Wireless is defining change in automation

“Basically all I’ve ever done in my professional life is get rid of wires,” joked John Berra, chairman of Emerson Process Management.
He delivered the keynote address Monday morning at the Emerson Global Users Exchange in National Harbor, Maryland.
His keynote was a “state-of-the-union” on Emerson (very healthy), a farewell to his leadership role in the company, and an introduction to the new head of Emerson Process, Steven Sonnenberg.
He harkened back to his first job at a Monsanto chemical plant startup at the beginning of his career and nearly 40 years ago. “It was new and had analogue instrumentation and I remember being overwhelmed by the number of wires … everywhere.”
Fast forward to the present day and the explosion of wireless, the main theme of the meeting, and it’s infusion into many parts of the plant. “I’m more excited about wireless than any technical advance I’ve seen in my engineering career,” he said. “Twenty percent of measurements will someday use wireless monitoring.”
He sees the standard for automation wireless is set because 16 of the largest companies in the instrumentation domain accept and use WirelessHART, products are now shipping that leverage WirelessHART, and the IEC (International Electrotechnic Commission) has accepted WirelessHART as a Publicly Available Specification (IEC/PAS 62591Ed. 1). A PAS, according to the IEC web site, “is a normative document that represents a consensus among experts. A simple majority of the participating members of a technical committee or subcommittee approve the document. An IEC-PAS responds to an urgent market need for such a normative document and is designed to bring the work of industry consortia into the realm of the IEC.”
“Is there any reason to talk about anything else?” he asked.
– Nicholas Sheble