Yokogawa User Conference in Spain

Yokogawa Europe held its 4th biennial user conference at the very elegant Hotel Rey Juan Carlos 1 in Barcelona, Spain on September 23 - 26, 2008. With the steering committee, we put together a varied and interesting program for over 150 users from all over Europe and Africa. Besides the usual presentations from users and Yokogawa, at this year's conference our business partners were invited to discuss their integration solutions with Yokogawa.

The theme “Delivering the Promise of Operational Excellence” chosen by Yokogawa and the steering committee reflects the new development in the backbone of the VigilantPlant initiative.

The technology fair demonstrated the integration of 16 business partners into the Yokogawa offering of VigilantPlant solutions. The concept “Walk the VigilantPlant Path” led users through the initiatives of Safety, Asset, and Production Excellence to the Operational Excellence platform of CENTUM VP.

The charter for the user conference states: “To provide a platform to facilitate, stimulate, and optimize the transfer of information for the mutual benefit of Yokogawa end users, and the Yokogawa organization.” At this year's conference we invited the European press; some 20 editors participated, and on Thursday afternoon (September 25) a short press conference was arranged. Also a first was a round table forum on Friday for a small group of visionary users with Toshiaki Shirai, Senior Vice President, and Dr. Maurice Wilkins, Vice President of IA Global Marketing. This initiative was very much appreciated by these key customers and is worth repeating at other such events.

All in all it was a very successful conference for users, business partners, and Yokogawa. We will shortly start planning for the 2010 conference.