Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Yokogawa User Conference-update Perhaps the most significant thing about the Yokogawa Corp. of America User Conference held May 19-21 in Houston was that it was held at all. In the midst of hard times in manufacturing, with corporate travel restrictions the norm, between 200 and 300 intrepid users of Yokogawa products and prospects ventured to the Intercontinental Hotel to learn more about the company's products and solutions. This number is lower than the last conference, but only by 60 or so. Kudos to the YCA marketing team for putting together a good conference under trying times. CEO and president David Johnson stated that YCA showed an uptick in revenue over the last six months of the fiscal year ending March 2009. Admirable results for what has been a pretty small player in the United States (although Yokogawa is large in a global sense). In other significant financial points elaborated by Johnosn, about 75 percent of the parent's revenues now come from outside Japan. YCA's revenues are now about 50/50 between products and systems. The company's "VP Van" was labelled a success with over 3,500 people visiting it during its tour of the United States. Previously announced recent products that are showing promise are the Real-time Production Organizer workflow analysis application, tunable diode laser analyzer for emissions monitoring among other uses and an intelligent remote terminal unit or RTU that is finding acceptance in well-head applications. Brent Lilienthal, general manager of service in North America for Yokogawa, and Dennis Nash, president and chief executive officer of Control Station, are announcing a joint application for PID (proportional integral derivative) loop tuning. Built from Control Station's Loop Pro, csTuner will look like a Yokogawa CS3000 application. Through diagnosis of process data, csTuner is capable of improving the performance of business-critical production processes. Nash told me the key differentiator of Loop Pro / csTuner is a patent pending technology called Non-Steady State Modeling. This technology enables users to accurately model both transient and noisy process data. In other keynote addresses, Terry Jones, founder and ex-chief executive of Travelocity.com, challenged attendees on innvation--noting that it will be the driver to get companies out of the economic slump. Jones called innovation "fresh thinking that creates value." He warned against the "Dopeler" Effect--the tendency of stupid ideas to sound smarter when they come at you rapidly," and the "Bozeone" Layer, where middle management stops bright ideas from getting implemented. He called on attendees to pay attention to young people who will be heavily recruited to fill process control positions in the near future. "Todays graduates are tomorrow's employees, and technology is central to their experience." Parts of Jones' innovation culture include experimentation, measurement, coaching people, allowing failure and keeping teams small. Bruce Jensen, YCA director of product marketing, led customers through the product roadmap for the near future. Highlights include more power in the controller, enhanced alarm management, enhanced supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) especially for upstream applications and a high-speed safety controller. WirelessHart instrumentation was also high on the list with products expected in the first quarter of 2010. Concurrent to the announcement at YCA, parent company Yokogawa Electric Corp. posted news on its Website announcing the company's support of the ISA100.11a Wireless Communication Standard. The release states it will develop a new field digital network platform "that will enhance productivity by eliminating the difficulties users currently face with incompatible wireless communication protocols and making possible the systematic integration of wired and wireless technologies." 6:07:30 PM    comment []

Get more energy During the first "energy crisis" of the early 70s, I heard a motivational speaker say something to the effect "the greatest energy crisis is within humans." Are you running low on energy? Well, the Zen Habits people give you not 1, not 2, but wait, 55 tips for gaining energy. OK, so we all vote for number 37, right ;-) Or maybe just number 11. Have fun. 7:06:41 AM    comment []

Are you grounded? Greg McMillan has another episode in What Have I Learned. Here he talks about electrical problems associated with variable frequency drives--finally something I can understand by direct experience. I have experienced all sorts of problems due to wiring, grounding or other electrical situations. Take this advice to heart. 6:59:19 AM    comment []