Helping You Innovate with Web 2.0

by Jim Cahill

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.

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

The Foundation Fieldbus Loop Keeps On Keeping On

by Jim Cahill

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.

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July 12, 2007 in Foundation Fieldbus, in Screencast | Comments (2)

Foundation Fieldbus Diagnostics and Advanced Process Control Screencast

by Jim Cahill

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.

DeltaV and Foundation Fieldbus: Advanced Diagnostics MPC ScreencastEmerson'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.

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May 18, 2007 in Abnormal Situation Prevention, in Control Strategies, in Foundation Fieldbus, in Screencast | Comments (0)

Diagnosing and Switching Over Pump-Motor Trains

by Jim Cahill

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.

Fieldbus and DeltaV: Failed Motor Pump ScreencastEmerson'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.

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May 7, 2007 in Abnormal Situation Prevention, in Asset Optimization, in Foundation Fieldbus, in Screencast | Comments (0)

Using Advanced Diagnostics in Control Strategies

by Jim Cahill

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.

DeltaV Foundation Fieldbus Entrained Air ScreencastToday'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.

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April 26, 2007 in Abnormal Situation Prevention, in Foundation Fieldbus, in Screencast | Comments (0)

DeltaV InSight Control Performance Software Screencast

by Jim Cahill

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.

DeltaV InSight Screencast

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.

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March 7, 2007 in Process Optimization, in Screencast | Comments (2)