29 September 2009

New DeltaV, new processes at Emerson

Steve Sonnenberg sees the light at the end of the tunnel.

Part of that light might come from the new DeltaV.

“This is the biggest advancement in control I/O,” said Sonnenberg, president of Emerson Process Management, during his keynote address at Emerson Global Users Exchange Monday in Orlando, Fla. “This is control system hardware that lets you finalize your I/O design once you finish your process design. Imagine significant reductions in change orders. Imagine eliminating spaghetti wiring, eliminating miles of multi-core cabling, and thousand of tedious hours of landing I/O. Imagine changing your mind and not getting penalized for it.”

Fighting through the global recession, the new DeltaV is a big push at this year’s user group.

“Emerson process has been affected by this downturn. We feel our business is starting to bottom out, and the predictions are for next year, 2010, to be a recovery, albeit a slow recovery,” Sonnenberg said.

During this downturn, the company has built new facilities, made acquisitions, and worked through research and development to develop new products in addition to DeltaV.

“One of my personal favorites is wireless,” Sonnenberg said. One of those products is something called the THUM. “The THUM is a product that can wirelessly enable existing wired products. It is estimated there is 26 million HART devices in the field today, and this smart wireless THUM will free the diagnostic information trapped inside these devices.”

All the products boil down to one thing: Getting more information or data out to short staff organizations.

“There is a huge knowledge void in mature markets because of people walking out of the door because of layoffs or retirement,” Sonnenberg said. “Plant jobs have become less specialized and more generalized.”

“We also hear frequently, ‘How can we mange all the data coming from your automation systems? What we really want is for you to convert the data to information that can help us make decisions.’ ”

“We also hear, ‘With fewer people and more work to get done, we need to try to eliminate unnecessary work and processes.’ ”

“We hear from customers, ‘Your technology and your competitor’s technology are great, but sometimes you move faster than we can actually absorb it. Sometimes the training involved can be daunting, and sometimes the number of steps required to complete a routine task can be cumbersome.’ ”

Emerson learned something from those messages.

“The truth is the automation technologies developed over the past 30 years weren’t developed based on work practices, they were developed upon product features. The vast majority of our advances have been around technology features without how users interact with the technologies and how these products are used. Products sometimes present as many challenges as they do solutions.”

Emerson said part of their evolution is they are approaching technology development in a different way. “First think about how and why customers use the product and then design that product for the optimal user experience,” Sonnenberg said.

—Gregory Hale

For related information, go to www.isa.org/productivity.