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Automation Training and Education Advances  It’s time to start up a section of the refinery.
You walk down the road over to the first valve that must be opened, and you open it. Then you walk over to the next valve, avoiding the pipes and equipment in the way, and open that valve. Then it’s upstairs to a mezzanine for the next set of valves. With your peripheral vision, you can see your operator/partner accomplishing his set of tasks. With all the start-up procedures accomplished, you remove your special “virtual reality goggles,” and the instructor who has been monitoring your work on a computer beside you—and throwing an obstacle or two in your way—debriefs you.
This is actually a new product from Invensys Operations Management (www.invensys.com), Plano, Texas, that was unveiled to industry editors Sept. 22 at the company’s North American Client Conference in Houston. The “operator” uses a Microsoft Xbox gaming interface—surely familiar to new hires into the refinery or other process facilities—to maneuver through the plant, performing required tasks...
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» INFRASTRUCTURE: Machine Safety Automation Requires Planned Strategy
- Business and plant managers actively seek a well-thought-out, intelligent safety strategy that not only protects humans, machines and the environment—but also supports increased productivity, improved machine efficiency and increased uptime, believes Sal Spada, research director for discrete automation at ARC Advisory Group Inc. (www.arcweb.com), Dedham, Mass.
For robotics, for example, “an ‘inside out’ approach using robotic programmable safety systems (RPSSs) may well provide the key to this strategy...”
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» INDUSTRIES: OEMs Need Automation to be Competitive -
Automation is a requirement for competitiveness of original equipment manufacturers’ (OEMs’) products, states Peter Karlsson, global manager for OEM/value-added-reseller at Wonderware (www.wonderware.com), the Lake Forest, Calif.-based automation software supplier that is a unit of Invensys Operations Management.
The reason, Karlsson suggests, is the better machine performance that automation brings. Equally important is end-users’ ability to prioritize “flexibility and availability in their production” and “for them to analyze-measure-adjust-inform. Automation is the key in that process...”
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» TECHNOLOGIES: An Update on EDDL and FDT -
There are two sets of standard tools commonly used for reading, interpreting and displaying digital information from field devices—EDDL and FDT.
EDDL stands for Electronic Device Description Language, and FDT represents Field Device Tool. These software tools play a vital role in facilitating preventive maintenance and helping to turn digital automation into a nearly plug-and-play affair. They can coexist in the same plant...
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