Yokogawa Participates in ARC Forum 2009

Despite the dismal global outlook looming on the horizon, more than 450 attendees were present for the 13th annual ARC Strategy Forum February 2-5 at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, Florida. The Yokogawa Electric Corporation and Yokogawa Corporation of America leadership teams used the time to meet with top Yokogawa customers like ExxonMobil, Valero, and Savannah River.

Under the theme of “Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Sustainable Manufacturing,” Yokogawa's press conference and showcase table at the exhibition featured highlights of the intelligent remote terminal unit (RTU), the tunable diode laser (TDL) analyzer, and the new Real-time Production Organizer (RPO). At the showcase table, the TDL helped to attract customers such as ExxonMobil, Boeing, Hatch, and General Motors.

This is the fourth consecutive year that Yokogawa has participated in the forum as a Gold Sponsor. In 2005, Isao Uchida announced Yokogawa's intention to be the global No. 1 by 2010. This began a fast-paced growth for Yokogawa Corporation of America and is felt to be the starting point for improved awareness of Yokogawa in North America. Yokogawa Corporation of America's business has been growing steadily – expanding in market share and striking fear in the eyes of our competitors. Many important Yokogawa IA marketing campaigns such as VigilantPlant®, Safety Excellence, Asset Excellence, and Production Excellence have been launched at this forum.

The ARC Forum's general session concluded with a very interesting CEO Q&A roundtable discussion. During this session, Dennis Sadlowski of Siemens, Mr. Kaihori, Christopher Curtis of Schneider Electric, Angel Mendez of Cisco Systems, and Franz-Josef Kersting of BASF each took turns answering a variety of end user questions from the audience pertaining to environmental and business sustainability.

The questions asked included:
- What technology do you see in the next 5-10 years?
- What is your customer telling you and what are you doing in the next 6-12 months?
- How do you reduce system maintenance costs?
- Will there be any IT investment in automation?
- How do you train/motivate people?

End users, media representatives, and Yokogawa partners joined us at the Yokogawa Gold Sponsorship Breakfast to learn about “Solutions for Sustainable Manufacturing” from Mr. Kaihori. A total of 80 people attended the breakfast.

Other events sponsored by Yokogawa included two customer dinners.

On February 2, Mr. Kaihori, Mr. Kurosu, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Gaas, and Mr. Knittel joined Dr. J.D. Tate of Dow Chemical at Roy's Hawaiian Fusion Restaurant to discuss the TDL and Yokogawa's future relationship with Dow.

Dr. Tate leads technology development in the Process Analytical R&D Group at Dow, where he has oversight responsibilities for identifying gaps and opportunities for online measurement and control. Before joining Dow, he worked as a scientist at Sparta, Inc., leading research efforts involving optical biosensors for commercial and defense applications. Dr. Tate is recognized as an expert in online spectrometry, installing hundreds of analyzers used to monitor important industrial processes.

Yokogawa's second dinner, the Yokogawa President's Dinner, took place on February 3 at Arthur's 27, a restaurant atop the Wyndham Hotel. Here, ExxonMobil, Savannah River, Nova Chemical, and Valero met with Yokogawa's leadership team to discuss present and future relationships. For Yokogawa, this President's dinner is one of the best customer events at ARC. This year's VIP guests included Sandy Vasser, Michael Sarli, Craig Schiro, Thomas Alloway, Stephen Russell, Jin Guram, Dale Nicosia, and Gary Youll.

Editors from Control Engineering, Control, Industry Week, InTech, Maintenance Technologies, Managing Automation, Manufacturing Business Technology, Plant Engineering, Reed Business Information, and many others attended the Yokogawa press conference. Mr. Kurosu presented the roadmap of the new RPO.