Invensys’ North American customer conference draws 800 visitors

Foxboro, MA—Invensys Process Systems reports that almost 800 visitors, mostly users of Foxboro, Triconex, and Avantis products, participated in its recent North American Customer Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, TX.

By Control Engineering Staff November 9, 2004

Foxboro, MA— Invensys Process Systems reports that almost 800 visitors, mostly users of Foxboro, Triconex, and Avantis products, participated in its recent North American Customer Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, TX. The event also included interactive sessions and shared ideas from about 225 of Invensys’ customer companies and user organizations, ranging from small municipalities to the largest multinational corporations.

Many participants reported that the conference was the most useful and informative customer event they’ve ever attended. ‘We told them what we were looking for, and the Invensys team delivered a first-rate conference,’ says Terry Deo, of Infineum USA, who serves as chair of Invensys’ North American I/A Series User Group Steering Committee. Triconex and Avantis customers reportedly provided similar feedback.

The overall theme of the Invensys customer event, The Big Picture, highlighted the broad range of products, services, and capabilities that Invensys Process Systems has to help improve performance in its customers’ plants. Foxboro, Triconex, and Avantis staged sub-themes for their customer-specific tracks, including ‘Sharing Know-How’ by Foxboro, ‘Safety Heats Up’ by Triconex, and ‘Maximize Asset Reliability and Performance’ for Avantis.

During the general session, Invensys Process Systems’ president, Mike Caliel, discussed the company’s intensified focus on technology and performance, Invensys’ renewed financial strength, and its increasing emphasis on building performance-based relationships with customers. This was followed by an inspiring keynote presentation by National Geographic photographer, DeWitt Jones, who used examples of his photographs to demonstrate how individuals can turn creative visions into reality to improve the quality of their personal and professional lives.

Security was the main focus of Foxboro’s conference tracks. This included a three-hour kick-off session featuring presentations by David Sanders from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Eric Byres from the British Columbia Institute of Technology; and Peter Meister from Microsoft Corp. This was followed by an in-depth technical session on network and cyber security presented by security specialists from Invensys and its customer organizations.

Triconex’s conference program included customer tracks on safety, nuclear, and turbomachinery control. The program featured many user presentations, as well as a series of master classes on relevant topics, such as OPC communication configuration and SIL determination. Premier Consulting’s safety system expert, Bob Adamski, taught the second class.

Avantis’ conference program featured several customer case study presentations and sessions on asset reliability strategies. These included a presentation on Dynamic Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) by Houghton Leroy from the ARC Advisory Group, and a panel discussion lead by experts from Invensys and two key customers.

In total, the conference included more than 140 sessions presented by Foxboro, Triconex, and Avantis’ users, Invensys’ technical and marketing specialists, and third-party presenters. Many of these sessions were filled to capacity, and most were followed by question and answer periods.

In the event’s product demonstration areas, there was significant interest in the latest I/A Series system enhancements, including its new family of high-performance controllers, high-availability mesh process control network technology, FDT-enabled fieldbus enhancements, and ease-of-use enhancements provided by the latest version of the I/A Series Configuration Component (IACC). Visitors were also interested in the latest Triconex TMR Safety Instrumented System and turbomachinery control system technology, and in the recently enhanced version of the Avantis enterprise asset management (EAM) software, including its dynamic maintenance management (DMM) solution and new decision-support capabilities.

Several third-party vendors also demonstrated their products at the conference. These included Entrasys Networks; Inventory Management Analysis LTD; Management Results Inc., MaxEAM Inc., Modular Industrial Comuters, Pepperl+Fuchs Inc., Popware Inc., SmartSignal Corp., and TiPS Inc.

Control Engineering Daily News DeskJim Montague, news editorjmontague@reedbusiness.com