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Connected Plant Show Preview 2019

| By Mary Page Bailey

The 2019 Connected Plant Conference (www.connectedplantconference.com) is being held February 19–21 in Charlotte, N.C. The event will bring together experts from around the globe to discuss the practical implementation of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and other digital technologies in the chemical process industries (CPI) and the energy sector. The conference will kick off with the “Introduction to All Things IIoT Workshop” and will continue over the next two days with a comprehensive program covering risk management, asset optimization, security, maintenance, meeting customer needs and much more. The event will conclude with a panel of end users discussing their experiences with digitalization, including input from DuPont (Wilmington, Del.; www.dupont.com), Covestro AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.covestro.com), Black & Veatch (Overland Park, Kan.; www.bv.com), Siemens AG (Munich, Germany; www.siemens.com) and more. The Connected Plant Conference also includes exhibitors who will showcase their newest IIoT technology offerings. The following is a small selection of the digital technologies offered by the 2019 Connected Plant exhibitors.

Seeq

This analytics platform features customizable data scorecards

R21 (photo) is the latest release of this company’s analytics platform for process manufacturing, including chemicals, petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, mining and more. New R21 features reflect both the growing need to share analytics-based insights across organizations, and the increased complexity of the use cases where engineers need to analyze process data. For publishing insights, R21 offers expanded “scorecards,” a feature for the display of calculated tables used for tabulated metrics, measurements and other summary data. Scorecards may be presented in tables with conditional formatting support and user-defined columns. R21 also adds frequency-analysis capabilities, often referred to as “FFT,” to transform segments of a time-series signal into the frequency domain. Users access the frequency analysis tool via an intuitive panel that guides them through the transformation process and displays results as a power spectrum, or they can access FFT functionality as a formula in the R21 scripting environment. Booth 306 — Seeq Corp., Seattle, Wash.

www.seeq.com

Gardline Communications

Global satellite communications targeted for industrial users

This company provides satellite communication equipment for voice, data, email and IIoT, specializing in satellite phones, fixed and mobile communication systems, satellite-integrated supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), system monitoring and asset tracking (photo). The 9555 Satellite Phone provides voice and texting capabilities, and is lightweight, rugged and easy to carry. The company’s BGAN Portable Office system enables internet service in remote locations with voice and high-speed data capabilities for one or several people. Booth 304 — Gardline Communications (GComm), Houston

www.g-comm.us

 

 

Schneider Electric

This control software simplifies commissioning

EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS Control Software 7.1 (photo) is designed to improve the realtime efficiency, cybersecurity, reliability and profitability of assets and operations. New features of this software release bring the EcoStruxure Field Device Expert suite of functions, which includes: the Intelligent Commissioning Wizard, which can reportedly reduce commissioning time by up to 75%; the Device Replacement Wizard, which greatly simplifies replacement and commissioning of HART devices; and the Bundled HART DD library, which eliminates version mismatch and cybersecurity risks. Version 7.1 also increases reliability with realtime asset-health condition monitoring and the Control Editors Activity Monitor, which is designed to enhance communication and collaboration across the workplace. EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS Control Software 7.1 runs on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, to ensure flexibility and robust cybersecurity. Booth 310 — Schneider Electric, Foxboro, Mass.

www.schneider-electric.us

Digital insights into critical heat-exchanger operation

OMNI is a digital platform designed to improve critical heat-exchanger performance. OMNI can predict fouling and operational issues, prevent unscheduled outages and prolong runtimes and asset life, says the manufacturer. The platform combines water- and process-side data, which are run through a secure, Microsoft-powered calculation engine. The data are analyzed in realtime, while a team of engineers monitor the data continuously for irregularities. The information is displayed on a powerful dashboard that provides realtime access to the assets across an organization. An onsite simulation system matches the exact conditions of users’ heat exchangers to provide a realistic view of conditions. Lastly, this company’s audit team reviews the entire plant annually to monitor the overall health of the complete water system. Booth 202 — Nalco Water, an Ecolab Company, Naperville, Ill.

www.ecolab.com/nalco-water

TrendMiner

New recommendation engine enables root-cause analyses

ContextHub is a new suite of capabilities available with Version 2018.R2, the latest release of this company’s self-service analytics software (photo). ContextHub is said to significantly increases the flexibility of annotation, providing experts new insights into their data. ContextHub is a repository, search engine and collaboration platform for context items that can be neatly aligned to assets, processes and events. The platform can be configured for the context itself to become a new dataset that can be both visualized and analyzed. It also serves as a starting point for time-series analytics. Other new features in Version 2018.R2 include a related context item search for fast filtering of time-series data and further extensions to the Recommendation Engine machine-learning tool, which helps to speed up root-cause analysis of process anomalies. Booth 103 — TrendMiner N.V., Hasselt, Belgium

www.trendminer.com

Fero Labs

Machine learning speeds up analytics projects

This company provides actionable machine-learning software technologies for chemical processors to improve plant yield, increase product quality and better understand root causes of production issues. According to the company, advanced analytics projects that can typically span several weeks or months can be conducted within hours using this software tool. The software is designed so that no prior data-science expertise is required for use. The data-cleaning and machine-learning model-generation steps are automated so that users can spend more time taking action to improve processes. Booth 101 — Fero Labs, New York, N.Y.

www.ferolabs.com

 

 

 

Siemens

This VR platform is now accessible on mobile devices

The Comos Walkinside virtual-reality (VR) platform (photo) for operating, training and simulation has recently been integrated with the PureWeb Platform. The PureWeb Platform provides comprehensive tools for remotely accessing, delivering and interacting with 2-D and 3-D models in real time. This enables Comos Walkinside viewers to realistically depict highly complex plant models in several dimensions using any web browser or mobile device. Integration of the platforms enables powerful rendering on a server and secure delivery of the images to a web browser or mobile device as part of an interactive stream, achieving a high level of image fidelity. This allows simultaneous collaboration from disparate geographic locations in real time, also creating new workflows for Comos Walkinside that were not possible before, says the company. Booth 203 — Siemens AG, Munich, Germany

www.siemens.com