Archive for the ‘Variability Management’ Category

True Process Variability Costs, Causes and Cures

Posted in Emerson Exchange, Variability Management on Tuesday, August 16th, 2011. No comments yet
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While we focus heavily on technical process automation-related subjects here on the blog, financial-related ones are critically important. I mention this because Emerson’s Doug White will be presenting Making Operations Predictable Through Automation: The True Cost, Causes and Cures of Process Variability at this year’s Emerson Exchange event, October 24-28 in Nashville, TN. Doug shared [...]

Neural Network for Product Quality Estimation

Posted in Measurement, Variability Management on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010. No comments yet
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Neural networks, not the ones in our brains, but the ones that came out of the artificial intelligence research, began back in the 1940s. This advanced process control (APC) technology has been used in the process industries for many years for applications ranging from virtual sensors to end of batch prediction. Neural networks have been [...]

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Refinery Solves Crude Unit Issues by Getting Back to Basics

Posted in Crude Unit, Refining, Variability Management on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009. No comments yet
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Sometimes plants go through a revamp and things just don’t work right. Loops that used to run fine in automatic mode now run in manual mode and require constant attention. I caught up last week with Emerson’s James Beall, a principal process control consultant, whom you may recall from earlier posts. James shared a great [...]

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A Few Tips to Optimize Your Process

Posted in Final Control Element, Process Optimization, Variability Management on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009. No comments yet
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I’ve featured quite a number of experts around Emerson over these past three years. Some categories, like Process Optimization, have more than 50 posts. There is quite a bit of wisdom mixed in all those posts. A few months ago, I was asked by Plant Engineering magazine managing editor, Jack Smith, if I’d be willing [...]

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Guidance for Good Dynamic Control Loop Performance

Posted in Emerson Exchange, Variability Management on Friday, October 10th, 2008. No comments yet

If ever there were a need for dynamic control, it would be for the global bond and equity markets this week. Instead of tackling that global challenge, with today’s post I’ll highlight Emerson senior process control consultant Mark Coughran‘s Emerson Exchange presentation. He presented, “Equipment Selection and Installation for Dynamic Loop Requirements” last week. The [...]

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Taming Extruder Temperature Control

Posted in Extrusion, Process Optimization, Specialty Chemicals, Variability Management on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008. 2 comments so far

I caught up with Emerson’s Mark Coughran, a senior process variability consultant whom you may recall from earlier process tuning and optimization posts. Mark shared a story of a plastics manufacturer that was challenged to bring a new product to market with a new extruder. This manufacturer needed to run trials with varying polymer formulations [...]

Online Statistical Techniques in Batch Operations

Posted in Abnormal Situation Prevention, Technologies, Variability Management on Friday, June 6th, 2008. No comments yet

I was reading the great Control magazine article, Data Analytics in Batch Operations, by Lubrizol’s Robert Wojewodka and Emerson’s Terry Blevins. It describes the challenges in applying on-line analytics in batch production for early fault detection and prediction of end of batch quality parameters. If done right, this can help avoid out of spec batches, [...]

Start with the Basics to Reduce Process Variability

Posted in Process Optimization, Refining, Variability Management on Thursday, May 15th, 2008. No comments yet

James Beall delivered a Back to the Basics – Process Control Diagnostics Improves Refinery Performance presentation at the recent AIChE spring meeting. James, whom you may recall from earlier variability management posts, is a principal process control consultant. He’s a senior member of Emerson’s variability management consulting team. In this presentation, James stressed what he [...]

Collaborative Initiative to Accelerate Process Development

Posted in Abnormal Situation Prevention, Life Sciences, Simulation, Variability Management on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008. No comments yet

In the upcoming March issue of BioProcess International magazine, there is a great article by Emerson’s Greg McMillan and Michael Boudreau, Broadley-James’ Trish Benton, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Yang Zang. The article, PAT Tools for Accelerated Process Development and Improvement, describes the collaborative effort between Emerson, Broadley-James, and UT, “…to examine and [...]

Clarifying the Lambda Tuning Method

Posted in Asset Optimization, Education, Variability Management on Friday, February 8th, 2008. No comments yet

The Automation List on Control.com recently had a question about IMC Tuning for Integrated Processes. I googled around for IMC or internal model control for a good definition and found these 2002 Introduction to Robust Control lecture notes: The Internal Model Control (IMC) philosophy relies on the Internal Model Principle, which states that control can [...]

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