Honeywell president outlines challenges, trends

“There was a time I didn’t know what an exabyte was,” quipped Norm Gilsdorf, president of Honeywell Process Solutions. “I now know that it relates the grand scope of the data with which we’ll have to deal. In fact, it’s at the heart of our biggest challenge—data overload.”
An exabyte is a unit of information equal to 1000 petabytes or 1018 bytes.
Norm Gilsdorf, president of Honeywell Process Solutions, addresses an audience at the Honeywell Users Group Americas in Phoenix on Monday.
Gilsdorf addressed the Honeywell Users Group Americas in Phoenix on Monday. He outlined what he and his team see as the biggest challenges facing the process industries and the most important trends for which Honeywell is making plans.
Trends now and as we move forward include:
Ubiquitous sensors: “Sensors to me is one of the most exciting areas,” declared Gilsdorf. MEMS (micro electromechanical systems), smart dust, analyzers on a chip, wearable sensors, GPS (global positioning system) tracking for equipment and employees, flying sensors for security, leak detection, video as a sensor, embedded sensors (as on a shelf in a distillation column), and others all fall into this slot.
Wireless acting as a cost effective enabler that extends the control network and furthers sensing technologies and monitoring. This will enable us to address new regulations. We will monitor far away operations and applications. “On a 3,000-kilometer pipeline in Kazakhstan, they have numerous break-ins and diversions of oil, which they detect remotely using wireless pressure sensors.”
Convert data to actionable knowledge: This involves using online optimization models to invoke built-in procedures in the control system, to drive automated action and response by the control system. This slot includes soft sensors and the ability via simulation to provide the operator a way to work with what-if scenarios using real time data.
The final convergence of IT and process control will settle in embracing service oriented architecture (SOA) virtualization, cloud computing, and open systems.
Unify the automation layers: This entails the interplay and communication from level one on the plant floor including field devices to the top level where supply chain activities reside and will ensure there are role-based consoles displaying the information that the person at each level needs. There will be embedded batch systems. “We’ll bring MES (manufacturing execution systems) into the clean room without dirty paper moving back and forth in that restricted zone.”
Going beyond the plant boundary: This trend, started, ongoing, but to spread said Gilsdorf, would include an operation like one in India that webs, networks, and automates multiple wells, refineries, transportation, and retail outlets.
“We believe these six areas are the core of change in the future. I see a safer, more reliable enterprise to come,” said Gilsdorf.
—Nicholas Sheble