Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 - Control Global · 2019-08-13 · Live from Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 come a natural extension of process equipment and to facilitate

Honeywell Users Group

Americas 2019

HONEYWELL USERS GROUP AMERICAS 2019The editors of Control report on breaking news and session highlights

June 9-14, 2019 • Dallas, Texas, USA

Live from Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTSRudolph frames Honeywell digitalization vision 3

LEAP only first step in virtualization journey 5

Honeywell Forge hammers out productivity gains 7

Refinery of the future less focused on fuels 9

Redefining how the world uses energy 10

New tech, new thinking streamlines capital projects 12

Cloud analytics unlock asset performance 14

Planning essential to hot cutover success 16

Field connectivity powers data directives 18

No time like migration for cybersecurity 19

Wearables empower field operators at Braskem 21

A step-by-step approach to managing alarms 23

Honeywell guaranteeing KPIs for renewables sector 25

Balance detection, response to counter cyber threats 26

Connected gas detectors boost safety performance 28


RUDOLPH FRAMES HONEYWELL DIGITALIZATION VISIONJim Montague

On the occasion of the 44th annual Honeywell Users Group Americas conference this week in Dallas, Texas, Honeywell Process Solutions

President John Rudolph announced two major solutions designed to streamline and advance the digital transfor-mation initiatives of the company’s industrial customers.

The first, Honeywell Forge for Industrial, is a soft-ware solution that provides actionable recommendations, highlighted with potential economic impact, for intelli-gent business and operations decision-making. Based on process and asset digital twins as well as comprehensive, role-based analytics, Honeywell Forge enables enterprise-wide visibility and helps to sustain overall performance of processes, assets, people and safety.

The second, Experion PKS Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE), represents a new approach to engineering and maintaining industrial control systems. Experion PKS HIVE simplifies control system design, implementation and lifecycle management by decou-pling I/O module assignments and control strategies from specific controllers, and leveraging IT capabili-ties in existing data centers. It also helps to increase employee visibility into the effects they can have on overall process and business performance.

In his keynote address to the more than 1,400 attend-ees of HUG Americas 2019, Rudolph ref lected on the improved enterprise visibility that Honeywell Forge finally affords. “Early in my career, I was out on a project with a highly qualified engineer, who knew exactly what she was doing and what was happening in her process. However, when I asked how she knew when she’d succeeded, she defined it as just finishing on time and knowing the process was working right,”

Rudolph said. “I thought there had to be more to it,” he added. “I mean, how can you feel good about your job if you don’t know how you’re contributing to your business and its success?

“Now, we’re talking more about digitalization and ana-lytics that are changing the organization of processes. In the past, we’d drive up to jobs, find out what the pre-vious person did, learn what mistakes were made, and write a report that probably wouldn’t be looked at until something went wrong. We didn’t know what lessons we could share with others, or how to measure success. This was unfortunate because engineers don’t want to do work over, but they do want to build on what’s been

“Experion PKS HIVE provides freedom of engineering and truly standardized control. It’s a different way to communicate because one controller can talk to any I/O, which lets users look at their processes differently, and know they can do it securely.” John Rudolph, president of Honeywell Process Solutions, in his kick-off keynote address at HUG Americas 2019.


learned before. This what’s really fun, but they need a way to prove it. Finally, Honeywell Forge can help them demonstrate their success.”

Decoupling = freedomRudolph reported that the primarily attribute of Experion PKS HIVE is that it fully separates hardware from soft-ware for much greater flexibility. “This lets users see their full control system on a laptop, which means dramatic operational improvements,” he explained. “For instance, PLC functions are now on a server, instead of being daisy-chained together as they were in previous control environments. This means one system can quickly scale up from being just one RTU to 100 PLCs to a full DCS, and be engineered from the edge to its HMI with solid solutions on each end.”

Experion PKS HIVE can likewise enable other pro-cess disciplines, such as operator training simulation and process safety. “Safety is something we’re always working on, but Experion PKS HIVE can take users to a different level,” added Rudolph. “Where process safety reports and responses could previously take two weeks, Experion PKS HIVE can base its safety report-ing on live events and alarms.

“Each user can now see their individual contribu-tion, know what success is, and how they contributing to their company. In the past, users might not know what do without telling them, but no one likes to be told what to do. Experion PKS HIVE is better because it gives users the metrics to help decide what needs to be done.”

Overcoming process obstaclesRudolph added there are four main challenges that Experion PKS HIVE can address, including aging infrastructure costs, visibility of operations and risk status, lost of critical skills, and churning technology. “We have to ask if we’re captive to old infrastructures, because obsolescence isn’t good for us or our customer base,” said Rudolph. “We can’t stop technological change from happening or the churn that goes with it, so we have find a way to make it easier and more natural. Basically, a PLC is no longer just a PLC, and a DCS is no longer just a DCS. Even the Purdue control hierarchy model isn’t the same anymore, but fortunately we now have the technology to handle these changes.”

Not only can Experion PKS HIVE and its I/O, control and IT elements improve routine process operations, they can also aid everything from disaster recovery to simulation used for training. “Everyone is already overloaded with work, so it helps that Experion PKS HIVE can look into existing systems, and pull that data it needs to help users manage their processes on their own,” explained Rudolph. “PKS HIVE lets us empower users to improve their functions and process safety by reducing risk each day.

“Experion PKS HIVE provides freedom of engineer-ing and truly standardized control that can streamline DCS environments. It’s a different way to communicate because one controller can talk to any I/O, which lets users to look at their processes differently, and know they can do it securely.”


LEAP ONLY FIRST STEP IN VIRTUALIZATION JOURNEYPaul Studebaker

The world is changing at an unprecedented pace. “We see more mobile workers, making faster and more precise decisions,” said Jason Urso, chief technology

officer, Honeywell Process Solutions. “Facilities are more productive and safer than ever, but we can still do better.”

Urso spoke to attendees of his Technology Overview keynote session at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 this week in Dallas.

“Honeywell is focused on project speed and efficiency, superior operations and infinite system longevity,” Urso said. “We’re moving to a new foundation and capabilities for a new generation.”

Harness the HIVE“A few years ago, we built on the Experion Process Knowl-edge System (PKS) with LEAP—Lean Execution for Automation Projects—consisting of Universal IO that can be configured in the field, moving from mass customization to mass standardization of hardware, and virtualization to separate hardware from software,” Urso said. “Now, we’re changing the way we think about and implement systems with PKS Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE).”

PKS HIVE uses LEAP project execution principles, software and networking to unchain control applications from physical equipment, and controllers from physical I/O. This enables control systems to be engineered and implemented in less time, at lower cost and risk and with simpler, modular builds. The solution also transforms the way control systems are maintained over their life-cycles, shifting day-to-day management of servers to a centralized data center, where experts and established protocols mitigate cybersecurity risk, allowing plant

engineers to focus more proactively on optimization of their control systems.

Experion PKS HIVE incorporates three elements—IT HIVE, IO HIVE and Control HIVE—that can be used individually or collectively, in tandem with customers’ existing systems and infrastructures:• Experion PKS IT HIVE centralizes up to 80% of the

IT infrastructure traditionally used in project engi-neering to lower project delivery and lifecycle costs, better leverage skills and drive consistent physical and cybersecurity management across an enterprise.

• Experion PKS IO HIVE provides flexible I/O and control distribution, enabling the control system to be-

“An interesting thing about the distributed control system is it hasn’t been distributed. Now, the C300 will be able to communicate with any I/O on the IO HIVE network, to discover and bond with it.” Honeywell’s Jason Urso explained the efficiency and savings of HIVE technology at the opening session of Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 in Dallas.


come a natural extension of process equipment and to facilitate modular and parallel project execution.

• Experion PKS Control HIVE uniquely applies con-trol containers to provide flexibility and standardiza-tion of control hardware platform, control location and control engineering. With multiple physical controllers operating as part of an Experion PKS Control HIVE, control engineering is dramatically simplified through automated load balancing.

Distributing the DCS“An interesting thing about the distributed control system is it hasn’t been distributed,” Urso said. The new Experion PKS IO HIVE network is a fault-tolerant, high-speed field network that allows the C300 [controller] to communicate with distributed I/O. “Now, the C300 will be able to communicate with any I/O on the IO HIVE network to discover and bond with it.”

Cybersecurity is provided with a firewall adjacent to each field I/O module and optional network encryption. Shifting I/O to the field eliminates the I/O cabinets in the control center, and using fiberoptic cable eliminates 4-20 mA wiring back to the control center.

Further, Universal IO will be able to do local control, extending control into the field in local cabinets with 20 ms cycle times. “The I/O can be programmed with a subset of C300 functionality—it’s a virtual C300—pro-viding full peer-to-peer control in the field and back to C300 in the control center,” Urso said. Control can be entirely in remote process cabinets in the production areas. The apportioning of control is flexible—either in the field, in the control center or a hybrid of the two.

The remote process cabinets support universal wire-less hotspots that can connect for control and provide wireless access for field operators with mobile devices. “For example, if a technician is performing a procedure for a process penetration, they can know if the pipe is properly prepared,” Urso said. “They can access the system and interlocks to ensure the purge is done and it’s safe to perform the procedure.”

With IO HIVE and SmartLine wireless transmitters with prebuilt templates and wireless configuration, instruments can be commissioned independent of the control system. “Using C300 on a laptop—Experion on a laptop—technicians can commission devices as if they were connected to the system, in the module yard.”

Control HIVE also allows multiple controllers to pres-ent as a single controller. “With the rigid, hierarchical

model defined by hardware, we used to assemble, wire and assign control strategies to controllers,” Urso said. “Then, to make late changes, we’d add I/O, reconfigure the controller, maybe add controllers and redistribute assignments to rebalance loads. It’s a very circular activity.

“Control HIVE revolutionizes control engineering. We assign controls to the HIVE, which integrates and distributes them automatically. Any controller can communicate with any I/O. This eliminates hundreds of steps when adding I/O and/or control strategies. If you need more capacity, just add controllers. Late changes become completely flexible.”

Using a new virtual controller and separating hardware from software, “we can now run control on virtually any PC or server,” Urso said. “It can run in the field or in a data center and be deployed anywhere.” The virtual-controller technology will be part of the Experion release in December.

Corralling ITIT HIVE reduces the cost of IT infrastructure at process facilities, which can now focus on process control, not IT. “We’ve already consolidated hardware requirements 80% by virtualization, but you still need on-site servers and IT expertise. Now, we centralize IT management using a high-speed network and a fault-tolerant infrastructure, with minimal hardware on-site and virtual systems stored off-site that are deployed on-site as needed,” Urso said. “During normal operations, most control is run virtually, off-site, with only the essential applications on-site. If off-site communication is lost, the plant continues to run on the virtualized and replicated images that remain on-site.”

For multi-site consolidation and enterprise standard-ization, users can have a single Experion release, hot fixes and patches and continually swap in updated sys-tems. They can consolidate multiple Experions and retain full local fault tolerance. And even the most remote locations get a full IT infrastructure.

“We use it for Honeywell control-as-a-service,” Urso said. “It’s being done now for terminal automation, where we have enterprise, as well as local views, simultaneously.”

The Experion PKS IT HIVE and IO HIVE can be ordered now, with deliveries beginning in the first quarter of 2020. Experion PKS Control HIVE will be available in the second half of 2020. For more informa-tion, watch the Experion PKS HIVE video.

ELCN and beyondSeamless evolution from TDC 3000 to Experion is a simple three-step procedure that can be done on-process,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPotasswfr0&feature=youtu.be


and users may be further along than they realize. The first step is to move to Experion Station TPS, preserving your intellectual property (IP) with your choice of old, new or both operator interface views.

The second step is to move from HPM to EHPM, running on fault-tolerant Ethernet while preserving displays and IP.

The third step is ELCN, which virtualizes legacy physical hardware. “In December, we’re adding a net-work gateway, so any TDC network of any complexity can move to ELCN,” Urso said. “You can remove all the physical control hardware and put control on any modern hardware. There’s no component obsolescence; it’s all in software.”

PM IO migrated to Series C IO 10 years ago. “Since then, PM IO cards have been coming with Series C hard-ware,” Urso said. “You’ve been replacing PM with ELCN that has PM functionality.” At the same time, HPM has become C300. “EHPM is an HPM plus C300. We’ve been turning on the functionality over time. With a simple three-step operation, TDC 3000 has seamlessly melted into Experion, completely on-process—a new system.”

Urso closed the session with glimpses at Unified Engineer-ing Tools that will allow TDC control engineering methods to meld into Control Builder Graphical CL Editor, to be released in December, and for mid-2020, TDC PM IO HART modules that will share data with FDM via EHPM.

HONEYWELL FORGE HAMMERS OUT PRODUCTIVITY GAINSMike Bacidore

It’s not uncommon for organizations to seek produc-tivity gains by bringing together and analyzing data from disparate silos of information. “A lot of initiatives

are about consolidating data from multiple sources,” said Sandeep Chandran, lead for product management for Honeywell Connected Plant. “IT companies, such as Google, Microsoft and SAP are doing this. But what can you do with those same approaches? From a technology point of view, our focus is on solving industrial problems.”

This new category of software is intended to improve enterprise performance by effectively collecting, analyzing and acting on data from their operations. Honeywell Forge for Industrial, being launched this week at Honeywell Users Group Americas in Dallas, leverages 100 years of expertise in asset and process control technology to transform the way work gets done by owners and operators of industrial facilities and other critical assets and infrastructure.

Honeywell Forge converts data from equipment, processes and people into intuitive, actionable insights

that enable monitoring of enterprise operations from a single screen, helping customers to optimize the effi-ciency, effectiveness and safety of their businesses. The software is designed with a hardware- and software-agnostic approach that allows for its use with existing systems. It leverages predictive analytics to identify maintenance issues before they happen; enable work-ers to be more productive, proficient and safe; reduce costs; and increase productivity.

“The big difference [with Forge] is the underlying knowledge that is built into the platform,” explained Chandran. “You have data and you have applications, including non-Honeywell systems. We have an engine that can go in and collect data from those systems as well.”

Built-in knowledgeToday’s operational challenges include longer, harsher operating cycles between turnarounds; differing out-comes across shifts, units, plants and enterprises; and a


lack of integrated insights across the operating spectrum. Honeywell Forge is designed to address and standardize these challenges, as well as provide analytics, insights and recommendations that affect outcomes and profitability.

One of the key differentiators of this new software is how it deals with the speed of change and provides instant effectiveness. “The new wave of innovation includes cloud, IIoT, virtual reality, machine learning and digi-talization,” said Chandran. “Software needs to be more than just a framework. It has to be pre-populated with knowledge.” Such built-in knowledge allows users to implement Honeywell Forge and begin to draw compari-sons and uncover recommendations right from the start.

“We use Honeywell expertise and knowledge to aug-ment that data,” explained Chandran. “And from that augmentation come recommendations. The focus has shifted from figuring out what needs to be done to which actions are best from an economic point of view. Because of the knowledge we have, the recommenda-tions that come out are very precise. These are the recommendations that a process engineer or operator can take advantage of.”

A modular approachHoneywell Forge for Industrial consists of four modules:• The Process Reliability Advisor module uses real-

time operating data to detect and diagnose issues to improve unit performance. It leverages Honeywell UOP’s comprehensive process expertise to assess process constraints and proactively mitigate opera-tional issues.

• The Process Optimization Advisor module yields expert operational recommendations to utilize as-

sets effectively and derive maximum profitability. It provides an optimal set of operating conditions, based on customer economics, for the unit to run at minimal cost and waste.

• The Profit Performance Monitor module identi-fies degradation of unit performance and provides expert guidance through actionable instructions to maintain unit profit performance, and it pro-vides visibility into the economic consequences of plant process performance as a cost of lost op-portunity. It also ensures sustainable benefits over varying operating conditions, visualizing real-time unit profitability.

• The Asset Performance Management module yields predictive analytics that deliver early insight to im-pending issues, as well as integrated process and as-set data models that identify new levels of untapped productivity. Unified enterprise connectivity drives common workflow across engineering, maintenance and operations.

“The big difference [with Forge] is the underlying knowledge that is built into the platform.” Honeywell’s Sandeep Chandran explained how users can quickly gain actionable insights using Honeywell Forge for Industrial software to analyze operational data from multiple databases and applications.


REFINERY OF THE FUTURE LESS FOCUSED ON FUELSPaul Studebaker

The future may or may not bring flying cars, robot servants and immortality, but it’s bringing excit-ing changes to the business of refining petroleum.

Those changes are opportunities to earn higher profits for plants that recognize how to leverage existing technologies to improve flexibility, integration and communication.

Integrated refineries and petrochemical plants are the “Refineries of the Future,” said Carrie Eppelheimer, vice president of strategy and marketing, Honeywell UOP, in her session at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019, this week in Dallas. Integrating petrochemical capabilities helps refineries “Get the maximum value out of every drop of crude oil, and respond to market drivers.”

Those drivers include a new regulatory environment. On January 1, 2020, the International Maritime Organiza-tion (IMO) will implement a new regulation for a 0.50% global sulfur cap for marine fuels. The industry expects this could drive the price of high sulfur fuel oil $20 to $40 per barrel lower than the price of crude oil.

Instead, “High-sulfur bunker fuel is a feedstock we can convert to higher value products,” said Eppelheimer. “Should we convert it to gasoline or diesel? The answer is obvious when one price is higher, but what if both are declining? The best answer may be to convert it to petro-chemicals—ethylene, propylene, etc.”

Integration on the riseHowever, the United States lags behind other countries in integrating refining and petrochemical complexes. “Today, refiners can continue to export higher sulfur, higher benzene, and higher RVP gasoline to Africa and Latin America,” Eppelheimer said. But the export market

is always changing because, as small economies grow, and fuel demand reaches the level to support a 250,000 bbl/day refinery, the country usually invests in local fuel refining and production. Often these plants also pro-duce petrochemicals.

Integrated refining and petrochemical plants are expand-ing in the U.S. as well. There’s still a demand for exported gasoline, and more refineries are adding production for propylene and ethylene, as well as and naphtha for export. “We used to have separate facilities and ship between them, but now we’re seeing more integrated plants.” “This trend isn’t just a paper exercise. The plants are real. Five years

“The product value goes from $60/ton of coke to $850/ton of petrochemicals. And you reduce water consumption because you don’t need it to cut the coke out.” Honeywell UOP’s Carrie Eppelheimer discussed the new product mix of tomorrow’s refinery, which leans more toward petrochemicals than fuels.


ago for example, only 15% of Honeywell UOP’s CCR Platformers were designed to produce petrochemicals. The rest were designed to produce fuel. In 2018, over 65% were designed for petrochemicals.” “We use six metrics to drive higher efficiencies in refineries,” Eppelheimer said. These include:1. Carbon: “Use every molecule of carbon processed in

the plant.”2. Hydrogen: “Minimize the number of times we add or

remove it” from a hydrocarbon.3. Utilities: “Using less energy saves money and reduces

the CO2 footprint.”4. Emissions: Greenhouse gases, particulate emissions,

SOx, NOx, and more.5. Water: “It’s a scarce resource. In the Middle East and

India, they often must desalinate the water, and even in the U.S., there are shortages due to regional droughts.”

6. Capital: Maximize return.

From refinery to petrochemical in three steps“We look at the six efficiencies and optimize them for you,” Eppelheimer said of Honeywell UOP’s work with oil and gas companies. For example, a typical delayed coker or FCC refinery may chose a phased approach to get from gasoline to petrochem. The first phase is to replace the

delayed coker with a slurry hydrocracker. “The product value goes from $60/ton of coke to $850/ton of petro-chemicals. And you reduce water consumption because you don’t need it to cut the coke out.”

Next, add an aromatics complex to produce paraxylene, benzene and toluene. “Finally, go into propane dehydro-genization and steam cracking,” Eppelheimer said. “I like to think of the propane dehydrogenation unit as a hydrogen machine that just happens to produce propylene. This pro-vides hydrogen to feed back into the hydrocracking processes.”

With these additions under Honeywell UOP guidance, a refinery can move from $20/bbl to $50/bbl net cash margin, Eppelheimer said. The facility can become flex-ible (can change product mix), integrated (giving high margins and value), and connected.

Connecting the plant is particularly important. “Some 50% of skilled workers will retire within the next seven years,” Eppelheimer said. That means fewer skilled workers even as increasingly integrated operations become more complex. “Our answer is to upload your data to a secure cloud environment and compare actual operating data to an optimal digital twin of your plant., This allows 24/7/365 comparison of actual to optimal performance to identify in real time the changes you can make to maximize return. This means our incentives are aligned, so your best day is also our best day.”

REDEFINING HOW THE WORLD USES ENERGYPaul Studebaker

D istributed renewables, managing losses and the ability to monitor—and turn off—customers are driving a new generation of data gathering,

two-way communications and smart meter systems for power, gas and water utilities. “How do we wrap our-selves around automation at the grid to benefit utilities and their customers?” asked Ed Myszka, vice president

and general manager, Honeywell Smart Energy. “Their traditional role is to get electrons to consumers. Now, they are trying to get data back on a grid that wasn’t designed for that.”

Myszka spoke to attendees of his session, “Redefin-ing How the World Uses Energy” at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 this week in Dallas.


Major trendsFirst, utilities need access to data. “We see public wire-less as a competitive alternative to our own networks. We need to move the right information, not just a lot of data,” Myszka said.

Second, utilities are dealing with disruptive forces including decarbonization, with a proliferation of renewables such as solar and the accompanying need for storage. Digitalization is also disruptive, with its emphasis on bits and bytes versus electron flow. Decen-tralization of assets presents significant challenges, including transactional interactions. “The state of Cali-fornia is requiring photovoltaics (PV) on every new building,” Myszka said. “That brings transactional interactions—will they sell to you, or to a different util-ity, or sideways to their neighbors?”

Electric vehicles represent an increasingly distributed load that can move around at different times to differ-ent places. “We need electricity at the right place at the right time,” Myszka said.

Then there’s the data. “We already have tens or hun-dreds of millions of devices,” Myszka said. “In the next 10 years, they predict 52 billion devices, producing 160 zetabytes of data every day. What will you do with all that data? You need data science and intelligence.”

Honeywell sees correlations between process and energy automation, with smart edge devices that measure power quality and load, and back office packages such as a virtual powerplant/distribution network, running on a digital twin to optimize operations offline, then put changes online in real time. “We bring grid auto-mation, cybersecurity, data analytics, data science—a holistic approach for optimization, safety and reliabil-ity,” Myszka said.

Gas and water as well as powerThe approach promises to help optimize the three main verticals—electricity, gas and water—with the opportunity to mine data across platforms. “Should a house using no power be using water? Should it be

using gas?” Myszka asked. With grid monitoring, “We could reduce losses 7% to 10%.”

For electricity, a new A4 Advanced Platform Design I power meter will help. “It’s a platform, not a prod-uct,” Myszka explained. Functional across applications including residential, industrial and commercial, it can

measure power quality and “it’s future-proofed, with lots of memory and processing power for unknown future needs,” he said. The platform has the power to provide edge analytics. “Instead of sending data back to a central location, the meter makes decisions and alarms if there are any problems. It can communicate with other meters, switchgear, reclosers, etc., and make faster decisions.”

Flexible communications include low-cost, low-power narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). “It’s cheaper to operate, and can read meters virtually anywhere, even where there’s no conventional cellular,” Myszka said.

Gas meters are similarly moving from proprietary networks to public wireless providers. Pressure and tem-perature sensors give intelligent information for safety, and the meters include a shut-off valve that allows the utility to turn off specific supplies in case of earthquake or fire. Along with traditional mechanical meters, these features are available with ultrasonic meters, with no moving parts.

“We bring grid automation, cybersecurity, data analytics, data science—a holistic approach for optimization, safety and reliability.” Honeywell Smart Energy’s Ed Myszka explained how the company can help its utility customers to meet today’s fast-evolving challenges.


NEW TECH, NEW THINKING STREAMLINES CAPITAL PROJECTSJim Montague

Project execution in the process industries has never been a day at the beach, but multiplying time and cost pressures, increasing project complexity and

accelerating technical upheaval are combining to make it more difficult than ever before. To help illustrate how new technologies and new project methodologies are helping to make these issues more manageable, Honeywell Pro-cess Solutions convened an expert panel representing a range of industry perspectives at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 this week in Dallas.

Representing the owner/operator perspective was Steve Cox, control system engineering manager at Valero’s McKee refinery. Robert Resendez, control and automa-tion manager for Bechtel, spoke for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) community. Jason Urso, CTO for Honeywell Process Solutions, rounded out the panel with the automation technology supplier point of view.

Moderating the discussion was Mark Sen Gupta, research director at ARC Advisory Group. He kicked off the panel discussion for members of the media with a rather gloomy assessment of industry’s overall track record on capital projects. “Research indicates that 64% of projects meet their goals and only 39% meet their outlined schedules, budgets and specs,” Sen Gupta said. “Meanwhile another 59% have cost and/or schedule over-runs, and 70% of companies report at least one ‘failed’ project per year.”

And while new technologies and new methodologies are helping, it’s clear that challenges remain significant, and within many organizations old habits die hard.

Strong headwinds“The big challenge is how to utilize new technologies and still meet customer requirements,” said Bechtel’s Resendez. “This is because many users want to use new technologies

For water, the critical concern is conservation. Meter information can help utilities balance supply and demand, know where and when there are leaks, and let customers see how to reduce how much water they use.

Intelligence from edge to cloudEdge-to-cloud intelligence requires communications to solve problems in real time, when and where they are hap-pening. Utilities get information about usage, anomalies and problems before they grow into issues such as high bills or losses. Information helps reduce operations and main-tenance costs, and help utilities improve safety, increase efficiency and manage shifting skillsets as personnel retire.

It also can help utilities better understand their cus-tomers. Do they have an electric vehicle? PV? How can they be better understood and involved.

Enabling assets to communicate in real time can help utilities de-silo to fit the decentralized grid. Accessing existing resources through a digital twin can help stabilize and optimize them. And it can help to stop losses, both technical and non-technical, by stopping theft and correcting wrong installations. “We can be smarter together,” Myszka said, “and improve operations, reliability and safety with more knowledge, better insights, precise actions and faster implementations.”


like programmable I/O, but they don’t know how to fit them into their applications.”

Valero’s Cox added that, “In the last five years, the big-gest change we’ve had to deal with is the speed of change itself. Everything’s happening faster than in the past, especially in the process automation field. Some projects seem to be over as soon as they get started.

“Plus, the amount of change in automation related to refining is much more than in other aspects of refining. And, because people in those areas aren’t as up to speed on automation, we have to bring them along—even though there’s resistance. As an organization, we’re also seeing problems we never saw before, and must constantly adapt to things we didn’t see coming.”

Cox added another major project management chal-lenge is coping with limited resources and complying with plant management’s requirements that automation projects avoid causing process disruptions or unplanned outages. “Valero’s bottom line is safety, environmental responsibility and reliability,” said Cox. “But we’re also a very remote refinery, so we don’t have a lot of automation professionals and contractors just down the road, which makes it even more important for us to address issues in a cost-effective way. We execute to get projects done, but before the automation people leave, we have to get our staff up to speed on any new system.”

Missions shiftHoneywell’s Jason Urso, suitably seated between the end user and EPC representatives on the panel, reported that his organization’s role in the project management space has traditionally been to assist its customers in keeping their processes and plants running reliably and safely, and helping them to migrate equipment and facilities when needed. “Part of this effort is using technology to keep auto-mation projects off the critical path because last-minute changes to I/O, controls and other devices are challeng-ing to execute, so we’re always asking how we can help.

“Many project management practices are decades old, but some of the newer technologies can make them more efficient,” Urso added. “For instance, capital proj-ects are usually based on cost, scheduling and risk, but now they can be redesigned to use newer solutions to get started sooner and operate more efficiently once they come online.”

Flexible and standardizedResendez added that one way EPCs like Bechtel design and develop their projects in the face of today’s constant change is by building in greater flexibility through the use of standardized solutions where possible. “For us, flexibility means focusing on standard products and standard templates,” he explained. “We also use good management of change (MOC) practices from design to implementation, even though the level of integration typical of today’s projects presents an added challenge.”

Project participants need to expect some degree of change simply because no project can be flawlessly designed up front, Urso added. “Users need the ability make changes without too many change orders, which is why Honeywell focuses on simplification, so they can add or modify control solutions seamlessly. We also can’t assume all the cabinet-level details will be settled up front, so cabinet designs also need to be adaptable.

“Even though there are many projects of the same type, each also has unique aspects. That being said, even though much technology has the potential to be standardized and reused, many I/O and controls are still designed in from the ground up. Everyone recognizes that we need to get away from these mass customization of the past.

“The next step-change in industry is recognizing com-monalities, recognizing we don’t always need to redesign control strategies and HMIs from the ground up, and reus-ing more technology when we can.”

To handle today’s ramped-up project management challenges, Valero’s Steve Cox (left), Honeywell’s Jason Urso (center) and Bechtel’s Robert Resendez (right), outlined the enhanced strategies, methods and tools their organizations are bringing to bear. Mark Sen Gupta of ARC Advisory Group moderated the media panel discussion.


To cope with today’s increasing lack of skills and people, Urso added that new technology can help fill in. “Soft-ware such as our Experion PKS Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE) can be used to assign roles and drive standardization around controls,” he said. “This decou-pling of software from hardware is important because, for example, when you order a Spider-Man movie from Neflix, you shouldn’t have to worry about what server it’s on. We know we’ve only scratched the surface so far, and that we have more to learn from the IT industry.”

To put some newer project management principles into practice, Resendez reported that Bechtel recently com-pleted six liquid natural gas (LNG) projects that required many I/O changes. “The flexibility of Honeywell Univer-sal I/O changed our whole work process,” said Resendez. “We like to standardize on stuff outside the usual control system world and use third-party packages when we can, but we also want to take this standardization to the next step. This can be tough to do with some items like pro-cess safety graphics,”

Resendez said. “Still, standardized DCS packages will likely become more acceptable in even the next six months.”

Convince colleagues, balance costsDespite the benefits that new project management tools can bring, Valero’s Cox added that many stakeholders still have to be convinced. “Many refining people don’t want to have anything to do with us or others they think of as

computer geeks—even though they rely on our controls. We have to find ways to bring them along,” he said.

“Valero’s project group puts in the [distillation] towers and other facilities, and we sometimes have to work with what we’re given to seamlessly add automation. For exam-ple, we’ve been doing a major DCS migration over the past three years, but again, plant management says we can’t cause any process disruptions, even if an automation project takes longer or costs more.”

Resendez added that cost remains a primary project driver, but it continues to be balanced by scheduling. “Users ask how what we’re delivering will help their performance and meet their objectives, so we have to show how it can,” he added. “There also used to be a lot of finger-pointing on projects, so we developed our Integrated Team approach that involves engineers, automation personnel, contractors and suppliers from design through startup, and has them collaborate throughout the project lifecycle.”

To avoid miscommunications between sales and development staffs, Cox added that Valero brings these different teams together, and gets project teams updated on the technologies they’ll need to implement. “Project changes can come in on a daily basis, so communica-tions, common objectives and standard procedures are more important than ever,” he said. “This is where tech-nologies like Universal I/O can positively impact project costs, system footprint, labor costs and other issues we have to deal with.”

CLOUD ANALYTICS UNLOCK ASSET PERFORMANCEMike Bacidore

By leveraging cloud-based analytic technologies from Honeywell Connected Plant (HCP), a six-month internal initiative boosted productivity of

machinery and processes running within Honeywell’s own

Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT) division. The pilot program increased revenue and capacity by more than 2% at the PMT plant in Orange, Texas, demonstrating the value that today’s cloud analytics can provide toward


recognizing hidden asset performance degradation and how assets interact with the processes they serve.

“We make low-density polyethylene,” said Will Olp, manufacturing director of the additives-and-chemicals group within PMT, in his presentation at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 in Dallas. “We were having more unplanned downtime than business could support. I had to have a solution, and I had to come up with a way to get this done quickly with the existing resources I had on-site.”

The plant had experienced several unplanned shut-downs over 24 months, an estimated $20 million negative impact, explained Olp. Performance analysis and reporting was lagging, manually gathered biweekly. Maintenance was highly reactive, repeatedly finding shutdowns were avoidable. And communication paths between engineer-ing and reliability/maintenance were inefficient.

“The plant incurred several costly unplanned shut-downs,” explained Olp. “There were myriad operational challenges and worn plant infrastructure. We didn’t want to wait for the engineers to do the analysis. We partnered with HCP, and they have engineers who know a lot of the equipment. We were able to take the process information and apply it to the algorithms and data that were being streamed into the cloud. I started this process in May 2018, and we had a solution in place in September. In the last quarter of 2018, we received results.”

The project team combined reliability engineers, pro-cess engineers and operators. “Within Asset Sentinel, they’re now putting in what the root cause was,” explained Olp, “in addition to creating the algorithm from the data in the historian. We have 28 assets configured and 58 measured KPI sentinels.”

Uptime contributionsThe process and asset monitoring data streams are uni-fied into a single data-processing scheme. At the same time a duplicate stream is being sent to the cloud. “It takes a copy of the data historian and upfeeds it to the cloud,” explained Olp. Monitored equipment included

reciprocating compressors, heat exchangers, boilers, reactors, off-gas spray columns, binary columns and deodorizers. Four areas of contribution came from the heat exchangers, deodorizers, boilers and an unidenti-fied trade-secret asset.

“Heat exchangers will foul over time and need to be cleaned periodically,” said Olp. “The analytics looked at the trend of the fouling and when the next planned maintenance was, allowing for increased throughput.” This accounted for 16% of the contribution.

On the deodorizer, the new model alerted significantly earlier, and engineers used steam to clear fouling. “Had alerts occurred later, the column would have operated past the point where extra steam would be effective, thus shortening packing life and requiring shutdown and pre-mature packing change-out,” said Olp. This resulted in 13% of the contribution.

Historical patterns revealed correlations and a pro-longed maintenance interval in the unidentified asset. “By monitoring the seal, we were able to predict that a bearing would have trouble, and the operators were able to make adjustments to extend the life of the bearing to the next shutdown,” explained Olp. “Unique shift pat-terns were found through historical analysis of bearing vibration data, and shifts revealed pending failure of the nearby packing gland (seal), rather than the bearing itself.

“We were able to take the process information and apply it to the algorithms and data that were being streamed into the cloud.” PMT Director Will Olp explained how his facility realized 2% productivity gains in just six months at Honeywell Users Group Americas in Dallas.


Previously the glands were a preventive maintenance item and replaced early.” This was the largest overall contributor, accounting for 55% of the gain.

Boilers improved in overall efficiency and operated within environmental regulations by increasing efficiency

through better utilization of waste heat, resulting in better throughput, a 16% contribution.

While a 2.2% increase in revenue and 2.2% additional capacity were realized in six months, financial projec-tions indicate breakeven in just 1.1 years annualized.

PLANNING ESSENTIAL TO HOT CUTOVER SUCCESSPaul Studebaker

Refineries and other process facilities routinely upgrade and even change control systems while the process continues to run, a procedure often

called a hot cutover. But they’re usually done one loop at a time, minimizing the time each loop is in manual and the potential for the process to go out of control. Foundation Fieldbus (FF) puts multiple transmitters and valves on a single segment, raising the stakes when it’s time to change out a fieldbus interface module (FIM).

Marathon Petroleum’s Detroit refinery success-fully upgraded the FF-networked system on its gas/oil hydrotreater without shutdown recently. The start-ing point was two Honeywell C200 controllers and 20 FIM2 Fieldbus interface modules with 220 Foundation Fieldbus devices and 403 measurements and valves; 11 Series A conventional I/O; heater/compressor SIS hand-shaking; and 585 control modules. Hot cutover was to two Honeywell C300 controllers and 14 FIM4s; Series C conventional I/O; and SIS communication via Peer Control Data Interface (PCDI).

“When we went to the existing system from a Bailey system, we didn’t do everything as well as we wished we had. We had 220 FF devices and 403 FF points on two C200 controllers. We had no spare capacity,” said Ed Bullerdiek, process control engineer at the refinery, to

attendees of his session at Honeywell Users Group Ameri-cas 2019, this week in Dallas. The C200s were designed to be redundant, but they would no longer failover.

“Also, programming of the 585 control modules (CMs) was not up to standards. Standardized programming improves support—technicians can understand it quicker in the middle of the night,” Bullerdiek said. “It was time for an upgrade.”

Moving FF from one system to another was not unfa-miliar, but they hadn’t done it on critical controls. And, on this system, the safeties and e-stops are in the DCS, “so we had to be very careful,” Bullerdiek said. “Could we cut over fast enough so the process doesn’t get away from us? Also, we had to convince operations that we weren’t crazy.”

Methodical methodologyTo answer the speed question, “we had portable FIMs and C300s in a box, so we could test our hot cutover procedure,” Bullerdiek said. With some effort, “we got it down to 15 to 20 minutes from time out to time back on for each segment. If we did critical instruments first, those could be back online in 10 minutes.”

With speed established, Honeywell and Buller-diek built a project schedule spreadsheet—a plan


that described the sequence, risks and special con-siderations for all the segments. Working with the production team in half-day meetings over several weeks, “we risk-ranked all the segments, and docu-mented the specific risks and their mitigations,” Bullerdiek said. “For example, one of the bypass valves is undersized. We had to cut charge rates the day we changed over that segment.”

Where a control scheme is complex, they planned to get the entire control done in one day so they wouldn’t have to revisit it. “We wrote a script for each segment to be sure we would do everything, with notes about cautions and special circumstances,” Bullerdiek said. “Make sure you have enough FIM licenses. We didn’t, but were able to empty the FIMs, harvest the licenses and move them to the next job as we went. Plan so you don’t get yourself into a corner where you need another license to get out.”

They also checked the physical condition of the work. “Can you remove the wiring covers, or are they rusted on?” Bullerdiek said. “Is there water in the segment protectors? Verify that communications are working—can you ping the box? Check the diagnostics on all the segments and fix any problems—replace any bad transmitters. If you can’t fix them, note them because, after cutover, you’ll own them.”

Hot cutover by the script“Honeywell helped us write scripts for all 39 segments that we cut over in three weeks,” Bullerdiek said. Keep track of which segments are done and where you are in the process, so you don’t skip or repeat steps, he advised. Notify the operator of the risk level associated with risky segments, so they can be alert to any problems.

With the integrated safety interlocks, “we told the operators, ‘Whatever you do, don’t shut off the heaters,’ because we weren’t sure we could get them back on,” Bullerdiek said. “And, we brought in extra operators

from other shifts to do the necessary field work while we worked on segments.”

When it’s time to cut over, first, inactivate the devices and unassign them from FF. Then delete them from the segment and start the field team moving the wires. While they do that, move and reload the devices, and move the CMs. When the wiring shows up, turn it back on.

Cutover is best done with two people to allow cross-checks and avoid mistakes. “We could usually do three segments per day, sometimes four,” Bullerdiek said. “Use a field calibrator to verify each segment. Then, stroking the valves from the control room verifies that the segment and wiring are correct.”

After cutover, there will be follow-up work. “Deleting CMs breaks all the links to other CMs, the historian and alarm groups,” Bullerdiek said. “I made a spread-sheet to keep track of these and then came back and reloaded them.”

The plant held off on the demolition work until the hot cutover was complete, so no one could get overzealous and remove something we might need, Bullerdiek said.

“We’ve done a lot of cutovers,” Bullerdiek concluded. “Production told us this was the smoothest one yet,” he said.

“Could we cut over fast enough so the process didn’t get away from us? Also, we had to convince operations that we weren’t crazy.” Marathon Petroleum’s Ed Bullerdiek


FIELD CONNECTIVITY POWERS DATA DIRECTIVESMike Bacidore

Information is power. And connected assets can provide a lot of raw data that can reveal some useful information. Annemarie Diepenbroek, global marketing director—

products at Honeywell Process Solutions led a group of Honeywell business leaders in a discussion of how to get the most value from users’ connected assets at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 this week in Dallas.

Ed Myszka, vice president and general manager, Hon-eywell Smart Energy, sees huge potential in cellular technology. A sliver of spectrum dedicated to interconnect devices is embedded in 4G technology and will eventually be in 5G. “We’ll be able to connect things with a ubiqui-tous blanket,” he said. “I’m looking to connect things like gas meters and water meters. It’s not the meter. It’s what we do with the data from the meter. We’re starting to add more technology capabilities, like pressure and temperature sensors. We’re putting in remote disconnect capabilities. A utility can use that to shut off power, but the value goes way beyond that. If we combine the data, we know what’s going on at the end premise.”

Myszka explained how a util-ity customer, let’s call her Meter Mary, looks to have more control. “The power and control of how to use energy is being directed to the consumer,” he said. “But we can

extract more value by adding data. We can identify when the furnace needs a tune-up or when the filter needs to be changed.”

Myszka also explained how the meter data could be combined with data from earthquake zones, so the utility could turn off the gas supply, for example, if there were a safety concern. “From a safety perspective, that has tre-mendous value,” he said.

The best way to find the value in the data from connected assets is to start with the key pain points, suggested Ujjwal Kumar, vice president and general manager, Honeywell Process Measurement & Control. “We have end-to-end solutions, which allows us to offer holistic, optimized solu-tions,” he explained. “We have a wide portfolio of software and products that allow us to solve your problems in a way not many companies can do. Some of our customers are even creating a brand new revenue stream for themselves by creating new service businesses.”

Honeywell business unit leaders Ujjwal Kumar of Honeywell Measurement & Control (left), Tim Lee of Honeywell Thermal Solutions (center) and Ed Myszka of Honeywell Smart Energy (right) discussed how the company’s increasingly connected asset offerings can help its customers to operate more successfully in a time of accelerating change.


For Tim Lee, vice president and general manager, Honeywell Thermal Solutions, speed is a key enabler and driver. “Three years ago, I would have said our digital strategy was to make sure our sales people had laptops and smartphones. Now we’re looking at how to improve safety and increase productivity with con-nected technologies.”

Connectivity creates valueDiepenbroek asked the group to expand on how their respective groups were helping customers to realize the greatest value by collecting data from connected assets.

“We make burners for thousands of different applica-tions,” explained Lee. His group helps customers to get the most from their assets, determining, for example, where to put the burner or what air-to-fuel ratio to use to optimize its efficiency.

With many workers nearing retirement and taking their domain knowledge with them, Lee’s group has found more opportunities to assist with tactical and strategic recommendations. “There’s an automotive plant in Ohio,” he explained. “All of the vehicles you came in, there’s a likely chance that my burners dried the paint on your vehicles.”

Lee went on to explain that a veteran worker at that plant in Ohio, named Burner Bob, had recently

retired and taken his domain knowledge with him, leaving the plant personnel clueless on what to do. So Honeywell stepped in with its expertise to keep the operation going.

“Fifty percent of skilled labor is going to leave in the next seven years,” said Lee. “How do we get the infor-mation out of those people before they leave? How do we bridge that gap of domain knowledge? We can come in as Honeywell and replace that knowledge.”

Myszka suggested introducing the concept of journey mapping by taking various personas in the operation and walking through what’s important to them on a daily basis. “In the utility space, we’re going through some massive disruption due to changes in the grid,” he explained. “A third of our energy is now being driven by renewables. That’ll be more than 50% in the next five years. You can stand up a wind farm in five to seven years or a solar farm in three to five years.

With these innovations comes significant complexity, Myszka said. ”These changes drive more data points to the grid, which increases the challenges faced by a utility operator trying to deal with them.” Add in an expand-ing array of decentralized assets, and it becomes more difficult to extract the data and turn it into intelligence.

“Honeywell can help,” he added. “We know how to control distributed assets and extract value, too.”

NO TIME LIKE MIGRATION FOR CYBERSECURITYJim Montague

Don’t put off adding cybersecurity until tomorrow if you’re migrating process controls today. Admittedly, cybersecurity is a daunting endeavor that can be

difficult for even the largest and most capable organization to approach; and migration projects are already stressful enough without voluntarily throwing in the cybersecurity monkey wrench.

“Talking about cybersecurity and transitioning to it takes time and requires specialized skill sets, but the main ques-tion users have now is: ‘Where do I start?’” said Mike Spear, director of global security consulting and operations at Honeywell Process Solutions, and part of a panel of experts from Georgia-Pacific and Honeywell, who detailed their experiences and best practices for cybersecurity during


Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 this week in Dallas. “Cyberse-curity is still a big, wide topic, so education is needed, and we’re developing more tools and models for it. There’s no magic answer, but we’re all making progress.”

Jarmo Salminen, director of process control engineering at Georgia-Pacific, added, “Today, we wouldn’t put in any information technology (IT) systems without cybersecurity, so why should we put in process controls without cybersecurity?”

Though it’s a relatively short window, the period when controls are upgraded or replaced can be the perfect time to build in better cybersecurity measures that can protect process applications and systems from ever-evolving cyber probes, intrusions, threats and attacks.

“We’re all so dependent on technology in general, and this has extended to process control systems, as well. As a result, when the pace of cyber attacks increases, control systems are more subject to them, as well,” said Donovan Tindill, senior security consultant at Honey-well, who provided context and an introduction for the panel. “However, the risk to process applications is more serious because, while a cyber incident on the IT side can mean the loss of confidentiality and data, the same intrusion or attack on a process application can mean a loss of control, damage to assets and risks to the health of personnel or the community. This is why cybersecurity on the operations technology (OT) side must be part of the process safety effort, as well.

“Cybersecurity must be part of any technology con-versation, change or upgrade, just as safety is part of any construction conversation,” continued Tindill. “Security is synonymous with reliability, and those who prioritize cybersecurity will have a competitive advantage.”

Securing opportunitiesIntegrating cybersecurity with migration can help users to take advantage of opportunities, added Tindill, so they can benefit from:• Improved management-of-change (MOC) tasks, such

as creating cybersecurity checklists, enhancing controls access, adding security features and setting up proven baselines to help users follow up on incident responses;

• Better design and engineering processes and proce-dures, such as assessing risk, selecting secure products, designing for security, secure implementation and test-ing, vulnerability scans and penetration testing and complying with policies and regulations;

• Reduced number of unplanned outages with critical-patch queuing, improved reboot performance and the ability to trace whether an outage is cybersecurity-re-lated; and,

• Planned outages with better controller changes, ma-jor reboots, architectural changes and critical pass-word changes.“A lot of enhancements can be done before a revamped or

new control system goes live,” said Tindill. “All these opportu-nities are where we can improve cybersecurity, but some other factors need to change to keep users ahead of cyber threats.”

Convincing peopleJust as migrations must be justified before they’re funded,

designed and specified, adding cybersecurity must clear the same hurdles, although it probably won’t be easy.

“It appears that industry is continuing to exclude cybersecurity because research statistics show that more

Honeywell’s Mike Spear (speaking) detailed how the company is developing tools and models to help customers gain cybersecurity capabilities during migration projects as part of a panel discussion with colleagues (left to right) Donovan Tindill, Owen Sillett and Mark Littlejohn during Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019. Jarmo Salminen of Georgia-Pacific moderated the discussion.


than 1,700 upgrade projects were completed worldwide in 2017 and 2018, but only 12% of them included any cybersecurity scope,” added Tindill. “Likewise, more than 1,400 upgrades were planned for 2019, but only 8% of global customer-quote requests specified any cybersecurity scope.

“If end users don’t integrate cybersecurity with their migrations, they could miss out on designing their systems to better handle patches or conduct multiple security tests before operations begin,” added Tindill. “Migration is the time to make these changes.”

Encouraging approachesGiven the challenges of learning about and understand-ing the rapidly evolving nature of cybersecurity, the panel reported on a range of options for integrating it into individual process applications.

“It definitely helps to begin with a risk assessment because it’s not as scary as trying to start with penetration testing,” said Mark Littlejohn, director of global man-aged security services at Honeywell Process Solutions.

Tindill added the main reason many users start a security assessment and begin to consider adopting cybersecurity is because they must. “It’s typically in response to an incident in the organization or to a neighbor, or to resolve an external assessment or compliance issue,” he added.

“The result of a cybersecurity assessment is a roadmap, which can be extremely helpful,” said Spear. “Users also learn the biggest vulnerabilities can come from inside their own four walls. In addition, they learn that North America is still very immature when it comes to cybersecurity because we haven’t addressed many of the basics. It’s actually less important to worry about China and Iran, and more impor-tant to worry about Bob in the plant.”

Fortunately, because even a typical DCS migration requires lots of preplanning, adding a cybersecurity assess-ment is a good idea, even if it’s not initially easy, explained Owen Sillett, manager of Honeywell’s Global Migration Center of Excellence. “When I talk with users about DCS and networking, many say they only focus on the DCS, while ‘those guys over there’ do the network and they just observe it,” explained Sillett.

WEARABLES EMPOWER FIELD OPERATORS AT BRASKEMPaul Studebaker

“People as an asset are very important in industry,” said Marco Santos, produc-tion engineer, Braskem Idesa. “Braskem

Increases reliability and productivity by investing in improving their skills.”

Santos described his plant’s experience with wear-able mobile technology at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019, this week in Dallas. Braskem is first in production of thermoplastic resins in America and in use of 100% renewable raw materials, producing 16 million tons per year of chemical and petrochemical

products in 36 facilities, $23 billion in sales and $2.4 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).

Santos has been with the Braskem Idesa integrated polyethylene plant in Nanchital, Mexico, since its startup in 2016. The plant produces more than a mil-lion tons per year from ethane, a process that involves “pressures to 3,000 bar (43,500 psi)—a very risky plant,” he said. “We’re investing to mitigate the risk.”

Digital transformation is the company’s “most important way to reach our excellence imperative,”


Santos said, with initiatives around the world in many departments. The Nanchital plant’s digitalization focus includes operations, with machine learning (predictive and prescriptive maintenance), and using Honeywell-powered mobile headsets for two-way video and sound communications in an initiative called Cyclops.

“Our Cyclops project began after I talked with Hon-eywell about scenarios as I worked with the plant on startup in 2016,” Santos said. “My concerns were focused on the operators. We had cell phones, laptops and the DCS, but, in the field, no tools for operators, just pencil and paper to take data.” The paper-based system made it difficult to see what direction the process was going or to detect deviations. “We also wanted a better way to transfer knowledge to new operators,” Santos said. “We sought to increase safety, reliability and productivity of field operations through people by improving monitor-ing and control of the process.”

Intelligent wearables programThe Nanchital plant signed on with Honeywell for a three-year subscription to software, apps and service for Connected Plant wearables. The augmented-reality headsets provide task automation, where workers receive guidance and can visualize system information and documents to perform their tasks correctly. Workers can also get expert assistance—the experts can access the worker’s head-mounted display camera and use video chat to offer advice.

“With Cyclops, we’re increasing reliability, productiv-ity and operational skills, and monitoring startup and shutdown activities,” Santos said. “When the devices are used, we can communicate and coach the operators in real time. When we inspect raw materials, we can consult

the specifications. For safety, the operators can take video evidence of unsafe acts and conditions and report them in real time to other operators and supervisors.” Techni-cians have access to lock out and tag out equipment and deliver it for maintenance, and communication between control room and field operators improves overall effec-tiveness. Videos of field operations can be used as tutorials to teach new operators unfamiliar procedures.

Santos gave a live demonstration of connectivity among the conference room in Dallas, the plant in Mexico and Braskem US headquarters in Philadelphia. He showed attendees how he could smoothly guide the operator with text and graphics, turn a headlamp on and off, designate features to draw attention, take and annotate still images, make text notes and join with remote experts.

Santos said the plant’s next steps include implement-ing Movilizer, a handheld system that guides and records operator and maintenance rounds, and intelligent vests for real-time monitoring of worker vital signs and envi-ronmental conditions. He said, “This is just one step on our journey to Industry 4.0, to increase reliability and productivity by investing in people.”

“We sought to increase safety, reliability and productivity of field operations through people by improving monitoring and control of the process.” Braskem’s Marco Santos discussed the use of wearable technologies at the company’s integrated polyethylene plant in Nanchital, Mexico.


A STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH TO MANAGING ALARMSMike Bacidore

When process-manufacturing facilities started changing their control rooms from analog panels to modern DCS displays, plants jus-

tified the new control systems by reducing the number of operators by about 75%. “We knew they added a lot of capability and flexibility,” said Nicholas Sands, senior manufacturing technology fellow, global alarm man-agement leader, and process control engineer, DuPont Safety and Construction. He is also co-chair of the ISA 18 standard committee and a 2019 inductee into the ControlProcess Automation Hall of Fame.

“We threw together the new HMI [human-machine interface] to look like the old panel control rooms,” Sands explained in a presentation at this week’s Hon-eywell Users Group Americas 2019 in Dallas. “But we gave the operator more tags and data points and alarms. It used to be $5,000 to add an alarm on the panel board. Then, with the new system, they didn’t cost anything.”

Managers, engineers and operators went alarm-crazy. “If we weren’t using all the alarms, we weren’t getting our money’s worth out of the DCS,” Sands reminisced. And soon, HMIs became overrun with so many alarms that operators couldn’t even see the ones that required immediate corrective action. Eventually, a procedure and a lifecycle map were needed to streamline the alarms and develop a continuous-improvement pro-cess for review.

“The reason for alarm management is to improve safety and business performance,” explained Sands. “When I started with DuPont, we’d have a high alarm and a low alarm when a pump turned on or off.” The alarm would go on when the tank hit the high level,

and another would activate when it hit the low level, which just added to the onslaught of unnecessary alarms. “Get rid of the alarms you don’t need, so you can see the ones you do,” said Sands. This ultimately became part of the audit function, one of the 10 steps in the alarm-management lifecycle that is part of ISA 18.2.

Standard procedureAccording to ISA 18.2, an alarm is “an audible and/or visible means of indicating to the operator an equipment malfunction, process deviation or abnormal condition requiring a timely response.”

“There must be a defined operator response to correct the condition, and the action must be for the short term.” ISA 18 Co-chair Nicholas Sands on the essential qualifications of a process alarm.


The alarm must indicate a problem, not a normal process condition, explained Sands. “There must be a defined operator response to correct the condition, and the action must be for the short term,” he said, “in minutes, not days.”

As co-chair of the ISA 18 committee, Sands led the group that developed the alarm management lifecycle standard for new facilities and existing plants. It builds on the works of the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium and the Engineering Equipment and Mate-rials Users Association. The alarm-management lifecycle is a continuous-improvement process, designed to be a best practice for control system maintenance.

It comprises 10 steps, three of which can be points of entry. The philosophy step is a good place to start for new facilities or systems. However, brownfield systems can begin with the monitoring-and-assessment step or the audit step.1. Alarm-management philosophy is the guide for

all alarm-management activities at a site. “A writ-ten philosophy is necessary to maintain an alarm system over time,” explained Sands. “Philosophy doesn’t have to be your first step, but it’s usually a good place to start.” Philosophy identifies what you want to achieve. It includes definitions, perfor-mance goals, roles, responsibilities and methods for rationalization activities. Sands recommended eight to 10 pages for the philosophy document.

2. Identification is the step where you insert your method for finding out if and where you want an alarm, determining whether it’s a quality, safety, environmental or regulatory reason.

3. Rationalization is when you decide if it really is go-ing to be an alarm. “In our results, about 50% of the alarms went away,” said Sands. “And 80% of our priorities changed.” Rationalization includes classi-fication, prioritization and documentation. Sands’ words of advice: Be careful not to jump ahead and do the detailed design during the rationalization.

4. Detailed design has three parts: basic alarm de-sign, which includes alarm types, dead bands

and delays; HMI design, which includes indica-tions and summaries; and advanced alarm design, which includes designed suppression.

5. Implementation is the process of putting the alarm or alarm system into operation. “Training and testing are key activities,” said Sands. “Safety systems are mostly testing and some training. Alarm priorities are flipped—mostly training and some testing.”

6. Operation is when the alarm is in service and per-forming its function. “Shelving and removal from service are key processes to define for operations,” explained Sands. “You can use shelving to track out-of-service and in-service. Shelving is for the operator and by the operator.”

7. Maintenance is when the alarm is out of service for repair, replacement or testing. “Testing and re-turn to service are key activities in maintenance,” he said. “You can track how long it takes, and you can return it to service after the repair.”

8. Monitoring and assessment are the tracking of the alarm system performance vs. objectives in the philosophy. “An unmonitored alarm system is almost always broken,” said Sands. “Monitor-ing is a key requirement of ISA 18.2. That re-quirement has changed what every control sys-tem supplier offers. The data tells you what needs to be fixed.”

9. Management of change administers the autho-rization for modifications to the alarm system. “Each change is reviewed and approved prior to implementation. Changes should follow the steps of the lifecycle,” he explained. “Once we’ve done steps 1-8, we don’t want to let that go un-controlled. The data will drive that continuous-improvement loop.”

10. Audit is the periodic check that the alarm system is meeting the objectives and procedures are fol-lowed. “Audit drives changes to the alarm philoso-phy,” said Sands, bringing the lifecycle full circle. “Compare the performance metrics to the targets.”


HONEYWELL GUARANTEEING KPIS FOR RENEWABLES SECTORPaul Studebaker

The electric power industry is going from central-ized production, linear transmission and defined consumers to a decentralized matrix of producer

and consumers with widely dispersed renewable sources as more consumers add solar power systems. “The grid is now distributed, and the focus is on stability, reliability and sustainability,” said Vineet Shah, director, global business strategy & partnerships, renewable energy, Honeywell Process Solutions. “Today, two-thirds of investment in capacity is in renewables.”

Shah spoke to attendees of his session, “Renewable Energy with Outcome Guarantees by Honeywell” at Hon-eywell Users Group Americas 2019 this week in Dallas.

“Subsidies are dying,” Shah said. “Renewables are reaching grid parity, with costs equal to or less than traditional sources. With capital investment dropping, utilities’ profitability depends more on outcomes—on operating expenses (OpEx).”

Honeywell has been involved in renewable energy (RE) for a long time, Shah said. “It used to be sporadic, but a couple of years ago, it became a focus, and now there is a group dedicated to RE.”

To reduce OpEx, the company provides system inte-gration “with the right methodology and technology,” as well as centralized monitoring and operation, reliable data acquisition and analytics, and mobile platforms to enhance competency and safety of workers.

The company is delivering projects in solar and in stor-age and shifting to lifecycle management. “Upstream, we focus on optimizing levelized cost of energy (LCOE),” a measure of a power source that allows comparison of dif-ferent methods of electricity generation on a consistent

basis. “Downstream, we help to optimize microgrid operations and carbon footprints,” said Shah.

Many projects are based on outcomes. “What we’re actually giving customers are contractual guarantees on key performance indicators (KPIs),” which include uptime, safety and compliance reporting.

Better KPIs for every REFor distributed and remote assets, “Honeywell connects assets, people and data with software and processes to enable outcomes,” Shah said. “For example, for an objective to reduce maintenance costs 30%, we can identify the important

“For a solar PV installation, we engineered drones to do unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspections. What used to take 3,000 man-hours can now be done in three hours.” Honeywell’s Vineet Shah discussed the company’s commitment to renewable energy producers, including contracts based on outcome guarantees.


parameters, whether they’re people or operations, and supply hardware and software solutions to deliver the KPIs.”

Solar KPIs include performance parameters, such as avail-ability, performance ratio and tons of carbon avoided, as well as support indicators, such as data integrity and mean time to identify (MTTI) and mean time to contain (MTTC) cyber intrusions. Technology can help to make major reductions in operational expenses. “For example, for a solar PV instal-lation, we engineered drones to do unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspections,” Shah said. “What used to take 3,000 man-hours can now be done in three hours.”

A similar approach is taken with wind power, includ-ing turbine monitoring and battery storage systems. “The more intermittent the power systems, the more you need storage,” Shah said. “We can put it together, and we can operate it.” Honeywell supplies turnkey battery energy storage system (BESS) modules and offers contractual KPIs including capacity, availability, cycle life, tempera-ture control and round-trip efficiency.

Geothermal, biomass, hydroelectric and concentrated solar power (CSP) can benefit from similar technologies to those used for solar and wind.

Microgrids have their own control strategies, which can shift depending on the owners’ priorities: “to optimize

which asset to dispatch right now, to control the load (demand reduction), to reduce carbon—whatever is your goal,” Shah said.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a university in Canada, “we added solar heat pumps, geothermal, turnkey BESS, a microgrid controller and bumpless uninterrupt-ible power supply (UPS),” he said. “The transition to and from the grid is seamless.”

For one of the largest renewable-energy companies in the United States, with more than 1,500 MW of wind assets, “we supplied all the technology for a remote operations center,” Shah said. “We successfully completed a six-site pilot and are doing site visits and documenting the next group of sites to add to it.”

Honeywell’s vision for future applications recognizes renewable energy providers’ concerns about peak pre-diction, battery storage and remote operations center availability. It combines multiple BESS modules, predictive analytics for maintenance, a battery man-agement system, a remote operation center (ROC) managed by Honeywell, operation and maintenance (O&M) services and guarantees of peak prediction, ROC availability and battery performance, as a turn-key installation, Shah said.

BALANCE DETECTION, RESPONSE TO COUNTER CYBER THREATSJim Montague

The best cybersecurity solutions in the world can’t protect anything if they aren’t installed, turned on and working in conjunction with each other.

That’s why Honeywell Process Solutions works with its customers to determine the right cybersecurity software, hardware and other tools for each application, and oper-ationalize them to work in concert to provide the best threat monitoring, detection and response.

“This is similar to the $5 million home in Malibu, Calif., which survived recent wildfires there because the owner

spent 20% of the construction budget on rooftop ember guards, 5,000-gallon water tanks, heat-resistant windows, concrete and steel walls, and roadways around it that could act as a fire barrier,” said Eric Knapp, director of cybersecu-rity products and innovation at Honeywell Process Solutions.

“Of course, not everyone can spend this large a percent-age of their budget on fire protection or on cybersecurity, so we at Honeywell are here to help,” Knapp said. “Opera-tionalizing cybersecurity requires balancing protection and response.”


Knapp presented “Advances in site-level and multi-site industrial cybersecurity” this week at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 in Dallas.

Protect, detect, respondKnapp reported that Honeywell helps protect many process applications and facilities worldwide, but added that pro-viding cybersecurity is more challenging than preparing for wildfires. “Wildfires are known to happen more often in certain weather and seasons, so they can be predicted more easily,” said Knapp. “Plus, wildfires aren’t actively trying to thwart defenses like malware that adapts to avoid detection, or threat-actor individuals that do the same. They do research and attend conferences to get better at it. This is a bad industry that’s always working to develop new attacks and ways to compromise systems, and conducts R&D by testing malware and attacks against the world.

“This is why users must also have active threat detec-tion and prevention programs in place, which include data, tools and people working together. Users must make sure they’re not getting too much data to deal with, and they may need more or less help with each step. However, each step of this path must be addressed, or the overall cybersecurity effort will fail.”

Mend and defendTo help its customers implement and maintain the most appropriate cybersecurity solution for them, Knapp reported that Honeywell’s newly released Forge for Indus-trial software includes a cybersecurity platform that consists of four quadrants:• Asset management that’s about what equipment and

processes a user is running, and what vulnerabilities they may face;

• Secure resource management that covers who’s able to connect to the user’s network, and verifies autho-rized participants;

• Risk appliance to audit the user’s systems and gauge the load on it continuously; and

• Threat detection and management capabilities to identify threats and what they’re trying to do.Knapp added that users, system integrators and other

developers seeking effective cybersecurity should also learn the difference between anomalies, threats and incidents. “Many users think if they do anomaly detection, then they don’t need as many people addressing threats, but this isn’t the case,” explained Knapp. “The chance that you’ll be attacked is 100% because everything from home to busi-ness systems to large organizations are being probed all time for possible intrusions. Most don’t succeed, and so they’re just noise. Incidents are different because they’re cyber threats that have succeed.”

Honeywell operates three R&D cybersecurity centers of excellence in Duluth, Minn., Dubai and Singapore, Knapp reminded his audience. “The centers recently ran a honeypot experiment that collected 100-gigabytes of zero-day attacks in about one week. We often detect threats in their early stages, but then they adapt, too.”

“Many users think if they do anomaly detection, then they don’t need as many people addressing threats, but this isn’t the case.” Honeywell’s Eric Knapp discussed the subtleties of a properly operationalized approach to cybersecurity at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 this week in Dallas.


CONNECTED GAS DETECTORS BOOST SAFETY PERFORMANCEMike Bacidore

F ixed and portable detectors protect workers from toxic gases at most plants And now, the portable, personal kind are even sending real-

time data back to the control room. Alerting operators or emergency-response teams of noxious-gas exposure can save the lives of field workers and help to eliminate environmental incidents by tracking and trending data.

“This integration is critical when every second counts,” said Tony Downes, global process safety advisor in Honeywell’s Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT) division, during a presentation at this week’s Honeywell Users Group America 2019 in Dallas.

“We’re taking data from the edge, non-zero read-ings, and doing some smart stuff with it,” he explained. Honeywell’s integrated solution combines a connected, wearable ProRAE Guardian gas detection solution with Experion PKS visualization and alarming capabilities to deliver enhanced safety of field personnel.

“You can use LTE signals with mobile phones, or we can connect through an existing [wireless] network,” said Downes. Supported wireless technologies include Wi-FI; Bluetooth, which connects the gas detector to a mobile device for relay back to the control room; and Wi-Fi/cellular, which leverages a commercial mobile network when Wi-Fi is unavailable.

“The alarm information and the gas detector’s loca-tion are sent over the wireless network to Experion PKS back in the control room,” explained Downes. “The operator can call up the Experion graphic page to see the real-time location of the device on the site map. The operator can see if other workers are nearby, or inform the emergency-response team.”

The system continuously monitors for alarms and tracks data, including personnel location. And it lever-ages the alarm-management capabilities that are built into Experion. “There’s a lot of data coming back,” explained Downes. “If you bring it into the historian, you can do exposure analysis as well.”

Use cases for connectivityIndustrial accidents cost a lot of money, and there are still plenty of them. In 2012 and 2013, for example, the total value of the seven largest accidents in the hydro-carbon industry caused by fire or explosion exceeded $1

“We now have a method to bring new data, new information, in from the edge.” Honeywell’s Tony Downes explained how connected personal gas detectors can increase worker safety and sometimes reveal issues that otherwise remain hidden.


billion, said Downes. In refineries, field workers might be exposed to hydrogen sulfide (H2S). “It’s a very dan-gerous gas,” said Downes. “In the field, you have a lot of people working by themselves these days. They’re an increased safety risk. You want to track where they are and what they’re exposed to. Any delay in notifica-tion mean you’re going to have a longer response time.”

Meanwhile, control-room operators don’t know what’s going on in the field unless they’re talking to the field personnel. A personal gas safety system with man-down detection can help rescue someone who’s been exposed and rendered unconscious.

Pattern analysis of non-zero readings can also help to identify hard-to-find leaks. For example, at a plant that generates nitrogen dioxide “we had spikes of NOx concentration, but zero readings in the same area,” he explained. “Turned out, some fumes escaped when

vessels were discharging because we weren’t carrying the gases away fast enough. We had a more dramatic example with a feed tank where we lost a blower. I was wearing a gas detector, and it went off when I was above the tank.”

The Honeywell personal gas detection system offers more than simple integration, added Downes. “The tool brings standardization,” he explained. “We now have a method to bring new data, new information, in from the edge. Key gas detector data, such as GPS location, is automatically historicized, and the network architecture meets all safety and security guidelines.”

Because Honeywell sells the control systems and the gas detectors, it can put all the pieces together. “That reduces engineering efforts and implementation risk,” said Downes. “It gives you faster response and the oppor-tunity to do more with the data that you’ve collected.”


MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR JUNE 21-25, 2020!

Honeywell Users Group Americas 2020 will be held at the JW Marriott Grande Lakes, Orlando, Florida, USA

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Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 - Control Global · 2019-08-13 · Live from Honeywell Users Group Americas 2019 come a natural extension of process equipment and to facilitate