Finally getting to a wrap up of the Honeywell trip while my vacation suitcase sits by the bed with 10 days worth of clothes piled up waiting for packing. I leave in the morning for vacation to Israel. There will be only a few posts until June 27. Sharon, if you still read this blog, I'm coming your way, but I don't think we'll be in Haifa. I'd be looking for a good automation conversation while I'm over there, though. My mobile phone won't work, though, so email will have to be the way to ping me.
Back to Honeywell. In the battle of wireless, my PR friends out there found a customer willing not only to talk, but to allow me to say his name. Byron Lewis of the Big Spring, Texas Alon USA plant, uses the Honeywell XYR5000 pressure transmitter and gateway base station for data acquisition. He loves the installation. Said it was easy to set up, easy to extend and easy to use. The application has helped him a lot.
One reason that came up is because there was much speculation about whether the much talked about sensor level wireless networking products of other companies are available for sale, yet. I asked and have not heard back. So, these and a later model, may be the only shipping wireless sensors among the large automation suppliers. In my July editorial for Automation World, I ask "Hype or Reality". If people are merely talking about products that don't exist in order to slow down the customers from buying from someone else (think of Microsoft in the 90s), then that's hype. I think they are all working on solutions and I also think that the benefits will be real when the products come. So, I'm willing to withhold the "hype" designation for a little longer.
Jack Bolick used the term "inflection point" in his address to the media during the OneWireless press conference concerning wireless. So, I asked him during our interview what he meant--and what his vision of a plant after a major wireless installation would be. First he said that wireless is the "enabler" of plant optimization. The applications riding atop the wireless (and wired) infrastructure that carries the data will be the game changer. He calls it "data-to-decision." Bolick likened it to the security firm ADT finding it could vastly expand its available market through wireless sensors in older homes that would be hard to wire, and then finding that it could add more services to its portfolio. Just so, engineers in process plants will be able to bring in more data points to their applications and probably find many new services designed to optimize plant performance. Harsh Chitale, vp of global marketing and strategy, added during my interview with him that this whole area should translate to operator productivity.
8:16:08 PM 
|
|
