionals share some of their experiences.

Dave Horan, has 17 years with Emerson’s Rosemount division. Dave works with many of the engineering contractors on large projects on their instrumentation requirement. His presentation is on a shallow-water offshore project off the coast of Venezuela.

The project had a floating storage offloading, central processing facility and wellhead platform. The central process facility (CPF) basically cleans up and separates the produced fluids from the wellhead platform. Produced water and some gas is re-injected to the reservoir to help keep the production flowing.

The largest problem in this project was 40 skids coming from 23 vendors located on 2 continents. The number of possible permutation in types of instruments is huge given so many skid suppliers. This would create a real training and maintenance headache to support these once the CPF was started up. The challenge was to manage the skid vendors to standardize on a set of instrumentation to reduce the permutations.

For the Rosemount transmitters, up front planning was done with the oil producer’s engineering team to pre-select appropriate instruments that could be used by all the skid vendors. For this project, all skid vendors had the same project manager in Emerson’s Rosemount organization, to specify and purchase the transmitters. Standardization was enforced for model numbers, materials, mounting brackets, and local indicators to name a few instrument selection parameters.

The project management group provides project managers, engineers, project documentation, quotations, data entry, logistics and other functions/deliverables required to achieve the project milestones.

The goal to reduce the variations of instrumentation was achieved meeting the project objectives of an on-time project and minimizing training and ongoing maintenance.

Tags: Emerson Exchange | project management | project services | instrumentation |

October 3, 2006 in Emerson Exchange, in Oil & Gas, in Project Services | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

We're off to a great start at this year's Emerson Exchange 2006 at the Garylord Opryland in Nashville.

To see some excellent summaries from the leading journalists in our industry, check out these blogs:

• Walt Boyes' Sound Off!!!


• Greg Hale's Talk to Me


• Gary Mintchell's Feed Forward

I've been catching several sessions, so I'll be adding a few posts throughout the week.

Tags: Emerson Exchange |

October 3, 2006 in Emerson Exchange | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)