Looking for automation’s efficiencies

If you think automation only has roots downstream, think again, because upstream companies need to reap as many efficiencies as possible where oil begins is journey to the refinery.
“To lower the cost of the total operation automation is the way to go,” said John Reading with Dynapar, a subsidiary of Danaher Sensors and Control. “Companies are looking for new ways to extract oil from existing wells, automation can help here,” he said at the opening day of the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, today. “More automation gives users more leverage.”
When it comes to automation, “we are seeing success after success upstream,” said National Instrument’s Robert Jackson.
The packed conference opened up today and will run through Thursday this week. This is the 60th anniversary of the show, which covers 515,600 square feet.
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Invest in winning nations

“Build your companies in the U.S. and North America, but go global, with the idea of diversification and investing in the future.”
That is the message economist Alan Beaulieu of Institute for Trend Research delivered to the Control Systems Integrator Association’s 300 members and friends at their annual gathering in Santa Fe, N.M.
It is a strategy of hedging one’s bets. North America is a fabulous, safe, and reliable place to do business. The question is: Where is the best place to expand overseas? Which are the countries of the future? Who is stable and growing?
Beaulieu gave four countries that have “winning demographics” and are therefore good places to be, and he gave five he sees as having “negative demographics” that are probably not as desirable over the long term.
The U.S. is tops on his list with 300 million people, and likely to go to 400-500 million by 2050. “Lots of customers, now and well into the future,” he said.
India is a great place to be. They are proving themselves socially, economically, and technologically now, he said. They are an English-speaking country, a stable democracy, and the population will grow to 1.4 billion by year 2050.
Indonesia is a stable, Muslim democracy. It is huge, and growing. It is on Beaulieu’s list along with Australia. Australia has not had a down year in its economy in 30 years. There are only 20 million people there, and they have the resources and geography to support strong growth.
Countries with negative demographics to avoid include China. Many social problems exist in China, not the least of which is a huge imbalance in sexes. There are vast numbers of young males who far outnumber young females. What does that mean? They will not have families. There will be extreme frustrations, hostility, social unrest, and crime.
Avoid Europe too, said Beaulieu. The population is shrinking, and socialism cannot handle that. Immigration is imperative and ongoing, and it is mostly Muslim. This will change the whole fabric of Europe’s culture and government.
Never mind Japan too. Their population is shrinking, and it does not even allow immigration. Russia is on this list as well, and it is another country where the population is contracting.
Finally said Beaulieu, “Invest in winning nations. Land values will go up there.”
—Nicholas Sheble

Prepare for slimmer times

“We will have a recession in the U.S. in 2009 and 2010 that will be similar to the one we had from 2000-2002,” said economy and business trend researcher and principal at the Institute for Trend Research Alan Beaulieu during his keynote address during the CSIA, or Control Systems Integrators Association, meeting in Santa Fe, N.M., Thursday. “That wasn’t much fun.”
Beaulieu discussed how to accurately project economic cycles and thereby prepare one’s business for the future.
Interest rates will rise this year by a half or three-quarters of a percent because of wage inflation, Beaulieu said. It is harder to find workers now, so one must pay more to get that hire one wants. Thus, there will be inflation, and thus, the Fed will raise the rates to banks.
Oil prices will rise this year, back to $70/barrel, he said. A democrat will win the election to the White House, and she (pause for laughter of agreement) will have a choice to balance the budget—cut costs, raise taxes, or increase deficit spending.
“Take a guess what will happen,” Beaulieu said. “We’ll continue and increase deficit spending, which means we’ll borrow more, issue more T-bills, they’ll be worth less because there are more of them, we’ll have to make them more attractive by increasing their yield … we will raise interest rates. Consumers have less to spend; we have recession.”
Recessions are cyclical and therefore make sense. We have a strong vibrant economy. Build your companies in this country, but go global. Prepare for the downturn by investing in and leveraging your products to enter non-cyclical, a-cyclical industries like health and elder care, medicals, pharmaceuticals, and higher education.
—Nicholas Sheble

Skyrocketing healthcare costs

The cost of healthcare is almost impossible to fathom, but when you put it into perspective, it somehow brings it down to earth.
That is what G. Steven Burrill, chief executive of venture capital firm Burrill and Co. did during his keynote address today at Interphex in New York.
“The cost of healthcare today is $2 trillion and it will double by 2015,” Burrill said. He said that increase in costs will not necessarily come from out of control drug costs, but rather the aging of the Baby Boomers and the increased quality of healthcare. Around 10% of those costs will come from drugs, he said. As people live longer and quality of healthcare increase for those getting older, it makes sense that costs would go up, he said.
He said one of the problems facing the pharma and biotech industries is research. Companies are not necessarily investing money into their own research, but rather, they are purchasing smaller companies with their own pipeline.
“In the future, we will continue to see partnering and consolidation,” Burrill said.
He said what the United States spends in five months on the war in Iraq is what the country spends in a year on research and development for new drug development.
Some of the hot areas in the biotech/pharma area, Burrill said, are stem cells, biofuels and personalized medicine.
He also said globalization is a trend that will not go away. In fact, he said, it was critical to advance the industry.
“We have to look at a global industry because disease has no border,” he said.

Wireless HART spec goes out for approval

Wireless HART is one step closer to getting products out to market as the HART Communication Foundation (HCF) completed the draft specifications for its wireless protocol, Ron Helson, HCF executive director said Tuesday at Hannover Fair in Hannover, Germany. The specification now goes into the approval stage.
“This is a major step for the industry and a major milestone for the process control industry,” Helson said.
The organization expects approved specifications by August and new products on the market by the end of this year or early next year, Helson said.
The wireless technology will enable manufacturers to garner more information on process parameters and to monitor performance of plant assets in areas that had not been accessible due to cost or technical reasons, he said.
For the technology to gain acceptance, it has to be easy to use. While the technology behind the scenes may be complex, “we have to keep it simple for users and for suppliers,” Helson said. “We want to enable access to devices users were not able to connect to before.”
The immediate goal for wireless HART is to allow greater asset management, data acquisition, and high speed monitoring.
“We are not building wireless refineries yet. This will allow access to information manufacturers could not get to before.”
Helson did say, though, the technology could support a control of a closed loop scenario where it was appropriate.
Helson said when the wireless protocol is up and running he could see a big jump in device installations. Right now there are over 2 million HART device installations a year. Helson said conceivably they could see the amount of installations double on a yearly basis. There are between 23 million and 25 millions devices installed globally, Helson said.

EDT, EDDL unite for device integration

Competing technologies are getting together to come up with one solution for device integration, said Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) and the Field Device Tool (FDT) Technology Group officials today at Hannover Fair in Hannover, Germany.
After a “secret” meeting at last year’s Hannover Fair, leaders from FDT and EDDL’s Cooperation Team (ECT) decided enough was enough.
“FDT will join ECT as an official member,” said ECT Chairman Hans-Georg Kumpfmueller. “We have already done some technical work to create a new FDI integration.
The goal of this effort is to develop a common Future Device Integration (FDI) architecture. The team will base the architecture on a client server architecture; an independent platform and operating system; independent host system; compatible with existing EDDL- and DTM-based device descriptions; applicable to any field device communication technologies; applicable for hierarchical and heterogeneous network topologies, and an open specification and become an international standard
“All of the suppliers are involved with this,” said Flavio Tolfo, managing director of the FDT Group. “The good news is interoperability. Now you don’t have to worry about buying a pressure transmitter from one supplier and wondering if it will work with another transmitter. All of that is now solved.”
Kumpfmueller expects to get a draft specification and prototypes out by 2008.
The two groups will base their effort on OPC UA technology.
The goal behind the FDT Group is to provide an open and non proprietary interface for the integration of field devices with engineering, automation and asset management systems.
EDDL is text-based description of the variables contained in the device such as flow, pressure, drive speed, ambient temperature, among others. The description defines each variable and describes the way to access it.

Hannover Fair report: Turkey seeking EU partners

The key to success always comes down to the strength of relationships. So, when Turkey’s Prime Minister speaks, he talks about the advantages his country can offer the European Union, in which he is trying to get his country accepted.
“The German government has always supported Turkey’s way into the EU,” said Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Sunday night during his keynote address at the opening ceremony for the Hannover Fair in Hannover Germany.
Turkey still has a tough row to hoe to gain acceptance into the EU, but Erdogan also knows for the country to gain acceptance into the EU–or for it to gain financially–it needs to increase its development. That is why the decided to become the sponsoring country this year at Hannover Fair. “The Fair will be a symbol for the development level Turkey has reached. Turkey’s economy has continued to grow and being the sponsoring country is just a symbol of that,” Erdogan said.
He said over the past four years, the country’s inflation rate has dropped to 10% from 30% and they had over $130 billion in imports. Erdogan also said by 2023, he expects imports and exports to grow “by leaps and bounds.”
Even after he gave his pitch for his country, he would always bring his discussion back to relationships.
“Our relationship with Germany is important because Germany is our most important trading partner.” He also said since there are over 2.5 million residents in Germany of Turkish descent, the two countries’ relationship is even more important.
German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel sees the value in partnering with Turkey, but acceptance into the EU may be off in the horizon.
“People will come to the Fair and see how modern Turkey is,” she said during her keynote address Sunday night. “Turkey is a country where German companies are investing. The most important ties are with the 2.5 million people of Turkish descent living in Germany.”
While Turkey is not an official member of the EU, the country did receive $500 million in funding last year and Merkel said they will get $650 million this year. “The talks to bring Turkey into the EU will continue,” she said. “There are still political issues to work out.”