The first keynote of the day was from Roger Fradin, chief executive officer of Honeywell Automation & Control Solutions and Bolick's boss. He was "thrilled with the business performance of Process Solutions during the past year." Under Bolick's leadership according to Fradin, Honeywell Process Solutions has regained technological leadership in the industry with the Experion platform. Further, he has achieved a unified, global and customer-centric strategy. Fradin emphasized that Honeywell is a technology company and his division will invest about $900 million in research and development this year. Within Process Solutions, he will continue to invest in R&D for such things as security, wireless networking, corrosion resistance and ways to capture process knowledge.
One star of Bolick's keynote was a noted industry editor (definitely not yours truly) who was videotaped extolling the virtues of Honeywell.
The company also unveiled its wireless roadmap. According to Marketing Vice President Harry Sim, the reason that the company waited until the Users Group Symposium to talk about its wireless strategy, and in fact to discuss it at all, is that users come to the conference to discuss with Honeywell their plans for 18-24 months out. So they need to have an idea where the technology is going. President Jack Bolick took great pains to assure the assembled editors at the press conference that Honeywell has been in the wireless sensor business for process control for over three years, and that the process division is leveraging technology from the rest of Honeywell--especially aerospace and defense--for its product development.
Honeywell will ensure that its wireless technology ties into the work of the evolving industrial wireless standard bodies, such as the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation (ISA) Society SP100 and Wireless HART committees. The company also did extensive research with customers to help it define its product roadmap. "Plant personnel are looking for a secure, reliable, scalable, power managed and multi-functionality strategic wireless 'cloud' for use in their facilities," stated Bolick.
The network designed by Honeywell will support various industrial protocols and up to 30,000 devices such as tablet PCs and sensors and will co-exist with other wireless devices like PDAs, pagers, walkie-talkies and cell phones. Other key network features include built-in cyber security technology and a redundancy feature that automatically routes critical information if a device fails.
Honeywell's newest effort surrounding sensors in the wireless roadmap will include strategic features such as "go-anywhere" sensors that feature self-contained power sourcing and high-speed monitoring that can provide up to 1-second updates. Engineers are designing products for a battery life of up to ten years.
Bolick stated that one of the additional benefits a company could achieve with this wireless technology was the ability to install a great number of sensors in a plant economically. This information connected directly to information systems (not through the control system) could enhance operators' ability to manage processes and managers' ability to make better decisions.
8:38:04 AM 
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