Screencast

Emerson's Buddy Ilao, a member of the SureService support team, offers up his fifth screencast on aspects of the SureService Guardian Support service. Buddy's earlier efforts are located in this blog's screencast category.

Today's screencast provides an overview of the Alarm Management capability. Buddy summarizes this capability:

The Alarm Management tile in the Guardian dashboard provides customers complimentary or subscription reports that will help improve the alarm performance in their control systems, as based on the EEMUA (Engineering and Equipment Manufacturers Users Association) publication 191 benchmarks and best practices.

As control systems become more complex, the need for proper configuration of the DeltaV alarms becomes increasingly important. By actively addressing ineffective alarm designs, operator performance will improve and attention can be focused specifically on delivering safe, effective plant operation.

You can follow this alarm management screencast link to see the full-size version or watch this embedded version below:

Buddy shows how those with DeltaV systems can upload their alarm logs to give the service a try by looking at their alarms with DeltaV Analyze On-line. Those who participate will also receive a complimentary summary alarm analysis report. The screencast shows some of the information that is available in this report.

If you have a DeltaV system and would like an alarm analysis performed, it's worth a few minutes to watch the screencast.

Emerson's Buddy Ilao, a member of the SureService support team, offers up another screencast on the Guardian service. Today's screencast provides an overview of a new Guardian Support Update Delivery capability.

The new Guardian Support Update Delivery capability in Guardian addresses the tedious manual downloading of updates, including DeltaV hotfixes, Microsoft OS Security Updates and Symantec Antivirus Updates that are applicable to the DeltaV system. Now, with this feature, which is available to active, Guardian Support subscribers, Guardian not only matches the required updates of the system, but also delivers them automatically by means of an applet that is installed on an internet-accessible, non-DeltaV computer, thus translating into user time savings.

Here's the complete library of Buddy's Guardian screencasts.

Here's Guardian screencast number 3 from Emerson's Buddy Ilao, a member of Emerson's SureService team. Buddy demonstrates how you can manage the knowledge base articles (KBAs) relevant for the versions of software and firmware in your automation and asset management systems. He describes the 6:40 screencast:

The KBA dashboard tile addresses the issue of searching through all the published KBAs and determining which articles are applicable to a specific DeltaV system.

By being a Guardian subscriber, KBAs in this tile are already matched to the system selected, thus, risks are immediately mitigated by saving customers time in viewing and managing these documents. Links to the KBA and the nodes where that KBA is applicable to are conveniently located in the executive summary.

Near the end of the screencast, Buddy shows how Google search is incorporated and can be refined with checkbox selections for different life cycle areas including installation, configuration, operation, and maintenance. All and all, another informational, succinct screencast. Thanks, Buddy!

With two screencasts in two days, let's officially declare this a screencast week. Today's one is by Buddy Ilao, a member of Emerson's SureService team. You may recall Buddy from his first screencast on Guardian Support Login and Enterprise Explorer.

Buddy shows the workings of the Guardian website, which provides personalized, real-time support service information tailored specifically to a process manufacturer's system architecture. He describes it:

This 5-minute screencast is the continuation of the 2-part screencast on the Guardian Support website. This second installment covers how to further navigate the Guardian website, including the links in the dashboard tiles, as well as the two other tabs in the website, namely the Configure and Resources tabs. Also, included is information on getting help on any topics related to the Guardian Support Service. These topics help process manufacturers gain an understanding of where and how to get the information they need and provide supplemental information to help them effectively and proactively manage their DeltaV system, thus getting the most out of the service.

Like yesterday's screencast, we hope this audio/visual medium helps provide a greater understanding of these support services.

Helen Chen, a project engineer and member of Emerson's TAG business, shared a recent project with me where she developed modular, interactive operator training screencasts for a DCS modernization project. TAG provides specialized services for process manufacturers on control system projects--from studies and system documentation to turnkey installations and follow-on support for DCSs, PLCs, SISs, etc. They perform projects with many of the process automation suppliers' systems.

The story begins with the wisdom of a first grade student who developed a narrated PowerPoint presentation to describe her vacation. Her teacher happened to be the spouse of the project manager on this large modernization project. He was thoroughly impressed with the narration and wanted to bring something like this into the operator training for this project.

The standard training is usually a presentation through a written manual. He wanted something pre-recorded, interactive, and site specific for this particular customer because the team was migrating this plant from a single loop board mounted controller system to a DCS. It was a huge leap for the operators to make.

Helen spent time learning the Adobe Captivate software. During the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT), she was able to do a lot of recording on the system. She also made a point of asking the operators there what their concerns were during that time. They were concerned with everything...navigation, point manipulation, alarms. One of them shared with her that this just didn't seem real and it was "like playing with video games and most of us aren't computer savvy."

From these interactions, Helen developed a training content from System Introduction (how to log in...) to Navigation, Point Manipulation, and Alarms...everything that the team thought the operators needed to be able to operate their new DCS system. From that point, Helen used their system including their graphic displays to make recordings of all the topics in the training content, such as navigating using the custom buttons, changing setpoint, etc. The final step was to publish in html format and to burn to CD.

The project team took this training to the process manufacturer's site and presented the individual topics to the trainees. They encouraged interaction between the trainers and trainees by having the trainees work through exercises including a workbook they developed. This training was done on a simulated DCS system while the trainers proctored and answered questions.

They were able to address all the questions that the trainees had as soon as they came up so that they could thoroughly understand this material. After the training, this pre-recorded interactive training remained with the site in CD format.

Having the training pre-recorded also helps keep it consistent. The team provided a training manual and "cheat sheet" for quick referencing. Now the curriculum appeals to the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. After the training, the project team saw that operators became very comfortable with the new system and that was a tremendous advantage during actual system cutover.

The vision cast by a first grade student has been extremely well received by the site personnel and this modular, interactive operator training will be included in upcoming projects at the site. Helen shared a screencast with a short excerpt (6 minutes) from the actual operator training to give you a flavor of what they are now using.

Sometimes valuable innovations are spawned from unlikely sources.

MP3 | iTunes

One of the goals of the Emerson Process Experts blog is to highlight more of the voices around Emerson Process Management. Today, I'm highlighting a screencast developed by Emerson's Buddy Ilao. Buddy is a senior services marketing specialist on the SureService team. He describes his first screencast in the series:

This 5-minute screencast is part 1 of a 2-part screencast on the Guardian Support website, which is one of the innovative features of the Guardian Support Service that enables real-time visualization and management of the DeltaV system. This first installment covers the login page and the Enterprise explorer of the Guardian website.

The login page part shows the correct format of the username to be used, how to request for a new Guardian account and changing the preferred language. The Enterprise explorer part, on the other hand, shows how to navigate through the different systems in the Enterprise and how to add a system to the list of favorites. By providing customers this knowledge, with just a few clicks, they can now gain access to critical information that is tailored to their DeltaV systems, helping them keep their systems available and sustainable.

Buddy, nice first one and I look forward to future ones!

In an earlier post, Secure, Firewall Friendly Communications, I described the new OPC Express Interface (Xi) standard. It overcomes some of the inherent issues in securely communicating information between process automation and asset management systems with other applications in a process manufacturing facility.

I asked Emerson's Lee Neitzel, who was the technical lead for the Xi project, if he would consider doing a slidecast presentation to provide an Xi technical overview of the standard. He agreed, so without further adieu, here is a 15-minute, narrated overview. The presentation is also available for download.

In this presentation, Lee provides a layman's overview of what OPC Xi is, why it was developed, and how it is a common interface for the OPC Data Access (DA), OPC Alarms & Events (A&E), and OPC Historical Data Access (HDA). He describes the security and performance models.

After this introduction, the presentation gets more specific and provides more detail for software developers. I found Lee's clear descriptions easy to follow even as a non-software developer.

You can also find out more about the OPC Xi specification and sample code at the Express Interface site.

Update and bump:The OPC Foundation has officially endorsed the Xi interface and it is known as OPC Express Interface or OPC Xi for short. I've updated the post to reflect the new name.

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.

Here is another installment in our continuing series of screencasts showing the intersection of Foundation fieldbus (FF) digital communications with automation systems. The intent of these screencasts is to demonstrate visually how the information in these smart field devices interacts with the automation system to help improve the process.

Emerson's Rune Reppenhagen shows a control loop with a Coriolis flowmeter, a digital valve controller, and a connection to a redundant pair of Foundation fieldbus H1 cards. Rune describes the control strategy where the analog input runs in the Micro Motion transmitter, the PID control block and analog output block run in the Fieldvue DVC6000 digital valve controller and fieldbus segments connects to the pair of DeltaV H1 cards.

In this 3:21 screencast, Rune shows how control around the loop is maintained by running even in the event of loss of both H1 cards. As you might expect, the information is no longer transmitter to the operator, but the loop will continue to operate. Operators can monitor the loop locally at the devices with their local indicators until the communications are reestablished.

Different applications and operating philosophies may prompt where you might want to locate your control strategies--in the automation system controller or in Foundation fieldbus devices. John Rezabek, a contributing editor for Control magazine, implemented this approach seven years ago as he describes in his article, Not jazzed about fieldbus? Try it. He describes the additional benefit of mode-shedding to manual when the process variable (PV) of the PID is bad or uncertain in the devices. John writes:

While it's a diligent piece of work, this user-coded mode shedding is utterly unnecessary in fieldbus--it's already hard-coded into the blockware and happens automatically. In the same way, the "actual" mode of a PID block sheds to manual when its PV status is bad or uncertain, holding the last output computed before the input's signal status changed.

For bad or uncertain transmitter information, John writes:

Bad or uncertain PV status will cause appropriate mode-shedding in the same scan (macro cycle) in which the condition is detected, so no "new" valve output is passed to the AO block; it dutifully holds last value.

All this happens by interconnecting the FF signals via your programming interface. No additional code or external interlocks are necessary. It's built-in, out-of-the-box and standard in certified FF devices that have implemented PID.

The bottom line from the screencast and what John writes is that Foundation fieldbus provides a lot of robustness in control in addition to the digital diagnostics it delivers.

In our continuing series of screencasts, I'm trying to give examples of how advanced diagnostics in Foundation fieldbus devices can be used in control strategies to avoid abnormal situations and potential losses in production.

Emerson's Rune Reppenhagen shows in this quick 2 minute, 47 second screencast, how an advanced model predictive control strategy in a DeltaV controller automatically recognizes a failure diagnostic in a temperature transmitter and switches the mode of control over to a manual state.

At the same time, this diagnostic alerts the operator of the situation, and the AMS Device Manager software shows the condition of the transmitter so it can be quickly repaired.

By using the advanced diagnostics from these intelligent field devices in the control and advanced control strategies, conditions which impact the availability and quality of the process can be avoided.

Here is another in my series of screencasts, this time showing how an automation system uses predictive maintenance diagnostics to switchover a pump before it fails.

Emerson's DeltaV product manager, Randy Balentine, shows in this 2 minute, 43 second screencast a redundant pair of pump-motor trains. These pump-motor trains are being monitored with CSI 9210 Machinery Health Transmitters.

Randy shows a situation where one of the transmitters communicates excessive vibration via Foundation fieldbus digital communications to a DeltaV system. One of the DeltaV control modules receives the diagnostic alert, performs the logic to switchover to the backup pump-motor train, and notifies the operator of the problem so that it can be addressed.

By incorporating these predictive diagnostics into the control strategy, the switchover can happen before a failure causes a loss of production. Based on the severity of the diagnostic information reported by the smart Foundation fieldbus transmitter, the actions can range from notification of the operators to control actions performed by the control strategy.

I had mentioned in an earlier post that short screencasts are a great way to quickly convery ideas in lieu of hundreds of words. One of Emerson's product application specialists, Rune Reppenhagen, graciously agreed to demonstrate how advanced diagnostics can be used in automation system control strategies.

Today's example shows how air in a fluid can impact Coriolis flow measurement and cause the automation system control strategy to falsely assume it needs to increase the speed of a pump to try to raise compensate for the low flow measurement. This situation called entrained air or slug flow causes the measurement on the coriolis meter to go to zero. The actual flow is OK but the problem is with the measurement.

Rune demonstates in this screencast (runtime: 4:51) how advanced diagnostics like those found in Micro Motion Elite mass flow and density meters can be configured in systems like the DeltaV system to read these diagnostics and take action in the control strategy to turn the loop to manual control for the operator and notify him of the cause of the situation.

This immediate recognition of a process problem and operator notification of the situation is one example of how advanced diagnostics and digital communications protocols like Foundation Fieldbus provide ways for process manufacturers to avoid losses in production, quality excursions, and abnormal situations which can impact the efficiency of the production process.

This week's DeltaV News RSS Feed announced the DeltaV InSight integrated control performance software package. The news release described the method for improved control performance:

DeltaV InSight automatically learns users' processes with embedded learning algorithms running at the controller level and develops process models based on day-to-day operations. These models allow users to identify operational benchmarks, diagnose problems and calculate optimum loop tuning across the entire control system.

Upon process changes like an operator setpoint change or a sequential logic-induced change which causes the process to move to a new operating state, the software learns the dynamics of the process from this change and provides recommendations on new tuning calculations. I discussed his capability in detail in an earlier post with DeltaV Advanced Control product manager, John Caldwell.

Over the years, I've become a fan of blogger and new Microsoft employee, Jon Udell and his use of screencasts. These short screen-captured videos really save thousands of words and help quickly demonstrate something he is discussing.

I spoke with John Caldwell and he agreed to give it a go and do a quick screencast of DeltaV InSight.

The screencast begins with a one-slide overview of DeltaV InSight followed by a demonstration of the software. I hope it conveys in its 3:22 second run-time a sample of this process of recognizing, learning, recommending, and implementing the change. There is also a product data sheet and whitepaper now available presenting additional capabilities.

John adds that the development team worked closely with several process manufacturers in developing and testing this functionality. We developed a video from one of the manufacturers, Lubrizol, last fall to document some of the initial results they saw.