Properly tuned loops are critical to efficient, effective plant performance. However, constant changes in the plant environment mean that proportional-integral-derivative (PID) tuning cannot be a set-and-forget procedure. This poses a problem for many modern plants,...
Operators are the heart of any process. Experience, skill, and attentiveness give the best operators an intuitive feel for processes that helps ensure uptime, safety, repeatability, and quality—even in the most infrequent process situations. But with a major shortage...
Control systems have been a stable foundation for operational excellence and reliable, repeatable performance in manufacturing for decades. However, just as needs have changed across those decades, so too have control systems themselves, evolving to meet the...
Creating a safe and secure automation process starts with implementing a well-designed basic process control system (BPCS) and safety instrumented system (SIS). Government agencies and industry associations offer guidelines and requirements for how these systems...
Author: John Dolenc It is nice to hear from our customers and read in the literature that it has become important to not just replace obsolete control system equipment, but to also provide operational improvement. For the longest time I have been puzzled by the idea...
We'll continue with our series on getting your brownfield automation project approved. In part one, Front End Planning for Control System Modernization Projects, we explored how changes in the project become more expensive the later in the schedule that they are made....
Austin, Texas, already a hotbed for technology as recently recognized by Forbes magazine, will host a gathering of chemical engineering professionals later this month. The AIChE is hosting the 2015 Spring Meeting and 11th Global Congress on Process Safety here on...
Author: Dennis Tkacs Why do computer driven systems fail? It's a subject I want to develop over the next few blog posts. And by fail I don't mean technically, but rather why do they fail to meet the business cases under which their procurement was initially justified?...
Author: Gordon Lawther In the world of aging automation systems and infrastructures, there are always new features and capabilities that we'd like to have. HMI's [human machine interfaces] more akin to our home computers, intuitive engineering tools with pre-defined...
Coming out of our recent global consultant meeting here in Austin, I heard a great story from Emerson's Glyn Westlake about a Spanish refinery that wanted to provide their operators with an identical and realistic environment to learn and gain familiarity with both...
At a meeting last week with our global consultants, I caught up with Emerson's Tinh Phan. He shared with me a new course that has been created using human-centered design (HCD) persona information by the Emerson Educational Services team. It addresses how to manage...
Measurement instrumentation has traditionally been used by process manufacturers to control their processes safely and reliably. This instrumentation may not be enough to operate the process as efficiently as possible. In a recent comment to one of my earlier posts,...
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The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the authors. Content published here is not read or approved by Emerson before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Emerson.