Yokogawa Corporation of America Technology Fair & Users Conference a Success

Although the global economy and the H1N1 (swine) flu had caused stutters in the start-up of projects for customers and a slowdown in travel restrictions, it seemed inconceivable to Yokogawa Corporation of America (YCA) that the 2009 Technology Fair & Users Conference was in doubt.
"We're the band," said Bruce Jensen, Manager, Systems Marketing & Sales Support and Co-Chairman of the Users Conference. "We play no matter what."
Approximately 350 attendees and an 80's music band named The Spazmatics showed up to attend the conference held May 19-21 at the InterContinental Hotel in Houston, TX.

The conference began with a General Session Tuesday morning that featured a challenge from Terry Jones, founder & former CEO of Travelocity.com. "Innovation will be the driver to get companies out of the economic slump," he said. "It is the fresh thinking that creates value." Jones also warned attendees of "the "Dopeler" Effect - the tendency of stupid ideas to sound smarter when they come at you rapidly" and the "Bozeone" Layer, "where middle management stops bright ideas from getting implemented".

Others speaking during the opening morning session included David Johnson, President & CEO; Matt Arcy, Chevron, and Steering Committee Chairman; and Bruce Jensen, General Manager, Systems Sales & Marketing. Johnson talked about the growth of Yokogawa outside of Japan and the success of some alternative marketing initiatives like the VPVan, the Company's regional mobile demo unit. Jensen presented the annual Technology Innovation Award and the 2008 Best Presentation Award.

The second day of the conference began in a short General Session. Jensen presented Yokogawa's technology roadmaps. David Lassiter of Microsoft showed his company's vision of the plant of the future. Mark Peters, publisher of Hydrocarbon Processing magazine, informed attendees of the HPI (Hydrocarbon Processing Industry) report.

The Users Conference was a two-and-one-half day event held away from the hustle and bustle of the Technology Fair and the hotel's traffic flow. The conference featured six technical session groups separated into five tracks and identified as workshop sessions, presentation sessions or tutorial sessions.

Topics ranged from alarm management to upstream solutions and wireless management.

Small, but focused on automation, the Technology Fair reverted back to basics.

"We had to find a way to keep it simple," said Con Lau, General Manager, Marketing. "How to impress with knowledge and content but, still have that first impression be a "wow"."

The "wow" came from several areas. Large banner flags in a variety of colors identified individual sections and provided more visibility to product offerings. Customers and press commented on the knowledge of attending personnel and a new toy called SCADAbot.

"One of the cool things at the Technology Fair is an illustration that Yokogawa isn't just a field instrument company that also makes one of the best "monolithic" DCS systems around." said Walt Boyes, editor of Control magazine, in one of his daily blogs. "I was standing in the middle of the room when a little yellow and blue car went screaming past my ankles...it was a bird, it was a plane...no it was SCADABOT!"

An electronic car controlled by the STARDOM RTU-FCN, SCADAbot demonstrates STARDOM's unique capabilities including its remote connections.

Three product training seminars were held during the conference. "A Practical Guide to Ethernet IP, a hands-on class with live instruments" - was held Wednesday morning. "TDLS", held on Wednesday, focused on the Yokogawa TDLS200 (Tunable Diode Laser Spectrometer) and a brief review of the other two products (TDLS500 and Advanced Reflux Sampler (ARS)) manufactured by the Yokogawa Laser Analysis Division. On Thursday, "FieldMate", a course designed to discuss and demonstrate the value-add features of Yokogawa's versatile device management tool, was featured.

The software is based on Control Station's award-winning Loop-Pro Product Suite and integrates seamlessly with CENTUM. The application applies the CS 3000's standard tag structure to access critical loop information, including existing tuning coefficients, controller spans, and the associated algorithm.

"The relationship with Yokogawa Corporation of America aligns two leading automation innovators," shared Control Station's President, Dennis Nash. "Integrating our state-of-the-art process modeling and controller design technologies with Yokogawa's highly reliable production control solutions presents end-users with immediate opportunities to optimize plant performance. This is essential to providing them with a sustainable competitive advantage."



More information:
For more information on this or other Yokogawa Corporation of America Technology Fair & Users Conferences, please contact us at <info@us.yokogawa.com> or go to www.yokogawa.com/us/usergroup