PAS Musings

Ghouls, goblins and ghost tags…

In America, many people will celebrate Halloween this week.

They’ll dress up and go to costume parties, visit scary places and take their children around the neighborhood to ask for candy.

A strange observance to be sure.

Joining in the Halloween theme this year is Captain Integrity – super-hero of the automation industries.

Captain Integrity and his powerful namesake software, will be out there helping control engineers and other plant professionals find the ghouls, goblins and ghost tags that may be lurking in their automation assets.

Most control systems, real-time databases and even advanced applications that have been implemented across the process industries have had little or no change management process applied to them over the years.

The result?  Plenty of ghouls, goblins and ghost tags running around the automation system – consuming extra slots, spare memory and computing capability across the plant’s real-time infrastructure.

Sure, most of these are friendly old ghosts – remnants of applications, calculations and control schemes left for dead across the infrastructure like the dead and drying leaves blowing across the otherwise well-maintained landscape.

While most cause little problem for anyone in particular, they can raise their ugly heads when it comes time for troubleshooting, upgrading or migration, bringing countless hours of extra work for engineers and others as they have to turn over every leaf to see what exactly needs doing to meet their goal.

The solution?  Call in our Ghostbuster friend and every engineer’s hero, Captain Integrity.

Captain Integrity and his namesake software – the Integrity Configuration Management software – are there chase off all ghouls, goblins & ghost tags, and make the control engineer’s life much easier by automating backups, managing change and exposing a complete map of the entire real-time infrastructure across any plant.

This year, call Captain Integrity as your super-hero of choice.

You’ll be glad you did.

© 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!

The Mathematics of Integrity

These days, not a conference or industry gathering goes by without some talk of the coming shortage of engineers. 

So what’s behind all the talk of engineering shortages?

>> a lower appeal of engineering versus other fields of study to the students of today,

>> prior period cost-cutting to “make the numbers” by most operating companies,

and,

>> the pending tidal wave of retirements by the existing engineers.

All three of these combine to paint a gloomy picture…

Some may view that we can “automate our way out of the problem” with feature-rich systems and higher-level software applications, but these bring problems of their own.

Trends in the industry over the last twenty years show an ever-widening variety of systems and applications in the plant with each automation “asset” bringing with it more complexity to manage the increased functionality.

This means that the automation and optimization infrastructure in the plant looks like this:

Combining the two charts – seemingly-unrelated industry trends – brew up the perfect storm for the automation engineer:

While it might still be somewhat feasible for control engineers and their colleagues to manage the automation infrastructure today, the challenges that they face become more difficult with each passing year.

We cannot afford to continue in this way…  something is needed, and I propose that a multi-system, multi-application configuration management software is needed.... something we at PAS call Integrity.

The prior tongue-in-cheek appeal of Captain Integrity, is now backed by what I call the “Mathematics of Integrity” – which simply state that a configuration management solution like our Integrity software is a must-have for control and application engineers – lowering job demands by increasing capabilities.

   

Engineers face an ever more varied and complex infrastructure, and must protect it against an ever-widening range of threats.  Without a solution like Integrity, they face an extremely difficult, if not an insurmountable, challenge.

Configuration management software like Integrity is specifically designed to bring relief – so the automation and optimization infrastructure on which we have come to rely on in today's plants can be sustained.

In today's environment, Integrity is a must-have solution for safety, reliability and profitability.

Read more on our website, in my blog, or by attending a webinar.

Do so today, because there is less time in every tomorrow…

© 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!

Emerson vs. Honeywell at NPRA

One more thing of interest from last week’s NPRA meeting…

Following three papers focusing on Part One of Cybersecurity, there were three papers on abnormal situations:

·         One on Abnormal Situation Management (ASM)

·         One on Abnormal Situation Prevention (ASP)

·         And one on Alarm Management

All three related to the topic of improving reliability and safety, with slightly different angles.

Although not presented by Honeywell, the ASM paper continued on a theme long- promoted by Honeywell via the ASM Consortium.  ASM aims to identify problems facing plant operations during abnormal conditions, and to develop solution concepts.

The ASM paper was followed by an ASP paper from Emerson (Honeywell’s key competitor).

The key Emerson message was that traditional ASM solutions are too-after-the-fact and that ASP (with emphasis on the “P” for Prevention) are better suited to improve plant safety and reliability. 

Presumably, because the ASP solutions work down at the sensor level they can identify abnormal performance issues before those signals can even make it to the higher-level ASM applications.

So basically they are analyzing higher-frequency signal variations to detect abnormal situations. 

That might be fine for high-speed rotating and electrical equipment, but I doubt that it provides any improvement over the ASM techniques promoted by Honeywell for process drift and other non-high-frequency changes.

In the end, as is often the case, a combination of technologies is likely the right approach.

But that combination then also needs to include our much-talked about friend of alarm management.

Which was exactly the topic of the joint PAS / Chevron Phillips Chemical paper presented after the ASM and ASP updates.

All in all, a good mix of papers on improving safety and reliability.

Where to start as a customer?

ASP and ASM are both still more or less research areas, with benefits often subject to the eye of the beholder.

Alarm Management on the other hand is well-defined with clear benefits.  Check out a copy of the NPRA paper or read the book for more info on that.

© 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!

Worst-ever NPRA?

Last week’s NPRA meeting was one of the worst-ever for me… 

It wasn’t the content or the attendees.  It was the location. 

The meeting was in Phoenix.  The same town where my family lives. 

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Trying to balance work and family life is hard enough for anyone to do, but with the 100,000 mile commute still going on, spending time at home and away at a conference at the same time was really hard.

Being gone from home all week except for maybe 44 hours a weekend means two things:

1)     I maximize time with family when I am back J

2)     I get lots done in the evenings during the week J

So despite being at “home” in Phoenix for the NPRA from Friday–Wednesday of last week and not doing the commute, I was not able to satisfy either objective… L

Although I had issues with the week, my wife was good about it – she even agreed to host a barbecue party at our house for PAS customers attending the conference. 

And she was happy about it… What a wonderful wife!

But after 5 days, she had seen enough of me and was happy to pack me off back to Houston -- with a suggestion for me to recapture the lost time:  stay in Houston the next weekend.

So I did.  No commuting for me this weekend.  Yippee!

Now the weekend is over and I’m back to being on top of my game – with the consequence being that there are certain others at PAS who now face a boatload of emails Monday morning!   J

Want something more serious?

Watch for my posting tomorrow on Honeywell’s ASM vs. Emerson’s ASP at the NPRA…

© 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!

Best-ever NPRA!

Its’ time again for the annual NPRA Technology Forum. 

The Advanced Process Control sessions are being held today – and PAS is the only APC vendor whose technology is represented by the customer papers!!

And the central theme to both customer papers is the elimination of step testing for APC implementation. 

The PAS Star/Galaxy technology set is unique in the industry as it delivers model-based predictive control without any step testing.  This saves countless hours of fiddling with the plant and eroding profits.

The papers were well received, but the traditionalists in the audience were up in arms – presumably afraid for their jobs…

That being said, the “old” way for doing APC projects has evolved.  Now, instead of 20 days of step testing on a 24x7 basis, they’ve got it down to maybe 5-10 days of testing, using fancy data reduction and analysis techniques that takes a PHD to use.

And everyone is winning with those improvements – but they are not enough.

I mean, why spend 5-10 days jerking around the plant at the expense of production rate and quality if you don’t need to.  Who would do that?

And not only do the traditionalists need to jerk the plant around for 5-10 days, they need to apply their expert at the customers’ cost to interpret the results, and produce the dynamic models for the controller. 

And this happens not only on first implementation, but also whenever those dynamic models need adjustment to match changes in feedstock, feed rate, operating mode, seasons, and who knows what else?

Which all means a lot of stepping and bumping of the plant. 

Ugh.

The better way is to incrementally have the controller monitor its own performance and adjust its own (internal) models.

Adaptive Model Predictive Control as one of the speakers called it – is the better solution.  And is exactly in line with the PAS vision and proven technology set.

Gladly, it now seems that the customers on the NPRA’s paper selection committee have “caught the vision” that we at PAS have been preaching for some years.  So much so, that the only papers on APC at this year’s NPRA conference are about the PAS no-step-test technologies!

Now that’s what I call progress!

Haven’t heard about our no-step-testing approach?  Quite possible, since we’ve done very little marketing and publication of our approach.   

Even despite the fact that we’ve been out there doing this for years….

Want to get caught up?  Then check out my prior postings on the topic:

Advanced Control

APC II: No More Step Testing!

APC III - First-Principles Advantage

By the way, don’t be embarrassed if you haven’t heard much about our no-step-test vision – in all honesty, our marketing to date in this area has been pretty subdued. L

But not for long… papers like this are going to help us revolutionize the industry.

© 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!

Lighten up! It’s Super IntegrityMan!!

Did you ever notice how seriously most companies take themselves?

We see quotes like this:

“… a leading provider of software and services to the process industries, today announced financial results for its quarter and fiscal year ended June 30, 2006.”

and:

“…today provided an update regarding progress toward the restructuring goals announced in a news release on June 26, 2006. The company will reach a cost-reduction rate of $45 million per year by the end of the third quarter of 2006 and remains on-track to meet its restructuring cost-reduction target of at least $65 million per year by the end of the fourth quarter of 2006.”

These are real quotes – typical of big and small companies alike.

Although most of our press releases are not quite as dull, we are not completely innocent of using corporate-speak either.

But no more!  Super IntegrityMan to the rescue!!!

This superhero gives us an opportunity to lighten up a little – have a little fun.  Contrast these excerpts with the above – readable and FUN!!!

Clearly not mistaken for a bird or a plane, Super IntegrityMan touched down in Houston , Texas today to restore order to automation and real-time application professionals across the process industries.

and:

"Holy Pneumatic Transmitter!!!", can there be anything better for today's automation engineer???

So today, think of the Super IntegrityMan and lighten up a bit – whatever your corporate function!

And, if you haven’t seen the details of what our hero is up to – then click here to request his latest action series with complimentary View-Master!

© 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!