Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Genentech ECP-1 Award Winner

We’ve all heard the expression – “Good things come to those who wait” and I guess executing some project work during the winter of 2007/2008 and seeing the positive results almost 3 years later would aptly qualify. Genentech’s ECP-1 facility in Tuas, Singapore recently received the Facility of the Year Award in Project Execution, sponsored by ISPE, INTERPHEX, and Pharmaceutical Processing Magazine.

RE Mason had an important role during the modular unit construction phase of this award-winning project at Jacobs’ facility near Charleston, SC.  DeltaV and multiple bus technologies were extensively deployed throughout the modules. Larry Wolfe and Carl Price headed up a team from REM who spent many weeks back in 2008 checking out and documenting the Foundation Fieldbus and DeviceNet segments.

These modules were huge – 60 ft long, 25 ft wide, and over 18 ft tall with a shipping weight of over 170,000 lbs. There were anywhere from 3 to 6 bus segments in each of over 20 of these “double-wides on steroids”.

The pre-commissioning and validation activities executed in Charleston greatly reduced the time required when these enormous modular units were finally put together in Singapore. Read the full story of this award winning facility here.


Monday, October 4, 2010

Update: Prime Time Batch Analytics

I thought it was worth mentioning that at the Awards Luncheon last Thursday at Emerson Exchange, Steve Sonnenberg, President Emerson Process Management, awarded the PlantWeb Excellence Award to The Lubrizol Corporation and Robert Wojewodka’s paper entitled “Batch Process Analytics (PA) – An In Depth Update”.

It was kind of neat to hear Mr. Sonnenberg give an explanation of the technology and reiterate that Batch Process Analytics will be part of the standard DeltaV product offering in version 12. I believe this will be the next big game changer in Batch Process Control.

Perhaps I'll have a paper to present at next year's Exchange in Nashville on Batch Process Analytics...