Wireless working in a refinery

Wireless is the rage in the industry these days, there is no doubt about it. But when Alan Autenrieth, team leader at ConocoPhillips asked how many people in the audience of well over 200 at the Honeywell Users Group Americas Symposium 2008 in Phoenix, Ariz., were using wireless, only about 20 stood up.
When he asked a few more questions only one or two were left standing. Does that mean there is slow adoption or a great sales opportunity? Only time will tell.
“Wireless is a new tool in our toolbox,” Autenrieth said.
Autenrieth talked about his company’s wireless solution installed at its Sweeny Refinery.
Some of the main questions he said a user should ask is about security, how you can make the system fault tolerant, bandwidth, a portfolio of sensing devices, and are you able to share data across multiple platforms.
“You don’t want to be limited in bandwidth,” Autenrieth said. “Bandwidth flexibility is very important.”
Another key element to look at is being able to reuse a solution over again. “One area to avoid is re engineering the same wireless solution every time,” he said.
After discussing tips on what to look for in a wireless solution, he went into the economics behind wireless and the disparity between wiring a solution and using wireless.
Autenrieth said the wireless deployment at the Sweeny Refinery was a success, but at the end of the day he just said the solution “needs to be secure and reliable.”

Honeywell, users connect

End users have a say when it comes to product development at Honeywell.
Customer advisory boards give huge advice for products, said Harsh Chitale, vice president of strategy and marketing at Honeywell during a press conference this morning at the Honeywell Users Group Americas Symposium 2008 in Phoenix, Ariz.
Chitale cited four examples where end users aided Honeywell in getting products updated and out the door.
The four product lines were the safety manager, Experion, POMSnet and POMStrace, and the Uniformance Process Studios.
“These products were developed along with customers and then went through trials at customer plants,” Chitale said.
One of the product line improvements vetted by end users is the updated version of Safety Manager, the company’s safety instrumented system (SIS).
This latest version of Safety Manager, which integrates with the company’s Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS), allows safety and process controllers to communicate with each other without depending on intermediate interfaces such as PCs, and without compromising operations security or data integrity.
In sharing critical information between Safety Manager and the Experion C300 process controller, the system can provide plant-wide SIS point data, diagnostics and system information, as well as alarms and events, operator displays and sequence of event information to any station in a plant.
Another product line a customer advisory board had input on was the enhanced version of the Experion system that allows plant operators to coordinate process control, safety shutdown and fire and gas mitigation steps.

Honeywell unplugged

When you think of Honeywell these days what is the first thing you think of? Is it as a DCS player? Or maybe their involvement in wireless?
If you ask Honeywell, they want to be known as an integrated main automation contractor (I-MAC) – a big solution provider.
“The earlier we come in with partners, the more predictable the project will become,” said Jack Bolick, president of Honeywell Process Solutions during his keynote address this morning before 700 attendees at the Honeywell Users Group Americas Symposium 2008 in Phoenix, Ariz.
Honeywell wants to focus on lifecycle sustainability, long term asset safety reliability and efficiency, Bolick said.
“Open systems are a little bit of a different animal compared to proprietary systems,” Bolick said. “Open systems need to be utilized across the enterprise,” not just at the plant.
Any time anyone from Honeywell talks, eventually the discussion leads to wireless. Today was no different. Honeywell unveiled an updated version of its OneWireless industrial wireless network equipment designed to be compatible with the ISA100.11a industrial wireless communication standard.
OneWireless is a mesh network with ISA100-ready hardware. When the standard becomes official, they can upgrade it with an over-the-air software update.
“Wireless is a major inflection point,” Bolick said. “Wireless is an enabler. You can pick up data quicker and cheaper.”

G.M.: Trucks may not be the future

It might be safe to assume the magic number was 4.
That is in it took the price of gas to hit $4 a gallon for G.M. to realize that maybe focusing on trucks and SUVs was not the way to go and maybe they should focus on fuel efficient vehicles.
So, now GM is shutting down four plants in North America that makes trucks and SUVs.
Within three years, trucks will account for less than 40% of the vehicles that G.M. produces in North America, down from about half today, said G.M. Chairman Rick Wagoner.
Wagoner said rising gasoline prices had forced a “structural shift” by American consumers away from truck-based vehicles built by G.M.
“These prices are changing consumer behavior and changing it rapidly,” Wagoner said before G.M.’s centennial shareholders meeting in Wilmington, Del. “We don’t believe it’s a spike or a temporary shift. We believe it is, by and large, permanent.”
What planet does Wagoner live on? Obviously not one that sees people struggling to figure out how they are going to pay for gas that has gone up from $2.58 a gallon in 2006 to $4 a gallon this year.
While saying rising gas prices may be an additional excuse for G.M. to break the union and lay off more people and to cut expenses, that may seem too cynical. But is it?
G.M. will close plants in Janesville, Wisc.; Moraine, Ohio; Oshawa, Ontario; and Toluca, Mexico by or before 2010.
The cuts will affect about 8,000 workers at the four plants. Some people, however, will be able to fill spots created when other workers leave because of early retirement and buyout offers.
“This is tough stuff,” Wagoner. “It’s not about we like this plant better than that one. It’s about that the market has radically changed and we have to adapt to it.”
“Tough stuff” indeed. It just seems if Wagoner and his merry band of managers in their corporate Ivory Tower were on the ball years ago, they wouldn’t necessarily be in this situation. Wagoner has no clue about “tough stuff.”