ExchangEREpoRtER

Monday, October 24, 2011highlights fRom thE 2013EmERson global UsERs ExchangE

Combining the Elements

Even Unsung Heroes Shouldn’t Have to Go It AloneEmerson’s Focus in 2013 Has Been to Make the Needed Changes to Earn Customers’ TrustBy Paul Studebaker

When Diana Nyad came out of the water in Key West, Fla., after suc-ceeding on her fifth attempt to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to

Florida, “She told reporters something very interesting,” said Steve Son-nenberg, Emerson Process Management president and CEO, to the nearly 3,000 attendees of his keynote speech Monday at the 2013 Emerson Global Users Exchange. “She said that it looks like swimming is a solitary sport, but in reality it is a team sport.

“She’s the hero of the story, the one who made the swim. But she re-lied on a team of nearly 40 people who were her trusted advisors on everything from navigation avoiding jellyfish stings, Sonnenberg said. “My goal is for you to think of Emerson as part of your team—as your trusted advisor—when it comes to automation.”

Emerson’s focus in 2013 has been to make the needed changes to earn that trust—changes customers asked for in their responses to “thou-sands of surveys,” Sonnenberg said. He outlined the four elements of its strategic direction—introduced last year—that provide a framework for Emerson’s efforts to earn a role as your trusted advisor: Connecting to customers; technology innovation; lifecycle services; perfect execution.

To better connect with customers, “Our aim is to intimately under-stand your situation, your pains and your goals so we can provide solu-tions that are right for you,” said Sonnenberg.

Emerson is strengthening its industry expertise and solutions capa-bilities. It now has “more than 800 industry, application and technology

specialists who work together—and with you—to solve your toughest problems,” Sonnenberg said.

Emerson is also developing pre-engineered, industry solutions—

“My hope is that when you run into obstacles or need a hand or just some advice, you’ll trust us to be part of your team.” Emerson’s Steve Sonnenberg on the company’s aspiration to become more than just a supplier to its customers.

proven combinations of technologies and services tailored to specific applications.

Sonnenberg said. “We have over 20 such solutions so far, with many more on the way.”

The second area is technology innovation, traditionally an Emer-son strength. Here Sonnenberg emphasized continuing investments in human-centered design—designing products for the way people work instead of making people change the way they work to fit the products.

“We’re applying human-centered design to more products all the time—even re-designing some of our existing products for better us-ability and maintainability,” Sonnenberg said.

Another trend is pervasive sensing, where the falling costs of sensors and wireless technology are accelerating their use to address business-critical issues such as reliability, energy, safety, health and environ-ment. Emerson introduced five new wireless products this year and have several more planned for next year. “The adoption rate for Smart Wireless is astounding and is now approaching 2 billion operating hours in the field,” Sonenberg said. “It shows this is another innovation that you clearly found useful.”

The final way Emerson is accelerating technology advancements is through acquisition, most recently of Virgo Valves and Controls, which will enhance Emerson’s ability to supply engineered on-off valves, es-pecially for oil and gas operations.

The third element in Emerson’s strategic direction is strengthening lifecycle services. Emerson has added seven new service centers and expanded others. Over the next two years it plans to add 12 more, for a

total to more than 400. It also added 215 additional service people this year, for a total of almost 2,700, and deploying centers close to custom-ers so they’ll get faster response.

The fourth and final strategic element is perfect execution. “To help you improve your operations, we need to improve our own operations,” Sonnenberg said. “In particular, we need to be easier to do business with. That includes having simpler business processes, consistent proj-ect execution and delivery dates you can count on.”

Emerson’s ability to draw on both local and global resources can bring significant force to bear on a problem or project anywhere in the world, and it has added more than 500 project personnel in the past year, bringing the total to more than 5,100. It’s also extending the role of its Project Management Office, which develops common tools, pro-cesses and project expertise.

“By combining those elements, we’re working to become problem-solvers and trusted advisors, to make Emerson Process Management easier to do business with,” Sonnenberg concluded.

“You are the true heroes of every automation story, whether it’s a green-field project, an upgrade or turnaround for an existing unit, or just keep-ing everything running the way it’s supposed to be, day in and day out. You may not always get the credit you deserve—which is why my prede-cessor, John Berra, called you the ‘unsung heroes’—but I have some un-derstanding what you’re up against and what it takes to reach your goals.

“My hope is that you’ll let us help you get there—that when you run into obstacles or need a hand or just some advice, you’ll trust us to be part of your team.”

Wireless networks will be the highway for a new generation of pervasive sensors and

analytical software applications that will give Emerson Process Management’s customers the ability to make a far broader range of useful and profitable decisions.

The executive leadership of Emerson Process Management described the company’s vision of “Pervasive Sensing”—and three customers showed how they’re using Pervasive Sensing solutions—during a press conference, “Conquering Complex-ity: Pervasive Sensing for Actionable Information,” Monday afternoon at the 2013 Emerson Global Us-ers Exchange.

“We want to make sure we’re a listening organiza-tion, and show we can work with our customer to solves their toughest problems,” said Steve Sonnen-burg, president of Emerson Process Management. “Our customers are traditionally vigilant in optimiz-ing their plant performance and keeping them safe, but there are other areas into which they haven’t had as much visibility. There’s an increasing emphasis

on other business-critical issues, such as equipment reliability, environmental concerns, energy use, se-curity and personnel safety. The cost of monitoring these areas has been dropping due to wireless tech-nology, and we’re now reaching an inflection point that we’re calling Pervasive Sensing.”

Peter Zornio, Emerson’s chief strategy officer, added that everyone seeks actionable information, whether it’s for improving personal health or picking good investments, but these efforts are often incom-plete or unsuccessful. However, unlike these other endeavors, Pervasive Sensing’s automated technolo-gies will give its customers far more widespread and complete health visibility.

As a result, the traditional process-critical func-tions of process control and process safety will now be joined under Pervasive Sensing’s umbrella by business-critical functions of site safety, reliability, energy efficiency and others. “Because keeping ap-plications and facilities up and running was the top priority, it was usually seen as too costly to add more sensors for monitoring business-related issues, but

“Pervasive Sensing” to Reach Far Beyond the ProcessThree of Emerson Process Management’s Customers Showed How They’re Using Pervasive Sensing SolutionsBy Jim Montague

“Pervasive Sensing changes the game in site safety.” Emerson’s Tom Moser on the new potential for more affordable, ubiquitous sensors to do far more than transmit process variables.

wireless makes doing this simpler and cheaper. Big data is now available,” re-ported Zornio. “Pervasive Sensing will provide users with real-time information on all aspects of their plants, and so we believe it will more than double today’s $16-billion traditional sensing market.”

In essence, Pervasive Sensing is founded on three pillars:• Innovative sensors that are multivariable, non-intrusive and cover

wide areas;• Easily commissioned components that are wireless, self-powered and con-

figuration-free;• No-maintenance devices that are accurate, calibration-free and have life-

time reliability.This foundation delivers its huge amounts of new data to a Strategic Interpre-

tation level, which sorts through it by using sensor awareness functions, new al-gorithms, industry knowledge and human expertise. Finally, this interpretation level presents its findings to users at the Actionable Information level.

“In fact, the value of business-critical sensing is already being realized,” added Zornio. “We know of a next-generation process plant that’s currently deploying wireless infrastructure and growing measurements by 60% for business-critical applications, which is above and beyond the 20,000 process-critical process con-trol instruments it already has. These include 2,000 personal safety measure-ments, 8,000 reliability measurements and 2,000 energy measurements.”

“Pervasive Sensing changes the game in site safety,” added Tom Moser, presi-dent of Emerson’s Rosemount Measurement division, in introducing three Em-erson users already using instrumentation technology to enhance safety, save energy and increase equipment reliability.

For example, Richard Clarke, maintenance team lead for Spectra En-ergy’s PTC Pipeline division, reported that its Empress plant and pipelines in Saskatchewan produce up to 2.4 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas and resulting liquid products, and then stores much of it in mile-deep salt caverns. Spectra’s problem was that shelters protecting surface valves and other devices also collected any gas leaks into dangerous concentrations.

Removing the shelters solved one problem, but introduced others. “Our leg-acy, single-point, catalytic bead detection technology was effective when the cavern wellhead was contained, but it wasn’t effective without the enclosure to contain leaks because the detector may not sense leaks in fluctuating open-air conditions,” explained Clarke.

As a result, Spectra adopted Emerson’s Incus ultrasonic, wide-area gas moni-toring and detection solution, which identifies the background noise produced by any leaks within a 40-meter radius and is field-proven to overcome any envi-ronmental performance challenges.

“We installed Incus last fall, and we’ve had great results,” said Clarke. “It per-formed flawlessly in all-out, high-frequency leak tests.”

On the reliability side, Nick Jude, rotating equipment reliability engineer at Flint Hills Resources (FHR) refinery in Pine Bend, Minn., reported that a recent process hazardous analysis (PHA) found 100 high-risk pumps that were at risk for vapor-cloud releases and potential fires. So Pine Bend fit-ted 110 pumps with Emerson’s CSI 9420 wireless vibration transmitters for continuous fault detection.

“On one pump, we saw an increase in vibration and confirmed it with a CSI 2130 analyzer,” said Jude. “So a work order was written, the pump was shut down, and our preventive project objectives were met. We only had enough funds to upgrade 15 pumps with traditional technology, but with wireless we had enough money to do all 110 pumps. And, over eight months, we found three or four pumps like this, and we shut them down, fixed them and prevented possible catastrophic failures.”

Finally, on the energy efficiency front, Richard Luneack, project co-ordinator for Fluor’s global services division, reported that a food man-ufacturer’s plant that makes refrigerated and frozen dough and yogurt in Murfreesboro, Tenn., reduced the energy used by hundreds of its steam traps and saved $36,000 by implementing Emerson’s Rosemount 708 wireless acoustic transmitters, which provide instant alerts about failed traps.

“It’s nice to get the business update from Steve Sonnenberg,” quipped Peter Zornio,

chief strategic officer for Emerson Process Man-agement, “but as engineers, we say, ‘show us the technology!’”

Zornio, who followed Emerson President Sonnenberg’s opening keynote to the Emerson Global Users Exchange 2013, divided his time on stage between the themes of Technology Everywhere, Shiny New Stuff and The Future.

Zornio began by explaining that the com-pany had re-organized its product and services offerings, grouping them into functional ar-eas: Measure and Analyze; Operate and Man-age; Final Control and Regulate and Solve and Support. “This is a new way for us to present our products and services and is ref lected in how the Technology Exhibits are organized.”

Starting with the realm of Measure and Ana-lyze, Zornio described a new and substantially different Elite Coriolis mass f lowmeter family,

as well as new viscosity and density meters and a polymer-housed version of the 3051 pressure transmitter that is natively wireless and boasts a five-year calibration cycle.

He introduced a new quad-sensor vortex me-ter for safety instrumented system (SIS) appli-cations that provides a process variable output and three voting safety outputs. In magmeters, there’s a new abrasion-resistant, high-tempera-ture lining that Emerson calls Adiprene. There are new temperature transmitters, as well as a wireless guided wave radar transmitter.

He introduced next-generation process ana-lyzers, including the Rosemount Analytical Model 1066, a two-wire device with either HART or Foundation Fieldbus outputs. A new oxygen analyzer and a multi-path ultrasonic flowmeter for LNG applications also were un-veiled. Incus is a new ultrasonic gas leak de-tection system that “listens for leaks and senses them before they become critical,” Zornio said.

Emerson Bringing New Technology to Many Plant FunctionsTechnology Everywhere, Shiny New Stuff and The FutureBy Walt Boyes

“Fasten your seatbelts!” Emerson’s Peter Zornio took attendees on a rapid-fire tour of the numerous technology advances on display at Emerson Exchange.

In the area of Operate and Manage, Zornio revealed a new Distrib-uted-RTU SCADA product that allows easy, drag-and-drop configura-tion of control strategies across multiple remote terminal units. Version 12 of AMS Device Manager with new asset classes is shipping. “And we have partnered with Beamex and Meridum so that we can have very smooth data transfer and workf low capability from the field to mainte-nance,” he said.

In Batch and Operations Management, Zornio noted several en-hancements, including improved operator integration and the increased ability to prevent unauthorized changes. He pointed to improved elec-tronic logbooks and recipe-authoring tools, especially applicable to the life sciences industries. The latest iteration of the CSI Machinery Health Monitor is now the CSI 2140 Machinery Health Analyzer, Zor-nio reported. This portable, tablet-sized, four-channel unit is equipped with Bluetooth and 802.11 wireless. “It has benefited greatly from hu-man-centered design in its navigation and HMI,” Zornio said.

For Final Control and Regulation, Zornio introduced an electric level loop for upstream applications including an easyDrive electric valve and LZe electric liquid level controller. He also showed the new 1098-63EGR Regulator, which he said is “zero-bleed, very green and

great for oil and gas applications.” In the area of Solve and Support, Zornio singled out some new pack-

aged applications, such as Asset Monitoring for Cooling Towers and Asset Monitoring for Compressors.

Of course, Zornio couldn’t leave products without talking about wireless. He introduced the new 1552WU wireless gateway which com-bines a WirelessHART gateway with a 5-GHz Wi-Fi backhaul, and the latest version of the company’s network management software, Smart Wireless Navigator.

Zornio’s view of the future focused on the changes that “pervasive sensing” will bring to the process plant. “We will have more real-time data for business-critical information, just as we do today for process-critical information,” he said. “You will see probably double the field sensors that you use today, and you will need the tools to manage that data and turn it into information.”

With lower-cost wireless sensors, it is now doable to have many more sensors. Ultimately, all this information will be brought together in an integrated operations center (iOPS), where the operator of the fu-ture will be a business operator, using a business operations network to monitor and manage actionable information.

Emerson bid farewell to the iconic triangle of its Micro Motion Elite Coriolis mass

f lowmeters at a Tuesday press conference this week at the Emerson Global Users Exchange. In its stead, explained Andy Dudiak, Micro Motion vice president and general manager, is the next generation Elite CMFS (for Corio-lis Mass Flow Sensor), a fully drainable mass meter that sets a new standard in high-perfor-mance mass f low measurement.

“We were able, because of our unmatched design capabilities, to produce a new meter family with real advances,” Dudiak said. “The accuracy of the new instrument is +/- 0.05% of mass f low, +/- 0.05% of volume f low, and +/- 0.0002 g/cc density, with 30:1 turndown. That’s high meter rangeability, and we’ve made it more stable at low f lows. The zero stability of the instruments ref lects a 50% improvement over the previous generation of Elite meters.”

He added, “We have improved our gas mass f low accuracy to better than +/- 0.25%, and we have proven this on our primary gravimetric calibration stand. We can handle bubble f low, slug f low of gases and liquids, and full/empty/full f low conditions. We have improved our Smart Meter Verification and made it possible to use WirelessHART to remotely verify the calibration of the product.”

“It is more than technology,” added Neal In-gram, president of Emerson Process Manage-ment’s Precision Flow group. In the past 36 years, he noted, engineeers for the Micro Mo-tion product line have received over 50 U.S. patents and 1,500 patents worldwide. Plus, Emerson has introduced 50 new products just in the past five years, Ingram said. The Micro Motion operation also has adapted to the demands of supplying f low and density instrument globally, including support for a

Micro Motion Sets New Bar in Mass Flow, Density MeasurementMicro Motion Improved Their Gas Mass Flow Accuracy to Better Than +/- 0.25%, and They Have Proven This on Their Primary Gravimetric Calibration StandBy Walt Boyes

“The zero stability reflects a 50% improve-ment over the previous generation of Elite meters.” Emerson’s Andy Dudiak unveiled Emerson’s new Micro Motion family of high-performance mass flowmeters.

multilingual call center, smart phone apps, training videos and an as-sortment of web- and social-media portals.

Dudiak then turned to the new vibration density and viscosity de-vices. Combining the latest Coriolis design into a product optimized for density, he proclaimed that the new Compact Density Meter raises the standard for online density metering and enhances custody trans-fer, processing and blending operations.

“We know our customers want application-specific solutions,” he said. “They want human-centered design solutions for easy start-up and maintenance, and they want simplified system integration with the plant networks so they can remotely diagnose meter health.”

Then he described the new Gas Density Meter, a vibrating fork type meter that measures gas density and provides gas purity and blending measurements.

Additionally, he showed the new Specific Gravity Meter, a vibrating tube meter that provides measurements of specific gravity, molecular weight, gas purity, BTU/calorific value and Wobbe Index.

“Customers want legacy f low computer support,” Dudiak said, “so we’ve provided the meters with frequency and 4-20 mA analog outputs,

as well as HART-to-WirelessHART and Modbus-to-FOUNDATION-fieldbus support. We have provided a new diagnostic capability called Known Density Verification that checks the meter for measurement alarm conditions, sensor integrity and the presence of coating, erosion or corrosion, and we have included integrated links to ProLink, AMS and other asset portal tools.”

Dudiak went on to describe specific applications for these instru-ments, including fuel gas monitoring, heavy fuel oil combustion con-trol, and—last but not least—alcohol distillation monitoring. “Absolut vodka has to have very tight concentration control, for tax purposes, from 40.0% to 40.1% alcohol concentration, and they are using the f low value from the Compact Density Meter to give them percentage alcohol by volume (ABV). This keeps them within spec without giving any extra alcohol away. It also prevents them from running the still too fast, which burns the grain and imparts a ‘strange’ taste to the vodka, and we don’t want our vodka to taste funny.”

The new family of meters shares a common user interface and has the same look and feel as the other members of the Micro Motion pro-duction system.

Control rooms are adding a few new tasks to their job descriptions. Both integrated

control operations and the intelligent fields are transforming the jobs and the very nature of field devices and what it means to be a control room.

For instance, Santos Ltd. has been supplying natural gas in eastern Australia for 50 years, and one of its primary applications includes 10 compressor stations, more than 1,000 wells, and regional control hubs producing coal-seam natural gas in a area covering several hundred square kilometers (km), located up to 1,000 km west of Brisbane. Obviously, managing and co-ordinating the operations of all these far-flung wells and facilities is a complex and usually time-consuming job.

“We needed a more efficient way to run our plants, monitor and control the fields, and inte-grate operations,” said Patrick Gorey, controls

advisor for engineering and reliability at Santos. “Supporting staff in the field was becoming cost-prohibitive, so we also needed to provide real-time data to our maintenance and operations per-sonnel to allow them to optimize performance of the wells, well-pads and fields.”

To achieve its vision, Santos began developing and designing its Brisbane Primary Control Center (PCC) in 2010 and just finished building it about one year ago. The PCC is part of Santos’ overall Brisbane Operations Center (BOC), and its up-grade will help supply the Gladstone Liquid Natu-ral Gas (GLNG) project, a joint venture between Santos and three of the world’s largest energy com-panies, Petronas, Total and Kogas. GLNG is ex-pected to increase the number of Santos’ wells in the region to about 6,000 over the life of project.

“We’re implementing our new hubs this year and will begin increasing LNG production next year,” said Gorey.

Santos Integrates Intelligent Field with Transformative Operations CenterAutomation Professionals Needed a More Efficient Way to Run Their Plants, Monitor and Control the Fields, and Integrate Operations. Santos Ltd. Delivered!By Jim Montague

“Equipment makes gas, but people are essential to make sure its runs properly and efficiently.” Santos’ Patrick Gorey on the ability of the Australian natural gas producer’s new operations center to im-prove its employees’ decision-making.

Gorey and Mike Ilgen, industry marketing director for Emerson Pro-cess Management, Asia Pacific, presented “Santos Brisbane Primary Control Center—A Collaborative Environment for the Intelligent Field” on the second day of Emerson Global Users Exchange 2013. A YouTube video of Santos’ project is at http://bit.ly/1c1QSmm (watch it below).

Ilgen added that integrated operations centers and intelligent field applications are transforming the oil and gas and other process indus-tries. “Most international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil com-panies (NOCs) have some form of these new centers, and research in-dicates that intelligent operations and smart fields can improve overall gas recovery by 5% and overall oil recovery by 10%, which can mean billions of dollars in added revenue,” said Ilgen.

“However, all these integrated operations (iOps) centers are based on more and better data from their intelligent fields and the pervasive sen-sors located downhole and at the wellheads, compressor stations and other facilities. This data can then go anywhere in the world and is then treated and analyzed by intelligent applications to improve deci-sion-making and operations. And the faster this whole data-to-decision loop can go, the better companies can run their businesses.”

For Santos’ natural gas extraction and processing operations, the “gas field of the future” means no longer driving or flying by helicopter to remote wells, which is costly and can pose added safety risks. Now, San-tos’ operators and engineers are implementing predictive diagnostics, including using wireless RTUs to conduct remote well tests from their PCC and DeltaV system in Brisbane. Likewise, some maintenance tasks used to require three or four days worth of travel and permitting to

perform a three-hour job, but now they only need one hour of remote travel, plus the three hours to the job.

Gorey explained that its new PCC design was based on a predicted organization model for 2013, which consists of three stations and spare capacity; four asset-based collaborative environment (CE) joint work-spaces with support for one field location; two discipline-based CEs for wells, maintenance and projects; two “war rooms” with video con-ferencing to support event-based issues; Hub-based CEs for field team use; one field office in the town of Roma.

To design and build their new PCC, Gorey added that the Santos team held meetings with relevant teams, including engineering and technical support, and field-based team representatives. Next, they met with their design teams, including local architects, services consultants and construction teams. Together, they all generated and optimized a f loor-plan layout and created detailed scope and costs for it. Emer-son serves as the main automation contractor (MAC) for the GLNG, and helps collect and deliver its real-time information. Lastly, the new

PCC was built, and it’s been up and running for about 12 months.Gorey added that the new PCC has:• Fundamentally changed the way that Santos operates its gas fields

in the Bowen and Surat basins;• Integrated its planning, scheduling, operations and maintenance;• Improved its ability to monitor and control all its upstream facili-

ties and collaborate with teams in the field to improve operations;• Improved compliance with its planning and production;• Reduced personnel in the field and trips to the field by more than

50%; and• Achieved payback in less than one year.“We have developed a world-class remote operation center,” Gorey

stated. “The center has changed the way our gas fields in the Bowen and Surat Basins are operated. Emerson’s team brought the process automa-tion expertise we needed to meet global standards, and their solutions have equipped us with the ability to centrally monitor the production and progress of our intelligent assets up to 1,000 kilometers apart.”

Sometimes sound is better than sight—just ask any bug-hunting bat, submarine sonar operator or air-traffic controller. They all know

that seeing requires a narrowly focused visual field, while hearing can take in audio data from a wide radius all around.

One example of this capability on display at this week’s Emerson Global Users Exchange is Emerson Process Management’s new Incus ultrasonic gas leak detector, which can provide immediate warnings of toxic, asphyxiating or combustible gas leaks and other conditions and greatly improve on the limited performance and scope of optic-beam, infrared and other traditional sensing methods. Instead, Incus detects the sound generated by high-pressure gas releases over as much as a 40-meter radius. Most importantly, Incus’ immediate detection and alerts can give on-site staff time to put on masks and perform other safety measures.

Factory-calibrated for life with sensors that never expire, Incus is in-trinsically safe (IS) and explosion-proof. Emerson reports that Incus isn’t designed to replace point-detection and other traditional sen-sors, but to help supplement them. The unit already has had success in Europe and some Asia/Pacific markets and is now being launched in North America.

This environmental sensing and monitoring system is just three years old, but it’s based on acoustic detection principles that have been

Incus Hears Tiny Gas Leaks in Big AreasIncus Ultrasonic Gas Leak Detector Can Provide Immediate Warnings of Toxic, Asphyxiating or Combustible Gas Leaks and Other ConditionsBy Jim Montague

Named for the diminutive, anvil-shaped bone in the human ear, Emerson’s new Incus gas leak detector can pinpoint the sound of a gas leak up to 40 meters away.

evolving and refined for 15 years. Early versions of Incus were built by Grovely Detection and Net Safety Monitoring, which was acquired by Emerson about two years ago.

“Because oil and gas applications in the North Sea must report all hydrocarbon releases on offshore platforms, engineers began trying to use microphones to find leaks in 1998,” says Dr. Eliot Sizeland, global sales and marketing director for Emerson’s Ultrasonic Gas Leak Detec-tion Division.

“Research showed that a lot of releases weren’t being found or reported by traditional optic, catalytic or point-detection methods, so developers be-gan trying to plug that gap with audible and then ultrasonic technologies.”

To detect leaks over such wide areas, Incus uses four multidirec-tional, acoustic sensing heads, and its 4-20 mA signals are enabled by

relays and HART protocol communications. It even uses an on-board, user-programmed microprocessor to help determine when a gas leak is identified. While it’s not self-determining, this microprocessor em-ploys user-defined parameters to decide if a release has occurred. Us-ers can also set up time delays and use stepped outputs of its 4-20 mA signals to arrange for alarms via its relay contacts.

“We’re using piezoelectric resonance sensors on all four sensing heads, and they allow Incus to detect much smaller releases and lower leak sources or respond to gas f lows over much broader areas,” explained Sizeland. “Competing devices only use microphones with diaphragms, which move and respond to temperature changes, so they must be re-peatedly calibrated. So for the same size release, Incus achieves four to five times greater area coverage.”

It’s a common problem: You’ve done a great design, but your control system moderniza-

tion program turns out to be too expensive. Your vendor says your existing system is ob-solete, and they’re dropping support; opera-tions says the system is failing, and they need new functionality, but “playing the obsoles-cence card doesn’t work with management anymore,” said Jan de Rijke, engineering man-ager, Momentive Specialty Chemicals B.V., in a Tuesday morning presentation this week at the Emerson Global Users Exchange. “Man-agement says if it’s working this year, it will work next year. Or, you have to halve the cost.”

Now’s the time to embrace Value Engineer-ing. “Value Engineering is a multi-disciplined, systematic process consisting of the applica-tion of analytical, creative and evaluation tech-niques to identify changes to a project, product or process in order to achieve the desired func-tions while minimizing the cost,” said Rijke.

Rijke does it in one day by bringing 10 to 15 qualified people together in an intensive meet-ing to review every aspect of the project with a mandate to reduce cost and raise ROI. The end product is a set of practical cost reduc-tions and proposed operational improvements to meet required cost-reduction goals. “Set a specific and challenging target,” Rijke said, for example, $2.5 million in cost reduction for one of his former Shell Oil Co. epoxy plants. “People will think they can’t do it in one day, but they will be surprised by the results.”

The group must represent all the stakehold-ers who will deal with the new system, as well as the management who will have to sign off on the final project.

Start by choosing a facilitator and a scribe, people who “must be fit,” Rijke said, “because they will work all day without a break.” You also must prepare for the meeting by perform-ing a functional breakdown of the system and

Value Engineering Finds Millions of Dollars for DCS ProjectsNow’s the Time to Embrace Value EngineeringBy Paul Studebaker

“People will think they can’t do it in one day, but they will be surprised by the re-sults.” Momentive Specialty Chemicals’ Jan de Rijke on the potential for his one-day Value Engineering methodology to ratchet up the returns on automation projects.

allocation of costs, which should be presented in posted pie charts that add up to the total cost. “Break down costs by activity, main func-tions, company, building, engineering discipline—any cost split you can make to help people understand where the costs are going and where to focus their creativity,” Rijke said.

Creativity? Yes, because value engineering is essentially a creative process. Each pie chart is presented in a brainstorming session where individuals are encouraged to offer ideas for how to reduce the cost or improve the payback. “Challenge them to come up with uncon-ventional solutions and write them all down without judgment,” Rijke said, “This will encourage everyone to submit unconventional, even controversial, ideas.” Use Post-It notes to record ideas and attach them to the charts. Accept written as well as spoken ideas. “This will encour-age the quiet people and prevent the loud ones from dominating the session.” Expect 100 to 150 ideas.

While the rest of the group takes a break, the facilitator and scribe

must enter all the ideas into the register for group discussion. After the break, discuss each idea as a group. Note who is supporting it and who is not; i.e., operations versus management, and group similar ideas into common scenarios or solutions. Hold all ideas for improved productiv-ity for later economic analysis, but quickly rate them for technical con-fidence, potential value improvement and impact on the project sched-ule. “Look for ideas with significant potential value, say, a minimum of $50,000,” Rijke said. The technical confidence rating is a way to side-step controversy. “By keeping an idea, but rating it low on confidence, you can avoid arguments and move on to the next idea.”

At this point, you’ll have what you need to revise the project. “I’ve done five of these workshops and each achieved its target,” Rijke said. “Four one-day events in the United States created millions of dollars in value.

“Value engineering can solve cost vs. functionality dilemmas for DCS projects,” he concluded. “It is essential for obtaining management ap-proval for otherwise hard-to-justify DCS modernization projects.”

Even the best-maintained equipment can surprise plant operators with an unexpected breakdown, but as engineers at Braskem’s PP4 polypropylene

unit in São Paulo, Brazil, recently confirmed, if an incipient fault is detected early enough and monitored carefully, a potential catastrophic failure can be turned into a scheduled, routine repair. This week, at the 2013 Emerson Global Users Exchange in Grapevine, Texas, Braskem vibration specialist Julio Mag-alhães and Emerson engineer Fabio Chrispim described such a situation on a critical reactor pump.

On August 21, 2012, the plant’s CSI 4500 online monitoring system showed an alarm due to sudden and excessive vibration in one of the reactor pump bear-ings. The vibration was verified in the field with a CSI 2130 measuring device, confirming the immediate need for intervention.

However, the reactor was scheduled be in production to fulfill a commitment to a customer. If the production system had to be shut down due to an un-expected failure, emergency repairs would have cost the company more than $400,000 in lost revenue.

The source of the vibration was a radial bearing on the reactor pump shaft. This bearing had previously showed a rise in vibration due to excessive clear-ance and had been replaced along with its housing during a scheduled shut-down on April 25, 2012. At that time, the old bearing had shown no sign of damage, only normal wear.

Now, the sudden increase in vibration indicated a need for intervention. But thanks to the early detection provided by the CSI 4500 system, the need was not necessarily immediate. The customer’s production run was sched-uled to be completed in 10 days, and the decision was taken to continue to operate the equipment with close monitoring to avoid a catastrophic failure

and the accompanying collateral damage.Along with online monitoring to detect any abnormal change, the bearing

was inspected daily with a portable CSI 1850. During the monitoring period, a spare bearing housing was assembled and made ready for replacement.

When the production was completed, the reactor was shut down, and the bearing and housing were replaced. It was found that the bearing failure was due to axial overloading when the bearing housing assembly was installed in April. The total repair time was 22 hours, for an estimated total cost savings of $250,000.

Vibration Monitoring Prevents $250,000 Incident at BraskemCondition Monitoring Helps Brazilian Petrochem Plant Meet Production Requirements while Avoiding Catastrophic FailureBy Paul Studebaker

Continuous vibration monitoring allowed Braskem to detect excessive wear of this reactor pump radial bearing before it failed unexpectedly.

Pressure, temperature and f low measure-ments around a heat exchanger can tell

you exactly how well it’s working, how fast it’s fouling and when it needs to be cleaned—if you have the time and resources to pay atten-tion. But as Emerson Exchange attendees ob-served in Session 1B-4851 on Tuesday morn-ing in Grapevine, Texas, many engineers are too busy to put a high priority on getting and analyzing exchanger data, so plants use more energy, run at lower productivity and even ex-perience unplanned outages due to exchanger neglect.

Such was the case at PEMEX’s Cadereyta refinery, in operation since 1979, where com-bined feed/reactor eff luent exchangers on die-sel hydrotreating units were fouling unpre-dictably due to variations in the composition of different feedstocks. The plant’s existing system of using an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of exchanger cleaning intervals was not

keeping up with the process dynamics.As Mexico’s sole refiner and supplier of oil,

natural gas and refined products, the company has long had a lock on its market, but it’s also “now making very important changes,” said Miguel Angel Camacho, operations coordina-tor, PEMEX, resulting in “a new culture for a more reliable process, requiring renovation of a number of facilities.”

Exchanger fouling in cooler areas of refiner-ies also is an increasing problem in the United States due to the varying qualities of shale oils, according to Gary Hawkins, senior refining consultant for Emerson Process Management.

The Cadereyta refinery has six exchang-ers on each of two hydrotreaters. “Heat losses due to fouling—in this case, by salts—must be made up by heaters and were costing $400,000 to $2 million dollars a year,” said Marcelo Ca-rugo, director, refining and oil terminals, Latin America, Emerson Process Management.

PEMEX Makes Heat Exchangers Tell How They’re FeelingMany Engineers Are Too Busy to Put a High Priority on Getting and Analyzing Exchanger Data, so Plants Use More Energy, Run at Lower Productivity and Even Experience Unplanned Outages Due to Exchanger NeglectBy Paul Studebaker

“A new culture for a more reliable pro-cess.” According to PEMEX’s Miguel Camacho, attitudinal changes at Mexico’s state-run oil company are placing a new emphasis on equipment reliability.

PEMEX wanted real-time monitoring of overall exchanger health, fouling factor and rates, lost energy cost, exchanger coefficients and notification when cleaning was required. The exchangers are equipped with wireless temperature and pressure measurements, and f low is available through an OSI PI database. “Our solution takes the ex-changer design data and online measurements, delivers the calculated value and displays the needed information,” said Nikki Bishop, senior application consultant, Emerson Process Management.

Heat duty is automatically calculated, which can be done for both the hot and cold sides of an exchanger. The heat exchanger coefficient, or rate of heat trans-fer, is determined using heat duty and surface area. The application calculates the observed coefficient (corrected for process flow), compares it to an estab-lished baseline for the specific exchanger and determines the extent of fouling.

The heat exchanger process display shows temperature, pressure and f low readings, as well as calculated values and a “fouling factor” of 0%

to 100%. It also can show the cost associated with the current level of fouling. The fouling factor tells when it might be time to clean the exchanger. If the differential pressure across the exchanger rises high enough, it tells the operator that cleaning is required.

“Readings are highlighted if the fouling rate has accelerated, so you can see that something has changed,” said Carugo. “Before, operators had no alert. Now they can see and make a decision about the best tim-ing to clean the exchanger.”

The application, Asset Monitoring for Heat Exchangers, is an AMS product, “not a snap-on,” added Bishop, and can be used on any kind of exchanger. The algorithms run in Asset Graphics, engineers can set alarms, and maintenance personnel can see results on the mainte-nance console. It can also be connected to other systems via OPC. She added, “It uses a common dashboard, gives continuous analysis and provides notification when attention is needed.”

It can be easy to get overwhelmed and frus-trated when faced with a f lood of new,

quickly changing and expanding technologies. But one way to stay above water and capitalize on the benefits of new solutions is to divide and conquer on understanding, implementing and maintaining them.

This is exactly what the instrumentation team at Potash Corp.’s New Brunswick (NB) division did to cope in the wake of a recent transition from its former RS3 distributed control system (DCS) to a DeltaV digital automation system and AMS suite software system and to prepare for a $2.2-billion plant expansion that is soon to come online. Located in Sussex, NB, Canada, the huge plant’s three mills contribute to Potash’s profile as the world’s largest fertilizer company, which pro-duces the three primary crop nutrients—potash, phosphate and nitrogen.

“This session isn’t about new technology, but is about our instrumentation technicians and their relationships with that technology,” said Bob

Emery, Potash NB’s instrumentation supervisor. “This all began in 2003 when I was promoted to instrumentation supervisor, and we subsequently switched our fuel systems over to natural gas and our control systems to DeltaV.

“The problem was we had so many technological changes, and they prompted adding so much smart equipment and operating methods, that it created a real technological storm for us. So we had to come up with our Champion Concept of narrow special-ization to help solve these problems.”

Emery and Matt Fenwick, Potash NB’s in-strumentation technician and AMS cham-pion, presented “PotashCorp NB Champion Concept” Wednesday morning at the Emer-son Global Users Exchange.

Emery reported that the DeltaV system and all the new hardware and software related to its transition and expansion were installed, and the plant was getting its basic production done, but it wasn’t using its new equipment to its full potential. It was also experiencing too

PotashCorp Champions Succeed Through SpecializationIt Isn’t about New Technology, but About Instrumentation Technicians and Their Relationships with That TechnologyBy Jim Montague

“We are able to consume technology instead of technology consuming us.” PotashCorp’s Bob Emery on the success of the company’s Champion Concept, which focuses each of its technicians on specific primary and secondary technology specializations.

many operating problems and downtime. As a result, Emery and his colleagues sought help from Cliff Topolinsky of Emerson local busi-ness partner Atlantic Controls and began seeking a way through the storm.

“We wanted to help our guys keep up to speed, and all the new tech-nologies promised a lot, but there was so much coming in that it was very frustrating for many technicians, and our actual installations times and downtime increased. We needed a way to motivate and excite our teams,” said Emery.

“When people have enough time to train on and master the new equipment, they’re able to really take advantage of it and be happy. In the past, people might learn a few pieces about an application, but no one knew all the tricks, and so several technicians might huddle around one problem, and this wasn’t very efficient either. And no one could master all our new technologies. They might learn some basics, but then they’d forget after not using them for awhile and have to learn again.”

Emery reported that the key to Potash NB’s solution for coping with and truly taking advantage of the DeltaV system and its other new tech-nologies was specializing, and this became the heart of its Champion Concept. Staff had gravitated to areas they were interested in before,

but now it would be more organized, planned, narrowly defined and prioritized for maximum effect.

“We looked at each technician’s unique strengths with each technol-ogy and where their interest lay and assigned each to learn, know and maintain a specific technology area, so we could learn and find solu-tions faster overall. We were going to become like doctors—you don’t see a general practitioner for a hip replacement—and that’s what we needed to do.”

Emery added that establishing specialization and its Champion Con-cept wasn’t easy at first because many technicians were reluctant to change from being generalists; they were concerned about only knowing one or two of the new technologies, especially if they were called in later to help in an unfamiliar area during an emergency; and they didn’t want to be possibly saddled with technologies that might be less important or interesting than those in which their colleagues were specializing.

“Another crucial part of our Champion Concept was mentoring,” ex-plained Emery. “Once a technician masters his technical area, he becomes the champion, go-to person, resource and reference for it, and then he ro-tates with and mentors guys who are less experienced in that area. In the last two years, some areas are more evolved and active, such as DeltaV, which is in the center of all we do, and so we have two champions for it.

“Now, any of our guys can build DeltaV graphics and work in Control Studio. And when ever newer technologies come along, we’re prepared to try and keep up and get trained on it. This has been a kind of off-the-wall revolution, but when my boss saw the reduced downtime and savings that Champion Concept could help us achieve, he became very supportive.”

For example, Emery reported that Potash NB has seen large dividends from using ValveLink software to perform predictive maintenance. “We have millions of dollars invested in all our valves, so it’s essential to keep them maintained and repaired,” he said. “In fact, we just saved about $55,000 because we didn’t have to send out valves that were scheduled for repairs, but were actually OK, while we also found other valves that weren’t scheduled for maintenance, but did need to be sent for repairs.”

Emery added that having these predictive valve diagnostics and ex-pertise in place is especially crucial because Potash NB’s recent expan-sion means it now has twice as many valves to maintain as it did be-fore. “We’ve been so busy, and in the past we had to focus on putting out fires, and we didn’t have time to learn all the things that ValveLink could do. Now, our two DeltaV champions understand the software, and do weekly valve checks. This turned up the valves that weren’t on the maintenance schedule, but did need repairs, and this prevented a plant shutdown that would have cost millions of dollars.”

Emery reported that another benefit of the Champion Concept is far better documentation and information-access procedures. “We used to have information in binders, in books, in heads and on the f loor,” he said. “Now, we have an eRecords management champion, who gathers up all our loop sheets, manuals, calibration records and other informa-tion and makes them immediately usable by everyone else through a Microsoft Access database. We used to waste a lot of time searching for documentation and other information, so this immediate access is as-tronomically beneficial to us.”

Likewise, Fenwick reported that he and his instrumentation col-leagues didn’t know at first how many advantages they could gain with the AMS software suite, but specializing with Emery’s Champion Con-cept unlocked this potential. “We were a little suspicious at first, but the Champion Concept really allowed me to get my creative juices f lowing about AMS,” said Fenwick. “It was a little like Industrial Psy-chology 101: Giving guys responsibility over specific areas helped them take ownership, and say, ‘This is mine.’ “

Emery concluded, “AMS is a wonderful tool, but combining it with our Champion Concept is what enabled our team to learn and share while achieving efficiency and reducing costs. We are able to consume technology instead of technology consuming us.”

After 14 years of development and testing, Emerson is seamlessly transitioning its legendary, 40-year old Rosemount 1150 Series of

nuclear-qualified pressure transmitters to its new 3150 Series.“Rosemount 3150 Series of nuclear transmitters is the culmination of

extensive, continued investments in improving core sensing technology, electronics design and overall transmitter performance,” said Chris Victor, marketing engineer for Emerson. “This new 3150 Series upholds a tradi-tion of unmatched product quality in nuclear sensing and leverages the dependability, functionality and performance levels that our customers ex-pect from Rosemount solutions.”

Early on, the 1150 Series included only its 1151 model, but it expanded to include three tiers—1152, 1153 and 1154—designed for increasing levels of radiation and different environmental conditions. The series was actually available in the 1960s, but the 1152 was introduced in the 1970s to comply with new U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations and testing requirements. Likewise, the 1153 and 1154 were launched in the 1980s and 1990s to meet technoloy changes and further rules updates, and to serve in even harsher environments.

Despite these upgrades and even though 1150 Series was a critical prod-uct for the nuclear power industry, it inevitably became increasingly chal-lenging to support, manufacture and maintain its qualifications, mainly due to the eventual obsolescence and limited availability of a growing list of electrical components. As a result, Emerson started working on its new

3150 Series in 1999 as the replacement for 1150 Series that will eventually be discontinued. Final orders for 1152 will be in April 2014, and last ship-ments will be in 2015. Final orders for 1153 and 1154 will be in April, and last shipments will be in 2016.

The new 3150 Series will also include three tiers—3152N, 3153N and 3154N—that are likewise designed for high-radiation and severe environ-ments. Also, because radiation can adversely affect digital equipment, 3150 Series is all analog, which also improves its radiation tolerance, as well as its overall cybersecurity. All three units are now available for ordering and shipping, and a fourth model, the 3159 will be available in December. Designed as “drop-in” replacements for the 1150 Series, the 3150 Series has the same process connection dimensions, electrical connections and mounting-bracket-hole dimensions as its predecessor.

“The 3150 Series provides many performance improvements in the areas of reference accuracy, transmitter drift, temperature effects and static line pressure effects, but most of all it gives us a qualified and available replace-ment for the obsolete parts in the 1150 Series,” added Victor. “The 3150 Se-ries envelops all of the testing profiles and performance of the 1150 Series, but 3150 also meets the requirements of the new third-generation (Gen 3) nuclear reactor designs.” Victor adds that the 3150 Series can even be used in non-nuclear settings, such as processes with potentially high levels of seismic activity, or in other applications that require analog devices for bet-ter cybersecurity.

Changing of the Guard in Nuclear Pressure TransmittingNew 3150 Series of Nuclear Qualified Transmitters Provides Drop-in Replacement for Venerable 1150 SeriesBy Jim Montague

Wouldn’t it be nice to get off the walkie-talkies and bring your control room

interfaces right out to where your process applications are running? You could get off the radios, stop playing telephone tag with coworkers, punch changes into the system directly and see orders carried out seam-lessly. It’d be even better for configuration and turnaround work, and you’d probably save a bunch of time and money too.

Well, some process operators are making “control room in the field” a reality. For example, Ergon Refining Inc. recently de-ployed mobile operator stations enabled by wireless networking to speed up turnaround at its plant in Vicksburg, Miss., and saved 60% on labor, or more than 1,400 hours worth $187,000.

Steve Giddens, Ergon senior systems ana-lyst, Kirk Giles of John H. Carter Co., an Emerson distributor, and Thierno Gueye of Emerson presented Ergon’s story, “Wire-less Mobile Workers Perform Loop Checks

During Turnaround,” at the 2013 Emerson Global Users Exchange this week in Grape-vine, Texas.

Ergon is the world’s largest manufacturer of naphthenic process oils with a processing capacity of up to 25,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Eight units at the Vicksburg facility make six different products. The site also in-cludes two tank farms, one f lare and three barge docking areas.

Giddens reports that Ergon’s mobile worker project started with buying two Pan-asonic Toughbook laptop PCs and connect-ing them to the plant’s DeltaV system. “We wanted the laptops to work as complete Del-taV operating stations, so one person in the valve area could ask for a valve to be stroked and collect the signal right there,” says Gid-dens. “Instead of using walkie-talkies to ask the control room to do these tasks, we could do them all in the field.”

The refinery tested out its wireless set-up this past January and February during a

Ergon’s Mobile Workers Embrace Wireless FreedomWireless Network Eliminates the Disconnect Between Field Workers and Control Room Operators.By Jim Montague

“We wanted to eliminate the disconnect between the guy at the console in the con-trol room and the guy in the field.” At Ergon’s Vicksburg, Tenn., refinery, a wireless plant network allows workers to carry a full-blown DeltaV operator station out into the field.

turnaround project that had two main objectives. First, Ergon wanted to perform a standard four-to-six-year maintenance turnaround of its hydrogen gas plant and propane de-asphalting (PDA) plant, which con-sists of servicing about 130 valves. Second, Ergon planned to commis-sion, site accept and loop check its crude Hydrogen Processing Unit 2 after migrating it to DeltaV and Emerson’s CHARMs electronic mar-shalling and I/O components. This project included five cabinets, each with two CHARMs I/O carriers (CIOCs) and 96 channels for a total of 550 loops.

“This was a total shutdown and refit of this part of the plant, but there was also a difference between a traditional wireless field network and the wireless plant network (WPN) we planned,” explains Giles. “A wireless field network has transmitters talking back to controllers and periodically reporting data. However, our network has mobile workers with wireless PCs talking to controllers and commanding valves and other devices. We can even add video monitoring, asset management, staff tracking and wireless mustering. We wanted to eliminate the dis-connect between the guy at the console in the control room and the guy in the field. We wanted to make them the same guy, who could be in the middle of all the action and get both jobs done with less man-power.”

Ergon turned the Toughbooks into DeltaV stations by using remote desktop protocol (RDP) or remote access service (RAS) servers to pro-vide redundancy, access to multiple DeltaV DCSs, and automated dis-connect/reconnect with visual feedback. As a result, RAS was imple-mented on the two laptops’ Pro+ sections; a remote node was created

in Ergon’s DeltaV Explorer software; DeltaV was implemented on the laptops; and a license was assigned to them.

“The proof-of-concept and setup wasn’t that difficult because we were already familiar with the remote access client (RAC) in DeltaV, which is common on wired, business LANs,” adds Giddens. “So we ini-tially bought the DeltaV license, used a Cisco wireless router to help build the system, and made sure it was feasible by first bringing it up in our conference room. After building a little confidence there, we began implementing Cisco and Emerson radios in other locations in the field.”

Giles reports that Ergon’s engineers originally thought their mobile workers would just have a control room-style kiosk in the field, but quickly realized that DeltaV and wireless networking and coverage by the four ac-cess points (APs) could allow their colleagues to work anywhere.

“We wanted the people in the field to be in real control of what they’re doing, instead of being driven by someone back in the control room,” adds Giles. “Our mobile workstations are a good tool for our operators and maintenance guys. They don’t have to rely on their radios as much anymore because they can see what’s happening for themselves.”

In the future, Ergon may add other devices and capabilities to its WPN, such as wireless cameras and video for f lare monitoring. “We have good coverage now, but we may add another AP to the PDA or to the terminal area,” says Giddens. “We’re also talking about expand-ing the WPN into other assets and applications, such as using more re-mote video, doing human access tracking or using wireless in blending operations.”

Each year, Emerson Process Man-agement seeks to recognize

companies that best demonstrate the effective use of reliability-based tech-nologies, effective work processes, re-turn on investment, integrated main-tenance best practices, and leadership in implementing a “best in class” re-liability program. This year, Tucson Electric Company takes Emerson’s top honors for “Reliability Program of the Year.”

But it wasn’t an easy choice. Four finalists made their presentations in two sessions at Emerson Exchange, in sessions hosted by Emerson’s Augie DiGiovanni, vice president of reliability strategic accounts. Fi-nalists were the winners of an extensive reliability program competi-tion against their peers. This year’s four finalists were Tucson Electric Power (USA), REC Silicon (USA), Suncor Energy (Canada) and EDF

Energy (United Kingdom). Panelists with DiGiovanni for the final sessions included Emerson’s Todd Schools and Chris Armitage.

The Reliability Program of the Year was established in 1989 to recognize the companies who apply the best reliability and maintenance practices worldwide. Companies submitting nominations complete an extensive questionnaire about their reliability program, partici-pate in a one-day/no-cost reliability as-

sessment and present their program to the Program of the Year Board.Past winners were selected based on criteria ranging from integrat-

ing proactive maintenance practices and efficient work processes, exe-cuting effective communication, including development of KPIs based on reliability, and broadly applying predictive technologies on a wide range of production assets.

Tucson Electric Company Takes Top Honors for ‘Reliability Program of the Year’By Control Global Staff

Many of life’s lessons are well-known, but sometimes they help us refocus and re-

double our efforts. When those reminders come in the form of trials faced by legendary busi-ness figures, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Virgin Group’s Sir Richard Branson, they can serve as guides and inspiration. The best person to pres-ent some of their stories is someone who knows them as well as Mark Thompson does.

Presently the CEO and cofounder of Virgin Unite Mentors, Thompson is the New York Times best-selling author of Success Built to Last.

He was the guest keynoter at Monday morn-ing’s general session at the Emerson Global Users Exchange 2013.

“How do you take existing tech compa-nies and service organizations and reinvent them? How can you build organizations that can grow through crises, chaos and disrup-tive change, and become 10-times-better pro-ducers (10x) compared to their competitors?” asked Thompson.

“How can you take industries that suck and find the great performers in them?”

Working with Stanford University’s Venture De-sign Labs, Thompson reports he helped study data from about 27,000 companies in 100 countries over 20 years to identify the characteristics of those that can seize opportunities, even when their beset by otherwise debilitating problems, and go on the become those 10x producers. He says that every “10xer” has four main leadership methods for stay-ing in control in an out-of-control world:

• Maintain a fanatical discipline and devo-tion to detail and quality.

• Don’t just be productive. Be paranoid as well, but don’t be frozen by it.

• Be empirically creative. Make decisions that will move your process forward, but still work to make it stable.

• Try to develop Level 5 leadership, which means be ambitious, but maintain humility.

“You have to blend relentless creativity with the discipline to achieve great results,” added Thompson.

Passion and People Succeed Over Crisis and ChaosHow Do You Take Existing Tech Companies and Service Organizations and Reinvent Them?By Jim Montague

“How can you take industries that suck, and find the great performers in them?” Mark Thompson on the lessons he’s learned from studying and working with some of the world’s most respected business leaders.

Thompson reported that a good leader’s “fanatical discipline” in-cludes asking other people for advice and finding and motivating the right people and project managers. This means looking for people that are passionate about what they do, helping them find and perform a job they can strive to be the best at, and helping them to drive their own economic engines.

“Apple is often perceived as all Steve Jobs, but he actually invested in a group of brilliant engineers and other people over the years. And they’ve been able to carry on after he’s been gone. Leaders must be willing to realize that success is all about the people they’re working

with, and that we can never succeed just on our own.”Another crucial leadership skill and productivity enhancer is to de-

velop and build trust, Thompson says. “Trust is under-promising, over-delivering and exceeding expectations. It’s also consistency, admitting when you’re wrong and being willing to make it right. “For example, Sir Richard Branson wanted to reproduce the experience of Southwest Airlines. So Virgin Atlantic started out with one airplane, but then on its first f light, with all of the press attending, one of its engines ex-ploded. Despite this setback, both Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America have gone on to be successful airlines.”

“There’s the good, there’s the bad, and there’s the ugly,” began Dan Schwab,

project manager for automation projects at BP Whiting, who together with Len Laskowski, principal technical consultant for Emerson Process Management, explained the impor-tance of properly calculated safety integrity levels (SIL) in a presentation at this week’s Em-erson Global Users Exchange.

“The good means you did your SIL verifica-tion calculations early: You have a feasible de-sign that proves that the required SIL can be achieved, describes the project with a proper scope and adequate funds, and positively im-pacts lifecycle costs. You get an award and maybe even a raise.”

“The bad,” he went on, “is doing your SIL verification calculations late in the project, and you find that the design is not feasible, and you have to redesign to attain the required SIL, with the potential for significant change orders and schedule delays. There’s also a potential for substandard design, and the lifecycle costs are

negatively impacted. You don’t win that award, and you probably won’t get that raise.”

“The ugly,” Schwab continued, “is when you do your SIL verification calcs just prior to start-up. The required SIL may not be achieved, and the design has to be completely redone, because you’ve installed inadequate protec-tions. Additional mitigating measures cost more and take lots of time. You may have to demolish the inadequate systems, piping and controls that you just installed, and that will impact lifecycle costs very negatively. Get your resume out and find a different line of work.”

Laskowski provided a fire-hose of definition and detail about safety integrity levels, how to produce a properly SIL-rated system—and have the SIL verification calculations to back it up. He described in detail what you need and how to perform SIL verification calcula-tions properly.

“You need a lot of information before you start doing your SIL calculations,” Laskowski said. “You need to know the number and types

Start SIL Calculations Early for Safety SuccessMake Sure to Do Your SIL Ealry to Get them RightBy Walt Boyes

“The ugly is when you do your SIL veri-fication calcs just prior to start-up.” Ac-cording to BP’s Dan Schwab, a late start on safety integrity level calculations may have you looking for a new career.

of instruments you will be using and what their SIL ratings are generi-cally. You need to know the voting architecture, and you need to decide which devices are going to be safety-critical.”

“And there’s even more,” he went on. “You need to know what the demand rate will be, and whether you’re designing to a SIL or to a SIL based on the residual risk factors (RRF). You need to know the valve fail positions and whether you will have energy to run wildcard devices like those that energize to trip.”

“You need to decide what the proof test interval needs to be, and you better remember that if you set your intervals too close together, you will certainly get push-back from operations because they don’t want to shut down, frankly, ever.”

When should you do your SIL calculations? “As early as possible,” Schwab said. “For brownfield modernization and expansion projects, you should do it in front-end engineering design (FEED). For new grassroots facilities you may not have the information until early de-tailed design, but do them as early as you can. Any high-risk areas should be evaluated in FEED.”

Using a recent project at Whiting as backdrop, Schwab and Laskowski went through the iterative process necessary to do a real-world SIL veri-fication calculation project and what the effects of the calculations were on the system as installed. “With an early start and successive iterations,” Laskowski said, “you can deliver your project successfully on budget and schedule, with the lowest overall cost of ownership.”

Kuwaitis have traditionally subcontracted much of their maintenance and operations—the skills they need to keep the plants running—to expatri-

ates. Now Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) wants to bring that expertise home and has worked with Emerson Process Management to develop and execute a com-prehensive training program that helps new engineers develop skills needed to maintain a running oil production facility.

As part of the contract, Emerson’s Educational Services team has launched a new aspect of customer training called Workforce Effectiveness. Workforce Ef-fectiveness begins with an assessment of the customer’s unique needs, contin-ues with the development of a plan tailored to address those needs and wraps up with measurement of the results.

At KOC, “90% of employees are ex-pats,” says Mark Dimmitt, educa-tional services consultant, Education/Training, Emerson Process Manage-ment. “KOC wants to upscale the local employees, so they selected the ‘cream of the crop’ to be trained.” As a joint effort between Lifecycle Care and Educational Services employees, Emerson tailor-made a comprehen-sive course for Kuwaiti engineers.

“During an 18-month collaboration effort, we designed a 19-week program combining courses from Emerson Process Management, eight other Emerson units and five contract companies,” says Dimmitt. The “boot camp” program covers field instrumentation, automation systems and cyber security, as well as process control—including advanced control and complex control strategies. The training is being conducted at Emerson’s regional training centers in the U.S. at both Austin and Marshalltown facilities.

The initial eight KOC maintenance engineers are responsible for all the refinery automation. “The KOC trainees are degreed engineers—some

U.S.-educated—and have pretty good English skills,” Dimmitt adds. They have now completed seven of the 19 weeks. The first seven weeks have fo-cused on measurement, instrumentation and final control elements. The second trimester will cover process and safety control systems, including functional safety training.

The final trimester will bring it all together by covering Foundation field-bus, loops, devices and valves, advanced control and DeltaV. “They’re ex-pected to know A to Z, soup to nuts on automation,” Dimmitt says. “The fi-nal exam will test their knowledge and their skills. We’ll give them a bunch of parts and they’ll have to build up a working system.”

Training has traditionally been “a la carte,” Dimmitt says. “You look at vendor courses and pick out a few. It’s good, but all the content may not apply to a job role. Customers want higher value, better ROI, so we develop programs specifi-cally for a site, based on a site training assessment that homes in on exactly what skills are needed. They get training on exactly what they need to know.”

Experienced personnel may just need to learn about DeltaV. Fresh grad-uates or new employees may need full boot camps. The programs are tai-lored to fill their training needs based on an assessment of their skills gaps and their personnel.

“We are seeing more customers engage in a broad course of training for their newer employees,” says Dorothy Hellberg, director, Emerson Pro-cess Management Educational Services. “As producers expand their en-gineering staff to replace experienced retiring employees or to staff new facilities, condensed training programs can facilitate smooth project ex-ecution and continuing operations. Our services can easily be configured to meet those needs.”

Comprehensive Training Prepares Kuwaitis to Take Over RefineryWorkforce Effectiveness Begins With an Assessment of the Customer’s Unique NeedsBy Paul Studebaker

Even in the best of conditions, an offshore oil platform can be hazardous place to

work. As such, they’re hardly an ideal venue for on-the-job training. Better to train opera-tors safely back on terra firma, and with a sim-ulated process, where operator missteps are of no real consequence.

Such was the motivation for oil producer Lu-koil, when it built an upgraded operator train-ing simulator (OTS) for its Yuri Korchagin field platform in the North Caspian Sea, ac-cording to Ilya Fotin, Lukoil chief metrologist and head of automation. “Offshore facilities are very dangerous,” he noted.

This week at Emerson Exchange, Fotin and Emerson senior consultant Viacheslav Kulikov presented a discussion of the OTS Emerson created for Lukoil in the Corporate Training Complex located in Astrakhan, near the Cas-pian Sea.

The North Caspian faces severe weather and

sea conditions most of the year, and in 2011 safety training began at the Astrakhan center. The facility was equipped to train personnel in evacuations, sea rescue operations, fire and gas safety, first aid and other essentials, but not in operations. In 2012, Emerson proposed creating a complete OTS that would have the same process, same screens and the same con-trol logic as the actual installation on the plat-form, but with the ability to expose operators to customized scenarios. The OTS would be located in Astrakhan at the corporate training center, not on the platform.

Fotin noted, “The process is very steady-state, and normally nothing much happens. The operators don’t have to interfere with the control system much. This means that in nor-mal operations, they tend to lose understand-ing of what to do in abnormal situations. With the OTS we can do refresher training for every shift team every few months.”

For Lukoil, Onshore Simulator Boosts Offshore PreparednessThe Rule Is Consistent Refresher TrainingBy Walt Boyes

“Offshore facilities are very dangerous.” Lukoil’s Ilya Fotin discussed the company’s development and use of an onshore operator training simulator (OTS) to provide continuous training of its platform personnel.

The system is exactly like the system on the platform, where Emer-son supplied the control system, safety instrument system, fire and gas alarm system, and the AMS maintenance suite for about 14,000 I/O points. Because the platform was already in operation, the OTS could duplicate exactly the working system on the platform. Kulikov said that it is planned to synchronize the OTS configuration on an annual basis.

Physically, the OTS consists of five operator workstations serving three roles: supervisor, central control room operator and field opera-tor. There are three DeltaV application workstations, and for the in-structor, a Kongsberg K-Spice workstation and a DeltaV ProfessionalP-LUS workstation.

The Kongsberg K-Spice system provides a full high-fidelity model for the process, including 26 production wells, as well as all of the associ-ated processes, ranging from water treatment to oil separation. DeltaV SEEDS provides a medium-fidelity model for the power generation,

distribution and other support functions.“The rule is consistent refresher training,” Fotin said. Training is

done in shifts, with the shift lead, senior operator, production operator, power operator and field operator training together.

Kulikov noted that the Lukoil operating and engineering staff is now trained in a realistic environment onshore, using the same process, operator screens and logic before going to the platform. The scenario-based courseware provides training and evaluation for various training levels from beginners to experienced operators, along with a shift work-efficiency evaluation.

“Our second field is entering operation next year,” Fotin said, “and our new operators are already hired and trained. Now, too, when new equipment or new advanced process control strategies are being em-ployed, the OTS gives us the opportunity to test them before installing them on the platform for full operation.”