Yokogawa Corporation of America recently concluded its Sixth annual Industrial Automation (IA) Conference and Exhibition Aug 30 - Sept 1, 2005 at the Capital Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C.  Emphasizing its “Clear Path to Operational Excellence” theme, highlights of its products and corporate developments were featured including its Vigilance™ campaign, which defines Yokogawa’s corporate culture, business style, and values as a company and as a people, and VigilantPlant™, which defines Yokogawa’s deliverables to the market.  Yokogawa hosted its largest group yet - approximately 200 professionals who shared their experiences of utilizing Yokogawa products and services. The agenda included Yokogawa presentations, theme-based workshops, learning seminars and an exhibition that included all Yokogawa IA systems and products as well as other complimentary solution partners.

“The Conference and Exhibition is vital for Yokogawa because it provides a means to present Yokogawa's direction in industrial automation as well as gather feedback from our users for our products and services so that we can improve our ability to exceed their expectations,” said Bruce Jensen, Manager, Systems Marketing and Sales Support. “Our users see it as a way to learn about what’s coming down the pike as well as to network with each other and share common interests. They provide invaluable feedback for product enhancements that will satisfy their business needs and help in prioritizing those improvements for the U.S. market.”

Continues Tom Craig, Chairman of Yokogawa’s Steering Committee – “The 2005 meeting continued a path of growth for the Conference and Exhibition. Participation from members grew in number and in the breadth of End-user companies represented. The quality and content of the presentations improved, generating, I believe, more value for all involved. The meeting still provides an ideal opportunity to share information with Yokogawa and other users- learning new ways to exploit past investments in Yokogawa automation & control technology, as well as discover effective means for future improvements. The steering committee welcomes everyone's input to that end.”

A reception held Monday evening welcomed the participants.

The conference began Tuesday with a General Assembly where attendees were presented with Yokogawa’s corporate direction - an introduction to Vigilance and VigilantPlant campaigns.  Speaking in the main ballroom under the seal of the President of the United States, keynote speaches were given on Operational Excellence in Execution by ExxonMobil, and a Journey to Operation Excellence by Shell.  They were followed by two other excellent addresses by Dr. Charlie Cutler, a member of the Process Automation Hall of Fame, and one of the fathers of Advanced Process Control, who gave a look into the future of APC; and Mark Peters, publisher of Hydrocarbon Processing magazine, who presented an outlook into the future of the oil and energy business.  The session culminated with the presentation of Yokogawa’s technology award.  Given to a person and company who provided product input in a previous user group conference that lead to a major product release, the 2005 technology award was presented to Deon Rae of Chevron for driving the direction of Yokogawa’s Plant Resource Manger to a real-time device maintenance and management diagnostic product achieved with the release of PRM R2.10.

Following lunch, the attendees heard product roadmaps from instrumentation, analytical, networking, systems, asset management and productivity solutions groups with numersous announcements of new products, new features, and new capabilities. Featured among them were removable electrodes in an Admag magmeter, multivariate pressure transmitter, new analytical devices, a multi-media demonstration of cold and vibration testing of a data acquisition product, a new SmartPlant bi-directional data exchange engine that with instrument database, a TDC migration station, an intelligent alarm management software product, and an improved diagnostics engine for its asset mangement product.

The evening was capped with an event featured a riverboat cruise on the Potomac the Odyssey featuring live music.

The second day featured workshops based around themes of Asset Management, Alarm Management, Networking, and Enterprise Management.  These workshops included presentations by Yokogawa experts, users, suppliers and featured, world renown speakers such as Dave Glazner of Foundation Fieldbus and Ron Helson of HART Communication Foundation who spoke in the Asset Management Workshop, Dennis Brandl – key contributor for ISA’s S95 Enterprise – Control Integration standards, who presented on the value of standards to integration in the Enterprise Integration workshop.

Thursday featured additional workshops on Integrated Production Control and Safety Management.  The safety session featured Vic Maggioli –United States representative on the International Standards bodies who spoke on the impact of the IEC standards on Functional Safety for the industry. 

The User’s then held a “User Only” session whereby they discussed Yokogawa performance toward user requests from previous user group meetings as well as prioritizing new items.

The steering committee then awarded a best presentation of the workshop sessions to Jim Davis of Piedmont Triad Computer Consulting for his presentation on “Using the CS3000 Alarms and Events Server from Visual Basic 6”.

During the breaks and throughout the event an exhibition was open to allow users an opportunity to discuss their automation situations with experts and to see the latest products from Yokogawa and their solution partners. The 4-monitor sit-stand motor operated console and valve diagnostic demos were the most popular.

The conference concluded with the User’s Report to Yokogawa, presentations of user requests for Yokogawa product development and other initiatives, and announcement of the 2006 Steering Committee.  The Yokogawa Steering Committee consists of Matt Arcy, Chevron – Chairman, Doug Tittle, PPG – Vice chairman, Don fowler, Shell Chemicals, Wayne Yacey, KonicaMinolta, Chuck Fortner, Precision Engineering, and Eric Branson, Solvay.