Abstract Submissions

Hey, don't forget to submit your abstract for the 2009 Emerson Exchange - it's due this Monday, the 16th of March. Visit www.emersonexchange.org for more information.

In the current economy, it's a great way to increase your chances of getting to go to Orlando this fall.

In 30 years...

OK, remember back in the late 70’s/early 80’s when SNL was really funny (debating this is a whole other blog)? They used to have a fake commercial after the opening monolog. The fake commercials were sometimes campy (the circumcision in the back of the Town Car comes to mind) and other times very realistic until the punch line.

They had this one where a guy is shaving with a new, innovative, 3 blade razor. The first one gets most of beard, the second gets what the first one missed, and the third one gets what the second one missed. The final tag line was “…we gave you 3 blades because you’ll buy anything…” But here we are, 30 years later, and a 4 blade razor gives me the best shave ever.

So what’s that got to do with anything? Quad-head monitors, that what. I don’t get it. Dual-head monitors, I get – I think their great, best thing ever. Quad-heads, no way. Way too much real estate for a single keyboard and mouse, especially if you have to react or acknowledge something quickly. Doesn’t matter whether it’s 2 over 2 or 4 in a row. I don’t like them.

And in 30 years, I’ll have a nine head monitor setup without a keyboard or mouse – I’ll just think it and it’ll show up…

Linkedin Groups Lame?

OK, so in some ways Linkedin is pretty cool – it’s gotten me back in touch with folks I haven’t heard from in decades. And I’ve joined several groups – including the DeltaV Automation group and the MES group.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times, but almost all the discussions are headhunters offering up career opportunities. Now my sampling is certainly not statistically valid, but I find it annoying.

I’m sorry, but I really want technical based discussions in these technical groups. Aren’t there enough venues on the web for headhunters?

Sync With Syncade

So what’s the first thing we did after getting our full-blown install of Syncade? We developed a utility.

Syncade (Emerson Process Management’s Smart Operations/MES suite) is a great collection of modules for Material Management, Order Management, Equipment Tracking, Training and Development, Document Control and Archiving, etc.

And while it’s tightly integrated with DeltaV’s batch engine, it needed a little help when it comes to tying non-batch processes and events to its suite of modules.

So that’s where Sync With Syncade comes in – it bridges the real-time world with the transactional one. OPC flags are used to trigger events associated with equipment in the ET module. These events can then cause workflow to automatically begin.

The cool thing about Sync With Syncade is that it installs on an OPC server – anyone’s OPC server. The communication to Syncade is handled by a web service call.

This was our first implementation using web services – definitely more to come.

You can check out the product data sheet for Sync With Syncade here.

New Automation Forum

Happy New Year.

I've known Tim Alosi of New England Controls for many years now. And in the spirit of out with the old and in with the new, Tim is overhauling his old DrTim site into www.ControlDoctors.com. Check out all the different control and automation offerings. Don't forget to sign up for some of the different forums.

Exchange 2008 Part II

One area we’ve struggled with over the last year is how to deal with remote operator stations. The two methods we’ve used have been remote terminal sessions using thin clients and KVM extenders. We did exhaustive testing in our shop trying to find the right combination of pieces and parts to allow KVM extenders to work with USB and PS/2 mice and keyboards. While we have something that works, it’s cobbled together.

At the Emerson Exchange, Dell unveiled a rack mounted operator station with a custom Ethernet KVM compression extender board and a remote decompression brick. And the solution is fully supported by Emerson!

The comment from the Dell representative commented they did a coast to coast test (PC on one coast, the extender brick on the other) and only had 80 ms of latency.


Look for availability later this month.

Exchange 2008 Part I

I just got back from the 2008 Emerson Exchange in Washington DC (well, I got back last Friday, but needed some R&R before diving back into my computer). It was an intimate gathering of over 2500 of my closest friends. The only time it felt crowded was when we were trying to board busses to the National Air and Space Museum on Thursday night.

While I’ll have several more posts on different topics related to Exchange over the next week, I wanted to start by mentioning the whole wireless world. It’s becoming more and more obvious this is going to take off big time, as more customers are beginning to see the potential benefits.

One hugely simple application is temperature monitoring for all those portable tanks, especially in the pharma/biotech world. The days of filling out roundsheets for these tanks can go away.

One bit of irony, the NovaTech User Group meeting was held the same week as Emerson Exchange (coincidence?), nearby in Baltimore – I’m sure all 60 people in attendance had a great time.

Getting Ready for Exchange

Well, Emerson Exchange is just around the corner (September 29th to October 3rd in Washington, DC) and for the first time in several years, I’ll just be a participant – no talks to be nervous about giving.

My past papers have focused on statistical analysis within DeltaV to determine chromatography column viability – HETP, Asymmetry, and TA (Transitional Analysis). Interest has really picked up related on this topic (all things are relative – I get excited if a dozen folks visit this blog in a day).

Another extension of the data manipulation techniques I’m looking at is Mean Kinetic Temperature – it looks like there might be some interest in it, so we’ll see.

If you're at Exchange, hunt me down. If not, I'll fill you in on what I was impressed with (and not impressed with) when I return.

Data Aggregation Market Grows

I’m a huge fan of the growing data aggregation/business intelligence sector associated with levels 2 and 3 of the S95 model. Those who know me have heard me preach about the benefits of a federated data model – let the data reside where it was collected, but aggregate many sources for visualization.

There are several players in this market, and just when you thought you had if figured out, Rockwell buys Incuity - what is this going to mean?

And what’s the deal with the whole concept of data ownership as it relates to where the data is stored? I think this is one of the biggest rifts between industrial and business IT departments. They're hard drives, not safes. These organizations need to be the caretakers of the data, not the information police.

And data replication into other stores has always been a hot topic with me – how do you avoid the “two versions of the truth” syndrome?

So I’m cautiously excited about a new product from OSI called AF. I’ve only seen the product data sheet this week, and further investigation is needed, but it appears to be a tool for aggregation and analysis without data replication. OSI uses a very interesting term in their write up – data agnostic. Now a Google search of data agnostic produces a variety of hits from different disciplines, but my take on it is OSI’s attempt at a federated data model.

Day Cruise

I'll appologize right from the start that this post is way off topic. But I had an incredible adventure this past Friday.

So check this out - my family and I arrived at the Norfolk Naval Base at oh dark 30 Friday morning. After the security checks (it made the TSA look like grade school hall monitors), we boarded buses for a quick ride over to the Little Creek Amphibious Base where we boarded a LCU (Landing Craft, Utility) for a ride out to the USS Iwo Jima, where we drove right up to its launch bay.

My brother-in-law is assigned to the Iwo Jima and we got to participate in a family day cruise. Ship tours, demonstations, topped off by an air show was all part of the ativities we had the priledge to take part in as we sailed back to port.