Exaquantum Traveling Sales Diary

It may be too late to say season’s greetings and wish you a happy new year. How did you spend the holidays? Through December and January, I traveled less frequently but the task load on each trip was heavier than ever before. You may wonder what I have been up to. It involves the multivariable analysis method that I introduced in entry No. 10 of my diary. I have been visiting customers around Japan to promote this method by suggesting how they could use it to address various problems. This multivariable analysis method is almost useless when a plant is running smoothly and is experiencing no major failures with production processes or equipment. However, the reality is that such plants are a rarity, and I am convinced that this multivariable analysis method would work well anywhere.

Haven't you ever heard similar stories at your plant? Just because a cook is very good does not mean that he will always cook a dish exactly the same way, right down to using the same number of grains of salt or some other seasoning. How it is heated or how long it is fried can vary slightly. A skilled cook takes all those tiny differences into consideration and brings everything to a perfect balance. The variety and amount of the ingredients and seasonings, the heating temperature and time, the speed with which it is stirred, and other variables all determine the final taste of the fried rice. If this balance is not achieved, or if the person's "sensors" are malfunctioning, it is certain that the fried rice will taste differently.

In industrial plants, almost all the controls such as volume, temperature, time, and mixing speed are automated by a DCS or PLC, and every control object is adjusted within a pre-defined threshold. Even so, you may come across situations where quality varies and you cannot pinpoint the problem. You know that it has nothing to do with the DCS or PLC and believe that a deficiency in operator skills or a failure of a measurement sensor may be at fault. The DCS can diagnose a sensor failure, but it cannot tell you what caused the failure or identify whether some difference in the expertise and skills of the individual operators is at fault. That\'s not the role of the DCS. Aside from that, it is only human beings who seek to improve quality or increase efficiency. For instance, you may be aware that all machines may break down sooner or later and face a choice between checking them periodically or simply repairing them when they fail. Wouldn\'t it be better if you could rest assured that the machine would notify you of an impending malfunction several hours in advance and, providing such an alarm has not been issued, rely on it to function well and operate at peak efficiency?

At a pulp & paper mill, the workers were concerned about large variations in the quality of the paper coming from a machine that produces paper from wood pulp. The problem had been a concern for several years and they had asked the service department of the paper machine’s manufacturer to investigate it. But nobody could spot the root cause and the quality issue remained unsolved. When I analyzed the machine data using the multivariable analysis method, I immediately found out that the cause was improper tuning of the control equipment, not the paper machine itself. This customer was very impressed by how quickly we pinpointed the problem cause.

At a polymer plant, the operators needed to judge when to perform a chain termination operation that stops a polymerization reaction when the desired polymer quality is reached. Some operators would make this decision based on torque loading. There was even a Meister (master) operator who had learned how to make this decision by observing the smoke coming out from the reactor and calling out “Now!” at the right point. What if we could save the data from several of these operations where the Meister calls out “Now!” and compare this data with the data coming from the polymerization process in real time? That way, when similar data is produced, an operator guidance message could be displayed at a DCS terminal and even less experienced operators would be able to duplicate the results achieved by this Meister. Or, they could set standard operating guidelines based on this Meister’s technique and use them to see how far other operators were deviating from this. Some of them joked that managers might be able to use this to set operator wages.

The multivariable analysis method could also be applied to find out the causes for poor energy efficiency by comparing the energy consumption data from operations that have high and low energy efficiency. It could also be used to automatically determine when maintenance should be performed on equipment that operates continuously for long periods. This is only the tip of the iceberg. I am willing to work hard day and night to gain experience in analyzing a wide variety of problems with processes and equipment and developing functions that can generate alarms when a process imbalance occurs or predict equipment failures. No matter how thorough skilled operators may be in instructing others, there are still some things that they will miss. There are also cases where operators do exactly as they are told, but still things do not go as planned. Some called this profound knowledge of a Meister that borders on an intuitive 6th sense “deep smarts.” The task of this multivariable analysis method is to translate the knowledge behind these “deep smarts” (DS) into numeric figures so as to be able to visualize the differences between and the causes of failures. Maybe we could call this the “Yokogawa-DS.” If anyone reading this is struggling to get to the bottom of a problem with some process or a piece of equipment, don’t hesitate to contact me. I will travel to the other side of the world, if necessary, and nothing would make me happier than to have a steady queue of people waiting for consultation.

A new year has just begun. I will be running all over this country, from one end to the other, Exaquantum in hand, introducing and promoting the benefits of this package to our customers. I hope that the year 2010 brings you all prosperity and happiness!

Yaki-tori

I am based in Tokyo, and I travel mostly around the Kanto region that extends outward from the greater Tokyo area. But I also go quite often to Osaka. In entry No. 8 of my diary I introduced that city's okonomiyaki (pan-fried pan cake) and tako-yaki (octopus dumplings). There are many more foods that I love such as a kind of kushi-katsu (deep-fried kabobs) that should never be dipped more than once into the sauce pot. However, there are some areas in that city where not a single restaurant specializing in those dishes can be found. If I stay at some inconveniently located hotel then it’s too much trouble to have to search around for Osaka cuisine. I hate to spend a lot of time looking for a hotel in a good location, finding out how to get there, and seeing if there are any good restaurants nearby. So, unless it is totally out of the way from my work destination, I always stay at the same hotel. It is near the train station, has Internet access, has bidet toilets, and convenience stores and restaurants are all available nearby. It is located in Nishinakajima, near the Shin-Osaka bullet train station. It is a relatively small district with lots of shops and restaurants. I'm a regular at a small okonomiyaki restaurant, a kushi-katsu restaurant run by a chef who used to work at a famous hotel, and a bar that has a great variety of cheap foods.

This restaurant in Nishinakajima opened about one year ago. It serves charcoal grilled yaki-tori (skewered chicken) and uses only jidokko (free-range chickens) from Miyazaki prefecture and the Tanba area (both are well-known chicken production areas in Japan). I went to the restaurant as soon as I heard about it because I love chicken. This chain restaurant is one of 10 such establishments in Osaka, and I was more than satisfied with the quality and variety of its dishes and with the good service. In no time I was a regular there.

They feature Miyazaki free range chickens, with grilled legs and chicken tartare being their main dishes. But the portions for both those dishes are rather large for one person and they also are a bit costly. But I　soon forgot my annoyance when I discovered that they serve yaki-tori made from fresh meat for just 120 to 150 yen a skewer. Many yaki-tori restaurants will only allow customers to order two skewers at a time of the same kind of yaki-tori, but not this one. I can order one at a time. There is a great variety of yaki-tori there, some of which I've never heard of. Some are served rare or medium because they are confident about its freshness. For those of you who are familiar with yaki-tori, they even know what “seseri” and “kokoro” mean. But for someone not so familiar with this, going to a restaurant like this is like going to a sushi bar where you cannot even order because you don’t know the names of the fish! Seseri is the meat from around the neck, which is tough and muscular as chickens move their necks a lot. Kokoro, or hatsu as it is often called, is the chicken heart. They serve it when it is very nearly well-done. If we were talking percentages, I'd say that it's “95% well-done.” That slight difference from being nearly well done makes the meat softer and more delicious.

The Kimo, or liver, is served when it is cooked to medium doneness. If well done, it would taste dry and be crumbly. But at medium doneness, it has a light and almost fluffy texture and it melts in the mouth. In this restaurant, I tasted segimo for the first time. Do you know what that is? Even after I ate it, I could not figure out what it was, and so I asked the chef. It’s kidney. It tastes half like meat, half like the internal organ that it is. It has a slight bitter taste, but it is a quite welcome accent that goes well with sake (rice wine). Be careful not to eat too much as it will sit heavy on the stomach.

I start feeling full after eating 10 skewers of yaki-tori that cost only 120 to 150 yen apiece, or no more than 1,500 yen in total. This is still in the comfort range price-wise. I usually conclude my dinners on the road with a bowl of rice or something similar. They have several kinds of rice dishes including chicken rice, a chicken bowl, and chicken porridge. My favourite one is a rice and egg bowl, and I fell in love with it the first time I had it. This is a bowl of rice served with a raw orange-colored egg yolk from a free-range chicken, sliced green onions, strips of seaweed, and a soy sauce broth, and it comes together with a cup of chicken soup for 368 yen. The mixture of egg, soy sauce, and onions on rice tastes much like a more expensive chicken and egg rice bowl.

After getting used to eating medium-rare yaki-tori, I tried a mixed platter of sashimi (raw) chicken – 1,050 yen. I ordered it out of curiosity at how the rare chicken would taste, as the medium-rare dishes had been wonderful. So far I had only tried rare white chicken meat. Arranged on this platter were zuri (gizzard), heart, leg, and liver along with wasabi (Japanese horseradish), ginger, garlic, and mustard. They all were absolutely delicious, especially the heart. In my mouth it almost felt like it would start beating. It was that fresh. After I swallowed it, it had a slightly sweet aftertaste. There still are people who think Japanese are strange to eat raw fish. I wonder if it is only the Japanese who eat chicken raw. Anyway, of all the thousands of yaki-tori restaurants in Tokyo, I have never come across one with the same quality. Recently, however, this restaurant chain opened a branch in Ebisu, Tokyo. Why don’t you visit one of their restaurants in Tokyo or Osaka?