PAS Musings

Technology Convergence

In his opening remarks at the PAS Users Conference, our Founder & CEO spoke about convergence of technologies that at the surface may appear unrelated.  Specifically, he discussed the prediction by the Gartner Group of a “Grand Convergence” by 2010 driven by three key technologies:

·  Ubiquitous Access with super-high-speed connectivity anytime, anywhere

·  Ambient Intelligence via smart sensors, RFID, the digital home, etc.

·  Semantic Connectivity using a common communication protocol

Two avant-garde and innovative companies are already thinking convergence – Apple Computer and Nike – by embedding a sensor in running shoes that will communicate with an iPOD that promises “take working out to a new level.” 

The new Apple/Nike tool kit will help runners keep track of their performance (distance, pace, calories burned) in real time as well as choreograph songs to the movement.

Grand Convergence isn’t just for fun though.  Gartner predicts it will lead to  15% productivity improvement with a 50% reduction in ratio of managers to knowledge workers – all by 2015.

The advancements in infrastructure to make this happen will offer numerous new opportunities for an innovation-centric company like PAS to continue to push back the boundaries of software use for our customers – which should be fun for us and good for them.

Let the good times roll!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Better than EEMUA?

One more blog on alarm management, and then I promise to move on…

Customers are sure loving The Alarm Management Handbook.  I guess it really meets a need and hit the mark.

Why the other day, an engineering executive at one of America's Top Five Oil Refining Companies (per the government’s own DOE ranking) wanted to order several hundred copies of the book for staff to read at each of their refineries world-wide. 

Books are selling well on Amazon, for sure, but not by lots of hundreds.  This is indeed encouraging feedback.

This Top Five exec said the Handbook was 10 times better than the EEMUA guide – and that at just half the price!

The EEMUA guide #191:99, published back in 1999, does provide a good set of industry standards as far what metrics go for a well-functioning alarm system, but it apparently doesn’t cut the mustard with this particular Top Five Refiner.

Maybe that’s why The Alarm Management Handbook is for sale on www.amazon.com and at Emerson’s DeltaV bookshop, but the EEMUA publication is not…

Industry whispers also suggest that other vendors in the industry also love the book, but just won’t say so in public… 

Even if they can’t claim to be the authority who “wrote the book” on Alarm Management, they can still join those “who read the book” and help us move the industry forward to safer and more reliable plant operations!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Alarm Management Gone Bad

Lyondell went on record today to give the six steps to avoid bad alarm management projects. 

Apparently, they’ve had some bad experiences with various vendors in the past and credit PAS with helping clean up the mess.  That’s nice.

More details are provided on the CONTROL magazine editor’s blog at http://waltboyes.livejournal.com.  But, Walt being the super-prolific blogger that he is will have posted pages more by the time you read this, so you’ll have to page down quite a ways to get to his posting called “More from the Honeywell User Group”.  That entry was posted today, 6/14/2006 at 1:34pm.

To spare you the hassle of trying to find that entry, I repeat Lyondell’s top six steps to avoiding “Alarm Management Gone Bad” as presented by Lee Swindler and cited by Walt in his blog:

1)     Change the culture and provide effective training

2)     Do your alarm rationalization right. We didn't hire an alarm management consultant and we should have. Eventually we brought in PAS to do it right. (Nice comment – thanks Lyondell!)

3)     Exercise caution with new technology. You may hear wonderful things from lots of other people about OPC or other new technologies, but until you've actually used it...beware.

4)     A Site Acceptance Test is critical, and shouldn't be shortened or done without, regardless of the impact on the schedule.

5)     Properly engineered PV settings and alarm bandwidth is important and should not be minimized.

6)     I recommend you maximize hot cutover regardless of what the experts say.

I especially like the reference to bringing in the professionals from PAS to “do it right”.  Thanks, Lee.

For those of you who want the full story, the same Lyondell paper was presented at the PAS User Conference, and can be downloaded from our website – click here to download the paper.  You’ll find Lee’s presentation listed under the “Operations Effectiveness” section of Day One of the conference.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Podcast on The Book!

The Alarm Management Handbook is generating even more interest than we anticipated…

Take the things that happened last week as an example.

First, a leading oil company contacted us regarding 200 copies of the book for all of their automation engineers worldwide.  Would be mandated reading for all, he says.

Second, a number of media companies have contacted us regarding the book – wanting more information about the book for reference in their articles and quotes.

And then most recently, Walt Boyes, the Editor-in-Chief of CONTROL Magazine interviewed PAS CEO and Founder Eddie Habibi about the book for podcast to the world. 

Click here to download the podcast or click here to read more about Walt Boyes.

For those of you who don’t know Walt, he is an industry icon and pretty much stays on top of any trends meaningful for the process control world.

Not only does he get around, but he is a prolific blogger, reporting the news from his blackberry as he sees it.  Just today, he was reporting live from the Honeywell User Group in Phoenix – and not just one posting, but multiple postings about what Big Red’s executives are saying and how customers are reacting.  Check out his blog at http://waltboyes.livejournal.com.

Haven’t got a copy of the book for yourself yet?

Get one now on Amazon or at the Emerson Delta-V bookshop. 

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Hidden Gems: The Wizard Family

I’ve talked before about how PAS has a number of secret technology gems and how we grew in spite of our expertise in stealth marketing, but now I want to highlight another of our hidden gems.

Although the ultimate stealth marketing title still belongs to our DCS Configuration Services (which still don’t have a web page of their own, by the way), the Wizards  aren’t far behind.

It’s as if the Wizards have been too “small” or too “simple” for us to spend much  time on them. 

So they’ve been left languishing in the corner of our web pages, just sitting there hoping that a customer will find them.  And occasionally, one does.

In fact, in the last two weeks, two customers have found them and brought them out of the corner to play.

What are the Wizards?

They are the ControlWizard and TuneWizard software products.  They are the essence of Super-Genius distilled into a small downloadable package. 

Very cool.

The ControlWizard helps find the control loops that are performing at substandard  levels.  Those loops that need adjustment to help the plant run better and make more money, more reliably.

The TuneWizard then helps fix the under-performing loop by identifying the parameters to once again reset it to perform its best.

The Wizards are there to help every plant – because the behavior of every plant changes over time with the seasons, the product mix, the equipment health, etc.

So we did what’s right for these guys – we tool them out of the corner and are putting them front and center for a while. 

The marketing machine is promoting them to everyone we know – trying to make up for all that time spent in the corner.

Want to know more?  Register to attend the web seminar.

And give the Wizards in your life the respect they deserve this month.  They’ll thank you for it.

Don’t know any Wizards? 

Then feel free to give our guys the respect instead – and boost your reliability and profitability while you’re doing it.  Click here to do this.

Thanks

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Summer Reading I: The World is Flat

One our finest at PAS, recommended a book that he had been intending to read for quite some time, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. 

If you’re in the business world today and plan to be there tomorrow, this book has some powerful insights that will pertain directly to your job as well.

In his book, Friedman shows how recent technological advances particularly in the areas of information technology have converged to create a global environment where resources and knowledge are able to connect as they never have before.  Globalization 3.0, he calls it.

Globalization 3.0 is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals like you and me, desktop freelancers and innovative companies – enabled by the technologies that connect us all.

Friedman’s premise is that the world has become so interconnected that it is flat!  And a flattening of the world is a good thing for business and people all over the globe. 

Many of the technologies we all use and I’ve referenced in this blog help make the world flat: Blogs (like this one), iPods (like our iPod analogy), Skype (where free is good), Google (raising the bar for web-based applications), and also the PAS software (with its web front-ends) all help make the world a flatter place.

Friedman is right – individuals like you and me, and innovative startups like PAS are helping make the world a flatter place.

Why just the other day, one of our customers voiced their satisfaction with how our Integrity product is helping to flatten their world and make them more nimble, reliable and profitable.

Flat is good.

This particular customer had our Integrity server software installed at their main IT office, with Integrity data collector nodes to interface to their automation systems (DCS, PI, APC, etc) deployed at their operating sites around the world. 

Now their engineers (or freelance consultants) can monitor the health of those systems from any network connection – anywhere in the world!

The world is indeed getting flatter…and PAS is proud to make it so!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!