Yokogawa's 5th European User Conference

Operational Excellence, technology partnerships and new wireless developments

View of General Session

The 5th Yokogawa User Conference and Automation Fair, held in the Netherlands from the 23rd to 24th June 2010, attracted a total of 150+ delegates from 15 countries and featured contributions from many of the leading worldwide players in the oil & gas, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and power industries. Yokogawa also used the conference as a launching pad for the company’s new generation of wireless products based on the ISA100.11a standard.

Two venues

For the first time in the history of the Yokogawa User Conferences, which have been held every two years in different European cities since the first event in 2002, the event was held across two venues: the Novotel in Amsterdam and Yokogawa’s new European headquarters in Amersfoort.


Yokogawa’s new European headquarters	The Novotel hotel

This year’s theme ‘The benefits of Operational Excellence’,and topics were covered in the conference and reflected organisational and human aspects of the automation sector as well as technical presentations. As the Committee’s Chairman, Robert Ytsma of Kisuma Chemicals, commented: “ As users we are confronted more and more with safety in our plants, an aging workforce, upgrading and migration, network security and the urge to apply continuous improvements in overall efficiency and productivity, all key business drivers. During the conference, users are able to learn and share experiences of how to apply Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant solutions and their business partner’s expertise in dealing with these challenges.”

The current business climate was referred to by the President of Yokogawa Europe B.V., Harry Hauptmeijer, in his opening address: “Following the Lehman collapse more than two years ago, prospects for 2009 were bleak. In fact we found ourselves in the worst recession in 80 years. It has been a difficult time for everyone in the industry. Recovery will come, but it is difficult to predict when and in what form. Yokogawa has taken measures to safeguard investor’s interests, the support of our customer’s delivery and quality metrics and the company’s employees. Recent events have strongly impacted the business operations and have forced companies to make optimum use of their assets, and Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant solutions, supported by our Business Partners, are helping our customers to deal with these challenges and meet their business targets while ensuring safe operations and regulatory compliance.”

Harry Hauptmeijer, President of Yokogawa Europe B.V.

Harry Hauptmeijer,
President of Yokogawa Europe B.V.

Keynote speakers

Keynote speakers included:

Dr. Werner Kreuz of A.T.Kearney, whose presentation was entitled ‘Is operational excellence the key to success and to competitiveness for European Companies?’. He showed how the concepts of Operational Excellence can be utilised to optimise an organisation’s performance.
Dr. André Overmeyer of Merck Serono gave a presentation subtitled ‘Two company histories, three languages, four cultures’, which described how his company with its diverse multilingual workforce had successfully implemented a large-scale biotech production plant in Switzerland.
David Godinaud of Saint-Gobain Glass described how to drive engineering improvement through a DCS excellence programme, with particular emphasis on how his company has worked with Yokogawa as a Global Alliance Partner to implement DCS systems throughout Saint-Gobain’s production facilities worldwide.
Mervyn Currie of BP gave a presentation entitled ‘Safety always No.1’ which, in addition to describing implementation of Safety Instrumented Systems throughout his organisation, focused on the safety culture that is adhered to within BP.
Tim Cook of Shell talked about Shell’s approach to technical training to solve current and future business needs. He covered the subject comprehensively from training and learning needs analysis, through the ways of closing competence gaps, skills assessment, to the future landscape of learning.

Other speakers included Yokogawa personnel presenting some of the latest developments within the company, and users outlining their experience of implementing projects using Yokogawa solutions. There were also a number of workshops and breakout sessions covering a variety of topics.

Automation Fair

The Automation Fair, held in the Yokogawa European headquarters at Amersfoort, covered the concept of VigilantPlant for safe, reliable and profitable plant operations, and featured Yokogawa’s solutions in the form of Safety Excellence, Asset Excellence and Production Excellence. Yokogawa’s Business Partners mounted their own individual displays to show their own contributions to each of these sectors.


Automation Fair

Wireless launch

A major feature of the 5th European User Conference was the launch of Yokogawa’s field wireless devices based on the ISA100.11a industrial wireless communications standard. At the international press conference the benefits of wireless technology were emphasized for field device and control system applications.