It’s been a struggle catching up after a busy CERAWeek last week and a Spring Break week, this week in Austin. Let’s close this short week with a look at one of the very accurate level measurement technologies—non-contacting radar. In this short 3+ minute YouTube video, Non-contacting Radar: Simple configuration with Rosemount 5408, Emerson’s Jimmie Soderstrom contrasts non-contacting radar with guided wave radar technology and demonstrates how to set up these level measurement.
Plantweb Digital Ecosystem Conversation at CERAWeek
Over on IHS Markit’s CERAWeek On Demand channel, you’ll find many of the sessions and one-on-on interviews from last week’s CERAWeek conference in Houston.
For example, here’s a one-on-one conversation between IHS Markit’s David Hicks and Emerson’s Melissa Ruths. In it, Melissa highlights the technologies, products, solutions and services that are part of the Plantweb digital ecosystem to manufacturers and producers improve business performance in key areas such as safety, reliability, production, and energy & emissions.
What Lies Ahead for the Energy Industries?
It’s been quite a whirlwind of week here at CERAWeek 2019. There were far more choices on what sessions to attend than ever before. For those with the fortitude to make it all the way to Friday, it’s one of my favorite days. It opens with a panel of the IHS Markit senior analysts sharing their perspectives from the week. I’ll try to capture a few of the key points I hear.
Atul Arya moderated the panel and panelists included James Burkhard, Susan Farrell, Shankari Srinivasan, Raoul LeBlanc and Jone-Lin Wang.
Jim opened recalling U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo speech with an unapologetic tone on the use of U.S. energy abundance and their exports to pursue policy aims. Continue Reading ▶
Diversity and Inclusion Improves Innovation
All throughout CERAWeek 2019, we’ve heard about the tremendous amount of challenges that can only be solved with innovation. To ensure we can truly be innovative, Laura Schafer and Bob Karschnia from Emerson conducted a session titled: How does diversity and inclusion improve innovation.
They started off by citing a few studies that illustrate the value diversity can bring. One study looked at companies in the top quartile and found that gender diverse companies were 15% more likely to out-perform financially. Similarly, ethnically diverse companies were 35% more likely to outperform financially.
They also illustrated the meaning of 2D diversity – having both inherent diversity and acquired diversity on teams. Inherent is the diversity you’re born with, including ethnicity and gender. Acquired is the diversity you gain from experience, such as working in a different company or being embedded in a specific market. Employees at companies with 2D diversity are 45% more likely to report a growth in market share over the previous year and 70% more likely to report that the company captured a new market.
Tips to bring in diversity and encourage inclusion: Continue Reading ▶
How to Connect IIoT Devices to Cloud-based Applications
There is much talk this week at CERAWeek 2019 about the need to get data from Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors and final control devices “out to the cloud” for collaboration. But how? IIoT technologies provide the opportunity to expand monitoring beyond process control. New insights are now available to other critical equipment – such as control valves, heat exchangers, cooling towers, and more.
At the Microsoft Agora house, Emerson’s director of Connected Services, Mike Boudreaux, shows exactly how data from IIoT-based sensors out to the Microsoft Azure Cloud, through an edge gateway device. Mike showed me various Emerson wireless sensing devices—temperature, pressure, acoustic and a control device, a Fisher control valve with digital valve controller (DVC) connected to a WirelessHART gateway.
Mike explains how Control Valve Condition Monitoring works. Behind rotating equipment, control valves are the next most critical asset type that can benefit from predictive maintenance. The DVC controls the valve and is wired directly to the control system. But it also contains a wealth of diagnostic information which can be transmitted wirelessly to the WirelessHART gateway. Continue Reading ▶
