For manufacturers in highly-regulated industries, such as pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing, it is critical to keep track of raw materials as part of the production records. To minimize or avoid waste, it's also important to use the first-to-expire...
operate & manage
Optimizing Storage Terminal Operations
Across the upstream and downstream oil & gas supply chain, storage terminals play a vital role. Efficiently managing many operations including product transfers, blend operations, fiscal measurements and inventories can mean the difference in profitability &...
Challenge of Designing PCS-Driven MES Architectures for a Greenfield Facility
Author: Jonathan Lustri I have previously written about a design strategy where the process control system (PCS) is the primary system driving all procedural batch activity within a pharmaceutical process. In this architecture, the PCS ISA-88 procedural model must...
Plant Reliability and the Industrial Internet of Things
Tools and methodologies to improve plant reliability have existed for many years. Examples include criticality analysis, reliability-centered maintenance analysis (RCMA), failure modes, effects, and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA) and root cause failure analysis (RCFA) to...
Focus on the Process in Your Safety Requirements Specification
A safety requirement specification (SRS) for a safety instrumented system (SIS), as part of the IEC 61511 global safety standard [from the exida blog]: …incorporates all the analysis done during the Risk Assessment, HAZOP [hazard and operability study]/PHA [process...
Overcoming Obstacles in Reducing Unplanned Downtime
Unplanned downtime remains the top issue for most process manufacturers and producers. At the ARC Industry Forum, ARC's Craig Resnick led a panel, Strategies to Reduce Downtime and Increase Plant KPIs. Emerson's Will Goetz participated in the panel to discuss the...
Best Practices Specifying MES Workflows for Life Sciences Projects
Author: Jonathan Lustri Manufacturing Execution System (MES) Life Sciences projects can be costly and be a challenge to keep in control. The biggest contributor to these challenges are the defining and design of manufacturing workflows. A Workflow is an MES procedural...
Non-Intrusive Wireless Corrosion and Erosion Monitoring
A Joint Research Centre (JRC) Scientific and Policy Report, Corrosion‐Related Accidents in Petroleum Refineries, found [emphasis and hyperlink mine]: Notably, of the 137 major refinery accidents reported by EU countries to the EU's eMARS [Major Accident Reporting...
Reducing Equipment Downtime and Improving Energy Efficiency via Wireless Power Monitoring
Equipment failure is a large part of unplanned downtime, slowdowns and/or loss in quality of the product being produced. Monitoring temperatures, vibration, differential pressures across filters are often performed to identify problems before failure occurs. Another...
Culturally Shifting to Top Quartile Reliability Performance
Whether driving down the road in your car or operating your manufacturing facility, the safest times are when operating at steady-state conditions. It's the times in transient states, such as startups, shutdowns, turning at intersections, etc. where the probability of...
Maximizing Plant Asset Performance
In the face of scarce capital for manufacturers and producers across many industries, optimizing the performance of existing assets often increases in priority. In an ARC Advisory Group whitepaper, Driving Maximum Asset Capability (summary), author Dick Hill notes: In...
Module-Based Automation in NAMUR NE 148
The NAMUR (User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries) is: …an international association of user companies (established in 1949) and represents their interests concerning automation technology. NAMUR numbers over 140 member companies. NAMUR...
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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.