Yokogawa Electric Corporation has been working to meet the ever increasing and diversifying needs of users by introducing new products and services as well as by stimulating its various global activities. This serves to strengthen the organization and enable it to propose and supply the best solutions to its customers. To clarify the basis for its recent expansion and to indicate the direction of its future systems business, Yokogawa has officially introduced a new concept, "Enterprise Technology Solutions."
New Concept
What do users with a plant or factory operation require these days of control-systems suppliers? They require not merely a production control system and the associated engineering service, but also the most effective, optimal, and comprehensive system designed specifically for each particular plant or factory. From a management point of view, under the idea of enterprise resource planning, they must know how to operate their facilities efficiently in a well-planned manner.
This new concept illustrates Yokogawa's latest focus on its systems business. That is, the company is not limiting itself to products and services that traditionally have merely helped in configuring plant and factory control systems; rather, Yokogawa is supplying a variety of flexible and integrated products and services. What this means is, depending on the degree of planned operator supervision, the user can configure the plantOs or factoryOs information system accordingly. This is in addition to the already broad range of functions provided, from the advanced control, simulation, and other functions of production support systems to those of diverse field instruments installed on site. In fulfilling user expectations and requirements from the standpoint of enterprise operation, Yokogawa employs leading-edge technology to supply the best solutions. This is "Enterprise Technology Solutions."
Background
Recent innovations in technology, especially the rapid development of open networks and other forms of information exchange, are making it possible to integrate distributed information systems--not only the control and monitoring systems scattered throughout production sites, but also those at a higher level, such as for production planning and management--by way of a hot link. In tune with this, users are coming to insist on a system that integrates a broad range of functions from the production to management levels and that is also the most efficient and economical as suits the particular facility from the point of view of overall enterprise management. With these changes in attitude and technology in mind, Yokogawa resolved to devise a new basic perspective in its systems business, that is, break away from the traditional limits of control system functions in order to provide a broader range of products and services for users, and to offer the most suitable solutions to each user. This is the basis for "Enterprise Technology Solutions."
In accordance with this resourceful notion, Yokogawa:
- incorporates every function possible in a facility's operations into a module using state-of-the-art technology;
- from the point of view of overall enterprise management
- to provide a user with the most effective and suitable solutions for that facility.
New Concept Leading to Exhanced Business Opportunities
Yokogawa has already begun expanding its systems business based on "Enterprise Technology Solutions." For example, regarding enterprise resource planning systems, i.e., upper-level information management systems, Yokogawa has already prepared interfaces that allow connection of the world-prevalent SAP R/3 and SCAW-CIM software packages to Yokogawa's distributed control systems and factory automation client/server systems. In particular, Yokogawa has already been approved by SAP S.A. as an implementation partner for R/3.
In respect to advanced packages for process control, Yokogawa and Aspen Technology, Inc., in the US, which has the largest market share in the world, have concluded an agreement to combine efforts in sales. This puts Yokogawa in the vanguard to supply multi-variable predictive control, database, and production management support functions for process automation. In another field, Yokogawa together with Mitsui Toatsu, Inc. has formed Omega Simulation Corporation to offer simulators for training at process plants. And in April, Yokogawa acquired GTI Industrial Automation B.V., the worldOs leading supplier of industrial safeguarding systems. These strides in YokogawaOs systems business all fit in well with the new concept.
Yokogawa has always been aware that each individual customer in every single industry has unique requirements, and that the obligation to serve each and every one depends on the company's ability to provide a complete assortment of seamless, yet flexible, components that can be brought together to provide solutions as best befits the customer and industry. With its strong commitment to "Enterprise Technology Solutions," Yokogawa will continue in its efforts to develop ultimate solutions for incomparable customer satisfaction.
Yokogawa is now, and in the future will be, expanding globally in balance with the new concept by offering systems, products, software, services, and diverse business alliances in the fields of process automation and factory automation.
