Yokogawa User Conference in Barcelona: Spotlight on Operational Excellence - Process Worldwide

Yokogawa User Conference in Barcelona: Spotlight on Operational Excellence

How do you live up to the promise of Operational Excellence? That was the theme for Yokogawa's fourth EMEA user conference, which took place in Barcelona/Spain in September this year.

Organizers and a Steering Committee of nine users had put together an extensive program of presentations for the period September 23–26 this year. The main themes of the event, where around 150 users from Europe and from the Middle East and the Near East were gathered, were the different aspects of Operational Excellence, Life Cycle Management, Asset Management, and advances in field instrumentation. A further 16 well-known partner companies presented their latest products and services at the accompanying exhibition alongside Yokogawa.

Evolutionary developments

At the accompanying exhibition, a further 16 partner companies presented their products alongside Yokogawa.

In comparison to the mega-events put on by a number of other process automation suppliers, Yokogawa's EMEA user conference falls under the category of "small but perfectly formed"! Ultimately, as Yokogawa's Head of Europe, Harry Hauptmeijer, points out, they can't and won't attempt to take on events of giant proportions, such as Emerson or Honeywell user conferences. Hauptmeijer: "Our customers have already asked us whether we can stay with this still manageable number of participants. This scale allows for more in-depth discussion and therefore creates greater benefit." This benefit was also referred to by the many speakers in different application presentations. But trends and development road maps were also shared.

For example, Tosiaki Shirai, Chief Technology Officer at Yokogawa, provided an insight into the white heat of development taking place at Yokogawa, with microprocessing technology and photonics to the fore, as well as the future ever-present influence of software and simulation technology (keyword: field instrumentation over IP). Advances in these technologies are also driving forward developments at Yokogawa at speed.

The main highlight was the new Centum VP.

There was constant emphasis on the evolutionary character of the sophisticated equipment and systems at Yokogawa; revolutionary developments tend not to be as prevalent among sustainability-led process automation companies. "What we offer our customers needs to satisfy the compatibility requirements of our customers," says Hauptmeijer.

Intuitive operation

This corporate philosophy also was tangible in the further development of the new Centum VP control system, which was launched to the trade press in the spring of this year and now offers more features. As well as a new intuitively operated Human Machine Interface (HMI), a new database has been incorporated into the Centum VP, thus allowing other manufacturers' equipment and systems to be integrated. The core aims include the identification of bottlenecks, optimization of production efficiency, and with it increases in productivity.

Europe boss Harry Hauptmeijer envisages an evolutionary approach to product development for Yokogawa, rather than revolution.

New to the Yokogawa range is the VigilantPlant Service which the company hopes will help plant operators to improve their key performance indicators (KPIs). The aim is to allow all the information the customer collates to be compared as a benchmark against other industries, and to make this available to the customer. To undertake this task, a new department led by Michael Büßelmann has now been lined up which determines the degree of process automation in a given production line according to the Six Sigma rules (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and subsequently offers recommendations for action.

And last of all: how is Yokogawa's wireless strategy looking? The company still has no wireless equipment on the market whilst a number of competitors have been marketing theirs for some time now. The corporate philosophy as stated applies here as well, as clearly expressed earlier by Europe boss Hauptmeijer: "We are of course working very hard on this issue. We are certainly not behind." In the end, Hauptmeijer maintains, it is important to be out there on the market with wireless products when a common standard that all users have called for is in place. The company is clearly aiming here at a solution compliant with ISA 100. What is also clear however is that in the coming year the Japanese developers are intent on supplying the first wireless products to the market.