Jim Cahill

Smart Instrumentation for Specialty Chemical Manufacturing

Oct 16, 2026

Unlike large continuous plants, specialty chemical sites often make many products with frequent changeovers, so flexibility, speed, and quality control matter more. Off-spec batches must be downgraded, reworked, or scrapped, and a missing feedstock discovered mid-campaign can be a major loss. Safety risks from toxic, hazardous, and flammable materials are present every day. Accurate, reliable measurement gives engineers the data they need to manage all these pressures at once.

Smart Plant Modernization: Building Automation That Starts Smart

Oct 12, 2026

In a recent LinkedIn article, “Smart Plant and Automation Modernization,” Emerson’s Jonas Berge, ISA Fellow and digital transformation advisor, lays out what a modern smart plant automation ecosystem should include, from field sensors and valves to the distributed control system (DCS), safety instrumented system (SIS), and device management software.

Building a Remote Operations Control Center for a Diverse Power Fleet

Oct 9, 2026

A remote operations control center, or ROCC, is more than a room with remote consoles. Its value comes from giving operators and support teams a consistent way to monitor, control, and troubleshoot assets across sites. That consistency becomes especially important as fleets add solar, wind, hydro, battery storage, and conventional generation, often with different control platforms.

Matching Slurry Valves to the Application: Five Selection Frameworks for Mine Operators

Oct 7, 2026

When a slurry valve fails in a remote part of a mine site, the cost goes well beyond the part: callouts, difficult access, personnel exposure, and lost production when a critical circuit goes down. Replacing a failed valve with the same type in the same conditions only repeats the cycle.

Inside the AI Data Center Power Challenge: 30 Turbines, One Virtual Power Plant

Oct 2, 2026

Bill Kleyman, CEO and Co-Founder of Apolo.us and Executive Chair of Data Center Programs for Informa, talked with Bob Yeager, President of Emerson’s Power and Water Solutions business, about what it actually takes to keep that power stable once a site goes live.

Real-Time Scheduling Turns Quality Control and Manufacturing Coordination into a Competitive Advantage

Oct 1, 2026

When QC scheduling is disconnected from production schedules, delays, inefficiencies, and coordination challenges can ripple throughout the facility. Real-time scheduling helps eliminate those gaps by synchronizing manufacturing and laboratory activities, so both teams work from the same, current, real-time-up-to-date information.

Designing Distillation Columns with Confidence Using Aspen Plus

Sep 30, 2026

In an on-demand webinar, Emerson’s Irina Rumyantseva, AspenTech Senior Principal Solutions Consultant, and Salimzhan Kabylbayev, AspenTech Product Manager, show how the Aspen Plus® Process Simulation Software supports those decisions from property selection through conceptual screening, rigorous simulation, and hydraulics.

Pick the Automation Partner Before FEED, Not After

Sep 28, 2026

Meeting regulatory and industry standards drives more complex plants: advanced process licenses and catalysts, heat integration, power islanding, mixed energy sources including hydrogen readiness, carbon capture, closed-loop water, and pollution abatement. More process units mean more rotating and static equipment, which means more advanced process control and far more pervasive condition monitoring.

From Reactive Repairs to Predictive Confidence: How Industrial AI Is Reshaping Asset Performance Management

Sep 25, 2026

In a recent episode of The Main Column Podcast, Nithiya Parameswaran, Vice President of Product Management at Emerson’s Aspen Technology business, joined Lee Nichols, Editor-in-Chief of Hydrocarbon Processing, to explain how Asset Performance Management (APM) is moving beyond monitoring toward predictive and prescriptive maintenance.

Modernizing Thermal Power Assets: Control, Measurement, and Digital Strategies for Lifecycle Extension

Sep 24, 2026

North American infrastructure was not built for the load growth now arriving from data centers, and the top industrial turbine manufacturers are booked solid for the next two to five years. That leaves operators one practical option: get more out of the plants they already own, many of them past the 40-year mark.

Alarm Management Fundamentals: Configuring Ovation Points for Cleaner, More Actionable Alarms

Sep 21, 2026

Every extra alarm competes for an operator’s attention, and a flooded list buries the one message that actually matters. Standards such as ANSI/ISA 18.2 and IEC 62682 give you a framework, but the day-to-day work happens in the point configuration inside Ovation Developer Studio.

Best Practices for Alarm Management in Remote Operations Centers

Sep 16, 2026

A healthy alarm program in remote operations centers is core to asset performance and starts with a sound alarm philosophy and guidelines, not with the configuration screen.

Posts by or with Jim Cahill