Yokogawa continues quest for top spot

Yokogawa, which says it will be the number one industrial automation supplier by 2010, will start up what it calls its asset excellence initiative which consists of three key approaches that achieves “production excellence through asset excellence, safety excellence and lifecycle excellence,” said Isao Uchida, president and chief executive of Yokogawa at the ARC Forum in Orlando, Fla.
Yokogawa is committed to the move, Uchida said. “A commitment made is a commitment kept.”
The company approach to asset excellence brings in four factors that end users will be able to measure to get the most out of their plant assets over the long haul: Asset reliability, asset availability, asset predictability, and asset performance.
Meanwhile, Yokogawa remained busy making news as Uchida unveiled a “working integration with GE Energy System for an integrated asset management system.
Yokogawa will provide a framework for monitoring the health of field devices, while GE will provide similar functionality for the mechanical and thermodynamic health of rotating machinery.
“The two systems will exchange data,” Uchida said.

Wonderware gains SAP certification

More news coming out of the ARC Forum here in Orlando, Fla., as Wonderware said today it garnered “Powered by SAP NetWeaver” certification status.
The Invensys business unit gained the certification for its Business Package for Process Performance Analysis 60.1 integrated with SAP NetWeaver Portal and the other is the combination of the SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure-based Content Package for Order Processing 30.1 integrated with SAP ECC 5.0 and Wonderware Enterprise Integrator 2.0.
This certification, officials said, is also part of the SAP certification program for ISA-95-based manufacturing interoperability.
“NetWeaver is a standard interface. People are embracing standards,” said Mark Davidson, vice president of global marketing at Invensys-Wonderware.
When it all comes down to it, these packages link plant-floor information with manufacturing intelligence dashboards at the SAP ERP level. This is another move to truly capture information from the board room all the way down to the plant floor.
The package should also be interoperable with existing systems, Davidson said.
In an environment where different plants have different systems, this should be able to allow manufacturers to compare apples to apples.
“This is one way to aggregate information and being able to do a comparison from plant to plant,” Davidson said.

Emerson makes wireless move

Emerson wants to go wireless. Or so it seems, as company President John Berra unveiled at the ARC Advisory Group Forum here in Orlando, Fla., the process control giant’s plans for bringing manufacturers into the wireless realm.
As most can recall from the ISA EXPO 2005, wireless is a huge hot point for those in the industry.
This big initiative from Emerson just goes to show there are manufacturers that need wireless, for things like predictive maintenance, or finding blind spots in your plant where you don’t take measurements or getting diagnostic information from devices that have the capability, but a manufacturer never uses.
However, being quick to change is not an industry strong point. Berra talked about the five “big concerns” manufacturers have with using wireless. Security, power, standards, robustness, and environment.
“Wireless is not deeply ingrained in the process industries,” Berra said. “We believe we have solved all these problems.”
Line of sight and the built in barriers to using wireless have also been an impediment against using wireless. Berra talked about a self organizing network for in plant needs so line of sight is not a concern.
With this technology, “you can get around the stationary canyons of metal and the moving canyons of metal,” he said.
Also part of Emerson’s goal is to have their wireless system able to connect with HART instruments to allow for greater diagnostic capabilities.
Emerson has not released any products yet, but plans to during the summer.

Universities play role in private R&D centers

You want the best research and development, so you need to go where the best and the brightest matriculate, according to a new study.
The study also said more research and development is going offshore. In a survey conducted by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private foundation that works with partners to advance entrepreneurship in America, asking more than 200 multinational corporations their research center decisions, 38% said they planned to change the worldwide distribution of their research and development work over the next three years. You can guess what countries will get the greatest increase in projects: China and India.
Are these companies doing this because of lower labor costs or better tax incentives? No, the companies said; they are a reason, but not the top cause.
Instead, the report found multinational corporations were global shoppers for talent. The companies want to garner close links with top universities in emerging markets to work with professors and hire promising graduates.
University collaboration plays a big role in the decision-making process for locating R&D facilities, the researchers said. In fact, collaboration with universities was a prevalent factor for expanding to emerging countries.
"The study underscores the critical role universities play in a country's national innovation system, not just in the training of new scientists and access to the best talent, but in the ease of developing and licensing technology," said Carl Schramm, president and chief executive of the Kauffman Foundation.

Industry needs a roadmap to innovation

Take a cyber stroll through a company’s web site and check out their product line or even walk down the aisle at just about any industry trade show and try to find truly innovative products.
Sure, most of the companies out there advance their existing product lines and that is great. These product lines are definitely more interoperable than they were even one or two years ago. But these aren’t new technologies, they are incremental steps.
Just where will the next great innovation come from? What will it be? Will it be a nanotechnology-based line? Or maybe a something that is biotech driven. Whatever it is, it most likely won’t fit today’s legacy systems. Or who knows, maybe it will.
As Jim Pinto writes in the 2/16/06 InTech newsletter, “to achieve sustainable advantage, manufacturing efficiency must couple with innovative new products. Companies that go beyond manufacturing low priced commodities and offer improved customer values are the winners in the new global environment. Apple is a splendid example with its iPod music and video players—within a couple of years, these products (hardware plus software combinations) are generating revenues in the billions, with excellent profit margins (better than 50%). The hardware and software are designed in California, and the hardware is manufactured and shipped directly from Shanghai, China.”
Just what will or where will the next great innovation come from?
Talk to me.

Outsourcing: A strain and a solution
Want to hit a hot topic in the industry these days (or any days for that matter), just sit down in a room full of engineers and talk about outsourcing.
When it comes down to it, outsourcing various functions to a third party can save money, improve processes, and increase flexibility.
Take a look: General Motors will spend $15 billion to outsource its IT functions over the next five years, and German carmaker DaimlerChrysler will hike outsourcing of Research and Development to India.
DaimlerChrysler Research Center in Bangalore does R&D in encryption, image signal processing, telematics, fuel cell modeling, CAD, CAM, CAE, and PDM, for the company’s global requirements. The Indian center would assist the group in designing and technology upgrades.
“DaimlerChrysler is planning to significantly augment R&D works at (the research center) in these areas. Similarly, the group's outsourcing of components like motors and crankshafts from India is also going to grow," said Wilfried Aulbur, MD and chief executive, DaimlerChrysler India.
It is very easy to take the easy way out and say the U.S. needs to keep its jobs. But let’s face it, for some U.S.-based companies, outsourcing manufacturing, either down the street or across the globe, is the only way to survive. While for others, outsourcing is its only means of existence. In a global economy, there has to be a global solution.
Keeping an eye on this vital area of the industry, InTech conducted a Zoomerang survey taking a sneak peek at what engineers in the industry are saying about outsourcing. While this is an unscientific poll, it does give an idea on what is happening in outsourcing:
When asked if their company outsources engineering work, 79% of the respondents said yes they do, while 21% said no. When it came to how much they outsourced, 20% said from 0-10%; 33% said from 11-25%; 24% said 26-50%; 16% said 51-75%; and 7% said 76-100%.
Outsourcing engineering work is one thing, but when asked if their company outsources its manufacturing, 45% said yes, while 55% said no.
One of the other big topics is where does outsourced manufacturing go? Does it stay in the U.S. or head offshore? So, when asked does your company outsource its manufacturing offshore, 74% of survey respondents said no, while 26% said yes.
Then trying to nail down what country they were outsourcing manufacturing to became interesting. Not surprisingly, China and India were numbers one and two. China came in at 28%; India 22%; Germany at 11%; Mexico at 6%, and other multi sites came in at 33%. Conversely, from an international perspective, the U.S. came in at 6%.
A complete report on the survey will be in the March InTech.