The 2020 Connected Plant Conference (www.connectedplantconference.com) is being held February 25–27 in Atlanta, Ga. Focused on the practical implementation of industrial internet of things (IIoT) and other digital technologies in the chemical process industries (CPI) and the energy sector, the event’s conference program will discuss digitalization as it relates to a wide variety of industrially relevant topics, including maintenance, risk management, process safety, security and more. The event will kick off with a tour of GE Power’s Monitoring and Diagnostics Center in Atlanta, where attendees can observe a control center whose daily processing load includes 200 billion data points from one million connected sensors in 75 different countries. The conference program includes presentations and panel discussions from digitalization experts at a wide variety of CPI companies, including Georgia-Pacific, Petronas, ExxonMobil, Evonik, 3M, Dow, Lonza and more. Digital innovators will also be honored at the Connected Plant Conference, with the Game Changer Awards that highlight significant achievements and problem-solving using digital tools in industrial facilities. The following is a small selection of the products and services offered by the 2020
Connected Plant exhibitors.
New features in this analytics platform promote collaboration
R22 is the latest release of this company’s analytics platform (photo) for process manufacturing applications, including chemicals, petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, mining and more. New R22 features reflect the need for increased collaboration across large organizations with item-level permissions, significant processing-speed increases and additional collaborative features. For organizations seeking to allow only certain users access to given data, R22 now enables users to specify and enforce permissions on all data items, including data sources, calculated data, assets and so on, in addition to the preexisting level permissions. Users can also view who else is working on a worksheet. R22 also features updates to Scatterplot, which now includes options to add trendlines, color by signal, condition or individual capsule and more. The Forecast Splice function can be used to append forecast data (for example, weather from the newly integrated NOAA database) to decision-making tasks. — Seeq Corp., Seattle, Wash.
Improve enterprise management with digital twins and analytics
This company’s Forge for Industrial system (photo) provides enterprise performance-management solutions for operations technology, improving the way that companies collect, analyze and act on process data. Forge for Industrial converts massive quantities of data from equipment, processes and people into intuitive insights, highlighted with potential economic impact for intelligent business and operations, to enable monitoring of enterprise operations from a single screen. In turn, this helps users optimize the efficiency, effectiveness and safety of their business. Forge for Industrial is designed to be quick and cost-effective to implement, with a hardware- and software-agnostic approach that allows for the use of existing systems. The portable and extensible software solution uses process and asset digital twins, as well as role-based and comprehensive analytics to enable enterprise-wide visibility. — Honeywell International Inc., Charlotte, N.C.
New machine-health platform delivers AI-based insights
The GMH platform integrates advanced wireless sensors (photo) and artificial intelligence (AI) into maintenance and machine-health monitoring, providing users with the ability to convert data into action plans aimed at improving efficiency and preventing breakdowns. The advanced sensors of the GMH platform offer detailed reporting delivered over the web. Data are transferred to a secure cloud platform (which meets ISO 27001 requirements), where a robust algorithm uses measurements, such as vibration and temperature, to detect the slightest variation in equipment optimal performance. Quickly installed using a non-invasive method, GMH sensors feature a temperature measurement range of –40 to 257°F. — Grundfos Pumps Corp., Brookshire, Tex.
Drive business growth through maintenance optimization
This company’s Asset Performance Management (APM) services collect and analyze data from condition-monitoring sources, inspection records and work histories to provide an accurate view of asset health and potential failure modes (photo). With this insight, organizations can develop intelligent asset strategies that effectively mitigate operational risk and prioritize maintenance and inspection resources. Self-learning digital twins can be deployed on critical assets to predict emerging threats early and prescribe mitigating actions. Beyond advanced analytics, the APM solution provides mobile inspection and operator-round technologies aimed at improving the accuracy and efficiency of manual asset-data collection. — GE Digital, San Ramon, Calif.
Wireless, battery-free sensors expand connectivity capabilities
This company’s IIoT solutions combine battery-free, wireless sensors and cloud analytics to enable low-cost smart instrumentation devices with long operational lifetimes (photo). These technologies allow connectivity for industrial assets that were previously too expensive or dangerous to connect. The company’s range of products are designed to monitor steam systems, flare systems and a range of rotating equipment, such as motors, pumps, fans and compressors. — Everactive, Santa Clara, Calif.
Deliver value through data with this connectivity platform
AssetHub is a cloud-based enterprise software platform (photo) that builds and sustains connectivity and visibility into asset and operations data spread across multiple computer systems and facilities. AssetHub connects to and integrates data from a variety of source systems to create one reliable, evergreen enterprise asset model that makes it possible for people across an organization to easily access asset data and gain valuable insights to improve operations. Along with AssetHub technology, this company offers the AF Accelerator Solution, which is a combination of AssetHub with access to the company’s industrial data experts and methodology. In just 12 weeks, with the AF Accelerator program, teams can efficiently initiate AssetHub capabilities into their operating facilities. — Element Analytics, Inc., San Francisco, Calif.
Easy-access trend analysis of time-series data
This company’s software (photo) is based on a high-performance analytics engine that allows users to query data directly, without the support of data scientists. The plug-and-play software adds immediate value upon deployment, eliminating the need for infrastructure investment and long implementation projects. Search, diagnostic and predictive capabilities enable users to speed up root-cause analyses, define optimal processes and configure early warnings to monitor production. The platform also helps team members to capture feedback and leverage knowledge across teams and sites. In addition, this company offers standard integrations with a wide range of historians, such as OSIsoft PI, Yokogawa Exaquantum, AspenTech IP.21, Honeywell PHD, GE Proficy Historian and Wonderware InSQL. — TrendMiner US, Houston
Optimization-focused machine learning brings critical insights
The latest release of this company’s machine-learning process-optimization software (photo, p. 52) features an automated optimization toolkit. This feature enables the software to discover optimal setpoints for important process factors to ensure performance targets are always met. The software automatically cleans and processes data, and with the latest release, multiple data sources can be merged, filtered and processed all within the software, vastly accelerating the software’s data ingestion capabilities. This allows engineers to train more machine-learning analyses in a shorter time period and explore more use cases. The scalability of the software is further reinforced with an expanding list of historian connectors, such as the new OSIsoft PI connector that allows the software to pull data directly from the historians. — Fero Labs, New York, N.Y.
Advanced monitoring and maintenance for pumps
This company’s wireless condition-monitoring system and smart enterprise predictive-maintenance software provides alerts, advanced analysis and automated reporting to prevent failures, increase uptime and extend asset life of pumps. The platform’s wireless temperature and vibration sensors (photo) work with a wireless gateway to securely transmit monitoring data to the cloud for storage and analysis. Authorized users can access real-time and historical data remotely, ensuring that equipment information and analytical tools are readily available wherever users are located. Automated communication when equipment exceeds set alert and alarm levels allows users to facilitate a swift response when problems develop. — Hydro Inc., Chicago, Ill.
Digital insights into critical heat-exchanger operation
OMNI is a digital platform designed to improve performance in heat exchangers (photo). The tool helps predict fouling and operational issues, to prevent unscheduled outages and to 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 real time, while a team of engineers monitor the data continuously for irregularities. The information is displayed on a powerful dashboard that provides real-time access to the assets across an organization. Lastly, this company’s audit team reviews the entire plant annually to monitor the overall health of the complete water system. — Nalco Water, an Ecolab Company, Naperville, Ill.
Demolition services with a focus on compliance and safety
This company performs demolition projects, including environmental assessment and remediation of contamination. The services offered range from selective demolition to retrofit and conversion projects to total site demolition. With experience in numerous industrial sectors, the company’s experts can work with the proper agencies to meet varying compliance measures in different states and regions, include very remote areas. — North American Dismantling Corp. (NADC), Lapeer, Mich.
This smart energy-monitoring tool improves decision making
Enerlytics (photo) is a digital software platform based on IIoT technologies that aims to help plant managers and operators respond optimally to transforming energy markets and meet environmental standards. Enerlytics presents user-built analytics, offering users the autonomy to optimize plant performance, and to make better informed decisions for improved flexibility and financial gain, while enabling a safe, secure and sustainable operations. The scalable tool can process huge amounts of live data to create predictions of future plant asset behavior. Enerlytics can capture data from multiple sources and perform streaming and batch analytics using various “clusters.” This allows users to more efficiently access and manipulate data and share it with a wider team, all on one central dashboard. — Uniper SE, Düsseldorf, Germany