Number 6
June 2009
Henriksson confirms Sudipta Bhattacharya as President and CEO of the new Invensys Operations Management
INSIDER
Four
months after originally announcing his interim appointment as Chief
Operating Officer of what were then being referred to as “the IA
business groups” - Invensys Process Systems (IPS), Eurotherm and
Wonderware (INSIDER, February 2009, page 1), Invensys CEO Ulf
Henriksson has confirmed Sudipta Bhattacharya as CEO and Business
President of a new division to be known as Invensys Operations
Management or IOM and comprising . . . well, IPS, Eurotherm and
Wonderware. To read the full story take
out
a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
automation and control
Yokogawa’s
full year results, announced in mid-May, served only to underline the
dire message of the third quarter results which had precipitated a
series of drastic measures back in February including swingeing salary
cuts for the company’s directors, officers and senior managers
(INSIDER March 2009, page 1). Indeed, so severe has been the continuing
decline in performance in the final quarter that even those measures
were considered inadequate. To read the full story take
out
a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) has broken with precedent by appointing a European, Edwin van den Maagdenberg, rather than an American, as vice president and general manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Van den Maagdenberg succeeds Norm Gilsdorf who became president of Honeywell Process Solutions in January of this year after less than a year heading up the European operation following the sudden and still unexplained retirement of Jack Bolick. Rather than moving to Phoenix or, as Bolick was reportedly on the point of doing, to Houston, Gilsdorf has chosen to continue to be based in the UK which perhaps explains why he has been able to persuade the powers that be at Honeywell ACS that the European operation can be safely entrusted to European hands. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
FDT 2.0 implies a limited
ambition for FDI
INSIDER’s report of the FDT Group board’s approval of the FDT 2.0 project to update its technology to keep pace with ongoing developments in IT (INSIDER, May 2009, page 6) brought an immediate reaction from FDT Group managing director Flavio Tolfo. Explaining the decision, Tolfo told INSIDER that “Information technology changes all the time and users are well aware of these changes. The reality is that we are responsible for maintaining this technology so this is business as usual.” To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Spring fever or a more
worrying trend?
Was May 2009 a particularly bad month for accidents in process plant or is the economic downturn beginning to impact process safety? Over the month Walt Boyes’ Sound Off noted explosions and fires at refineries at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania and Lemont, Illinois and an explosion at a solvent recovery plant at West Carrollton, Ohio together with the Armenian chemical industry’s worst accident of recent times at a plant at Yerevan and a spectacular gas explosion in Moscow. Couple these events with the recent Congressional Subcommittee hearings into last September’s accident at the Bayer CropScience facility in West Virginia and add in the continuing repercussions of both Texas City in the US and Buncefield in the UK and it’s clear that process safety remains high both on the industry and the wider public agenda. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Honeywell entrusts Europe
to a European
to a European
Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) has broken with precedent by appointing a European, Edwin van den Maagdenberg, rather than an American, as vice president and general manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Van den Maagdenberg succeeds Norm Gilsdorf who became president of Honeywell Process Solutions in January of this year after less than a year heading up the European operation following the sudden and still unexplained retirement of Jack Bolick. Rather than moving to Phoenix or, as Bolick was reportedly on the point of doing, to Houston, Gilsdorf has chosen to continue to be based in the UK which perhaps explains why he has been able to persuade the powers that be at Honeywell ACS that the European operation can be safely entrusted to European hands. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
FDT 2.0 implies a limited
ambition for FDI
INSIDER’s report of the FDT Group board’s approval of the FDT 2.0 project to update its technology to keep pace with ongoing developments in IT (INSIDER, May 2009, page 6) brought an immediate reaction from FDT Group managing director Flavio Tolfo. Explaining the decision, Tolfo told INSIDER that “Information technology changes all the time and users are well aware of these changes. The reality is that we are responsible for maintaining this technology so this is business as usual.” To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Spring fever or a more
worrying trend?
Was May 2009 a particularly bad month for accidents in process plant or is the economic downturn beginning to impact process safety? Over the month Walt Boyes’ Sound Off noted explosions and fires at refineries at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania and Lemont, Illinois and an explosion at a solvent recovery plant at West Carrollton, Ohio together with the Armenian chemical industry’s worst accident of recent times at a plant at Yerevan and a spectacular gas explosion in Moscow. Couple these events with the recent Congressional Subcommittee hearings into last September’s accident at the Bayer CropScience facility in West Virginia and add in the continuing repercussions of both Texas City in the US and Buncefield in the UK and it’s clear that process safety remains high both on the industry and the wider public agenda. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Glasgow study to evaluate
Control In the Field
The Glasgow, Scotland based Applied Control Technology Consortium (ACTC) is to conduct a study into the advantages of Foundation fieldbus based Control In the Field (CIF) compared with conventional fieldbus based technology. The study is the first in a program of formal, quantitative evaluations of the performance, reliability and maintainability benefits associated with Foundation technology which has been initiated following the decision by the Fieldbus Foundation through its EMEA Operations to join ACTC. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Motorola and Apprion move
a step closer
Motorola is capitalizing on the investment it made in industrial wireless technology specialist Apprion last year (INSIDER July 2008, page 8 and August 2008, page 1) by entering into an OEM agreement under which the two companies will jointly develop and market integrated industrial wireless application networks. Initially the plan is to incorporate Motorola wireless broadband systems and wireless LAN solutions into Apprion’s open ION infrastructure. Further down the line, however, the Motorola products and technologies are to be fully integrated as modular components of Apprion’s IONosphere and IONizer solutions. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
For Automation Products
read Products4Automation
Confirmation of our discovery last month that former Citect UK managing director Paul Hurst was back in the UK industrial automation market with a new company, Products4Automation (INSIDER, May 2009, page 11), came in a matter of days in the form of a press release from PR agency DMA Europa, until recently the source of Citect press releases in the UK and Europe, and a phone call from the man himself. Initially P4A is offering a portfolio of products including touch screen HMIs and flat panel PCs from Proface, Win-911 alarm notification SCADA software plug-ins from Specter Instruments, Tops CCC intelligent I/O plug-in interface modules and Monitouch high resolution displays. These last come with their own programmable HMI and a full range of communications options and drivers for most popular PLCs and can be networked to provide capabilities comparable with a full blown SCADA system. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
E+H anticipates zero
growth in 2009
Strong growth during the first half of the year was sufficient to enable Endress+Hauser to grow sales overall by 8.8% during 2008 to 1.211bn Euros, despite performance tailing off in the second half. With the process automation market as a whole estimated to have grown between 4 and 5% in the year, CEO Klaus Endress was able to claim that “We have once again grown at a stronger rate than the market.” To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
GE Fanuc decouples software
from hardware
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms has effectively decoupled its automation software business from its PLC hardware business, Matt Holland, director of strategic sales, software and services, for EMEA told INSIDER in early June. Holland was speaking after GE Fanuc’s first UK press briefing for five years, held around the football field sized boardroom table on the top floor of GE’s UK headquarters in Berkeley Square, London. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Control In the Field
The Glasgow, Scotland based Applied Control Technology Consortium (ACTC) is to conduct a study into the advantages of Foundation fieldbus based Control In the Field (CIF) compared with conventional fieldbus based technology. The study is the first in a program of formal, quantitative evaluations of the performance, reliability and maintainability benefits associated with Foundation technology which has been initiated following the decision by the Fieldbus Foundation through its EMEA Operations to join ACTC. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
Motorola and Apprion move
a step closer
Motorola is capitalizing on the investment it made in industrial wireless technology specialist Apprion last year (INSIDER July 2008, page 8 and August 2008, page 1) by entering into an OEM agreement under which the two companies will jointly develop and market integrated industrial wireless application networks. Initially the plan is to incorporate Motorola wireless broadband systems and wireless LAN solutions into Apprion’s open ION infrastructure. Further down the line, however, the Motorola products and technologies are to be fully integrated as modular components of Apprion’s IONosphere and IONizer solutions. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
For Automation Products
read Products4Automation
Confirmation of our discovery last month that former Citect UK managing director Paul Hurst was back in the UK industrial automation market with a new company, Products4Automation (INSIDER, May 2009, page 11), came in a matter of days in the form of a press release from PR agency DMA Europa, until recently the source of Citect press releases in the UK and Europe, and a phone call from the man himself. Initially P4A is offering a portfolio of products including touch screen HMIs and flat panel PCs from Proface, Win-911 alarm notification SCADA software plug-ins from Specter Instruments, Tops CCC intelligent I/O plug-in interface modules and Monitouch high resolution displays. These last come with their own programmable HMI and a full range of communications options and drivers for most popular PLCs and can be networked to provide capabilities comparable with a full blown SCADA system. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
E+H anticipates zero
growth in 2009
Strong growth during the first half of the year was sufficient to enable Endress+Hauser to grow sales overall by 8.8% during 2008 to 1.211bn Euros, despite performance tailing off in the second half. With the process automation market as a whole estimated to have grown between 4 and 5% in the year, CEO Klaus Endress was able to claim that “We have once again grown at a stronger rate than the market.” To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
GE Fanuc decouples software
from hardware
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms has effectively decoupled its automation software business from its PLC hardware business, Matt Holland, director of strategic sales, software and services, for EMEA told INSIDER in early June. Holland was speaking after GE Fanuc’s first UK press briefing for five years, held around the football field sized boardroom table on the top floor of GE’s UK headquarters in Berkeley Square, London. To read the full story take out a subscription to Industrial Automation INSIDER.
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THEY
SAID IT
“Ulf’s last hurrah.”
Jim Pinto
“Lack of a good safety culture contributes significantly to incidents and puts people at risk every day.”
Larry O’Brien,
ARC Advisory Group
“Too many companies are having their production put into inefficient straight-jackets . . .”
Paul Hurst,
Products4Automation
Matt Holland,
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms
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