Phoenix, AZ—Honeywell Process Solutions held its 30th annual users group conference on June 12-16. More than 800 users from 28 countries attended, representing a 30% increase in attendance over 2004.
Phoenix, AZ— Honeywell Process Solutions held its 30th annual users group conference on June 12-16. More than 800 users from 28 countries attended, representing a 30% increase in attendance over 2004. The meeting is organized and planned by the Honeywell Users Group.
Kicking off the conference, Jack Bolick, president, Honeywell Process Solutions, said that Honeywell’s orders are up 16% over last year and that the company has experienced an 8% growth in sales over the same period.
Bolick also noted major acquisitions Honeywell has made in the past year, including: completion of the purchase of Tata Group’s stakes in Tata Honeywell in India; Petrocom, a Russian advanced solutions provider; and HySys technology from Aspen Technology to create UniSim modeling and simulation software for optimization of plant design and operations through dynamic offline simulation, engineering studies and what-ifs, control strategy and procedure assessment, and training.
While the conference was underway, Honeywell also announced the acquisition of InterCorr International, a provider of products for corrosion management. Honeywell will integrate InterCorr’s SmartCET online technology into its Experion Process Knowledge System. InterCorr’s online, real-time technology is said to reduce the cost of corrosion by 20% when compared to standard, offline processes.
“Fewer people must respond faster to handle more complex processes to make better decisions with bigger consequences,” says Bolick, summarizing Honeywell’s view of the current and foreseeable future for manufacturers. Bolick’s statement underscored Honeywell’s focus at the conference on bolstering technologies through acquisition and development to enable Honeywell’s product offering to meet specific customer needs.
During a press conference at the users’ event, Bolick reported that acquisitions will remain an integral part of Honeywell’s business strategy, especially in the areas of sensors (for collecting and positioning data for movement through production systems), domain (vertical industry) expertise, and for geographic advantage. In terms of worldwide opportunities for future growth, Bolick added that refineries and biopharmaceuticals appear to have the biggest upside in North America. In emerging regions, such as Asia and the Middle East, power generation is expected to be the primary market for industrial growth.
With regard to Asia, Bolick noted that Japan is changing its historical pattern of not investing heavily in safety products. “The big trend there now, in safety, is a move toward operator effectiveness in dealing with safety issues,” he says.
In a related announcement, Honeywell has enhanced Experion’s built-in procedures for abnormal situation management to be showcased in the upcoming release of Experion R300. The procedures are designed to aid operators in startups and shutdown, as well as for maintenance and upgrades.
Peter Zornio, Honeywell’s product marketing director, stated in his presentation at the conference, “There has been a lot discussion recently surrounding the integration of controls and safety on the same hardware. Honeywell believes strongly in the integration of control and safety, but not on the same hardware” due to potential of hardware failure. The company’s approach to safety integration will be showcased in its Safety Manager R100 release this year.
Areas of principal focus for the conference were:
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Cyber and physical industrial security;
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Experion R300 and its automated backup and restore capabilities, which is reported to restore control and automation systems to pre-shutdown state in less than an hour;
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C300 controller and Series C line of vertical I/O (see the July print edition of Control Engineering products or click here ;
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Corrosion solutions, based on technology from InterCorr;
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Unisim advanced simulation software;
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Safety management;
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Experion migration strategies for both Honeywell and third party products; and
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Wireless industrial communication.
Control Engineering Daily News Desk
David Greenfield, editorial director
[email protected]
