Partnering with Industry for a Brighter Future · Partnering with Industry for a Brighter Future ... CENTUM VP evolves to serve users 11 ... 6 inefficiency and rework.

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Partnering with Industry for a Brighter FutureHighlights of the 2016 Yokogawa Users Conference & ExhibitionOctober 3-6, 2016 | Orlando, Florida, USA

A Special Report by the Editors of Control

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TABLE OF CONTENTSPartnering for a brighter future 3

Industry change doesn’t ‘just happen’ 5

New visibility into the DCS lifecycle 7

Process analysis needs paradigm shift 9

CENTUM VP evolves to serve users 11

Drones open new cyber-physical attack vector 12

How digital technology is transforming business 13

Yokogawa, KBC drive decision support 16

How to scope a major instrument upgrade 18

Stabilize quality with process data analytics 19

Cybercrime from the inside out 21

Air Liquide achieves secure, remote support 23

Idaho National Lab offers cyber assist 26

Leverage human strengths in operational design 28

Flue gas analysis enters new era 30

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With oil & gas prices low and much of the process industries in economic doldrums, “The market is facing challenges, and in-

novation is a key driver to sustaining growth,” said Ta-kashi Nishijima, CEO, Yokogawa Electric Corp. “We must re-create ourselves to create wealth and value to society.”

Nishijima spoke by video to attendees of the  2016 Yokogawa Users Group Exchange and Exhibitionthis week in Orlando, Florida. In keeping with the motto, “Co-innovating tomorrow,” adopted on the company’s 100th anniversary last year, the company intends to win new customers, expand its relationships with its client base and serve society at large by focusing on three ar-eas: building a stronger defense, operational effective-ness, and capital expense efficiency. “Yokogawa is mov-ing into the future one step at a time,” Nishijima added. “We’ll be working with you to build greater bonds of trust and to stimulate growth.”

The opportunities presented by co-innovation were then described by Dr. Tsuyoshi “Ted” Abe, vice presi-dent and CMO, Yokogawa Electric Corp. “Analysts are always looking at the short range,” Abe said. “Let me fo-cus on the long range.”

Having seen the benefits of mechanization and power, mass production and electrification, computers and au-tomation, we are entering the fourth industrial revolu-tion, this one brought about by cyber-physical systems and information technology, Abe said.

“In 1965, Moore’s Law was just an observation that the number of transistors per square inch of integrated cir-cuit was doubling every two years,” Abe said. “Now we

observe that the available computing power per person is rising exponentially as its cost is falling.”

Other examples of the logarithmic trends in IT cited by Abe included the rapid growth in people using the Internet, from 2.5 billion today to 3.4 billion in two years. The number of Internet-connected devices was 2 billion in 2006, 15 billion in 2015, and 50 billion are expected by 2020. Miniaturization also continues apace, as represented by the University of Michigan’s “Micro Mote” computer. “It’s the size of four grains of rice—including processors, memory, battery, solar

“Our big, hairy, audacious goal—BHAG—is sustainable processes.” Dr. Tsuyoshi “Ted” Abe, vice president and CMO, Yokogawa Electric Corp.

PARTNERING FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURESuccessfully embracing the 4th industrial revolution will require unprecedented collaborationBy Paul Studebaker

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cells and wireless communications,” Abe said.Peer-to-peer communication by smart connected de-

vices is widely expected to flatten the five-layer Purdue model to two layers, device and enterprise, with little or no need for intervening I/O, controllers and SCADA, Abe said. “This obviously requires IT and operations technology to converge, despite well-established and jus-tifiable differences in cultures and priorities.”

Technology to the rescue“We’re working on a platform for sustainable evolu-tion and sustainable value creation, with core innova-tion,” Abe said. When it comes to technology change, “You can read the future, change to accommodate it, be open to it, make it, or follow it. We choose to make the future.”

With cyber communities Facebook, Tencent, Google, Whatsapp, Line, LinkedIn and Twitter among the world’s 10 largest “populations” (along with China, In-dia, and the United States), “we see new forms of enter-prise rising to meet growing challenges for a burgeoning population of human beings,” Abe said. Adequate and fairly distributed supplies of energy, food and water re-quire innovation in human behavior. Abe sees six major factors “changing the game” for humanity:

• The crisis-prone global economy• The governance gap• The potential for increased conflict• Wider scope of regional instability• The impact of new technologies• The role of the USA“All can be addressed through measurement, control

and information,” he said.“Our big, hairy, audacious goal—BHAG—is sustain-

able processes,” Abe added. “While Yokogawa today has many industrial customers, our future customers are to-day’s children. We must all work together, to contribute to save the earth for our children. Leadership does mat-ter, but not only at Yokogawa. Let’s work together for a co-innovative tomorrow for our bright future.”

North America financial resultsYokogawa Corp. of America (YCA) has seen steady growth since its founding in 1957, and has been adding jobs and manufacturing capacity in Newnan, Georgia and in Coldsprings and Freeport, Texas. “But when we made our Transformation 2017 three-year interim business plan as part of our longer 10-year plan, oil was not at $40 per barrel. It was closer to three figures,” said Daniel Duncan, CEO, YCA. Still, revenues for fiscal 2015 were down just 1% from 2014, with record profits. “2016 is tougher.”

Current regional plan highlights include focusing on customers, “to engage with you on your business, chal-lenges and issues, and only after that, look at our port-folio of products, solutions and services,” Duncan said. “We’re putting boots on the ground and people in place, investing in great products but also expanding our value beyond technology—creating new value by partnering and innovating through cooperation with customers.”

Yokogawa is maximizing its own efficiency to help keep costs down by optimizing internal processes, de-veloping enabling technologies and investing. “We’re investing in account managers so we can spend more time with customers to understand their needs and add value,” Duncan said. “We’re adding specialists who can talk in depth about the technologies we can bring to bear; product managers to own products and solutions, work with headquarters to develop maps and support infrastructures; and field services across the USA—resources who can be in your facilities when you need us.”

A strengthened cadre of safety consultants is expert in safety systems lifecycles and risk reduction, and, “We have TUV certification of our entire project methodol-ogy. We’re the only company in North America that has that,” Duncan said.

With the economy as difficult as it has been, “We will never forget how we’ve managed to survive 100 years,” Duncan said. “It’s thanks to your willingness to trust in Yokogawa, and adhering to our five core values: respect; integrity; gratitude; create value; and collaboration.”

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“We challenged every process and technology, and eliminated processes and hardware wherever we could.” ExxonMobil’s Sandy Vasser on the company’s “It Just Happens” vision for reinventing the execution of process automation projects.

INDUSTRY CHANGE DOESN’T ‘JUST HAPPEN’Sandy Vasser and his team at ExxonMobil set out to improve their own project execution processes, and catalyzed industry change in the process.By Jim Montague

Some six years ago, the engineering group respon-sible for instrumentation, controls and electrical systems at ExxonMobil Development Corp. set

out to break free of increasingly complex and unsustain-able project execution procedures. Under the vision of “It Just Happens,” the group program set out to stream-line processes for major capital project specification, de-sign, testing and implementation—and catalyzed the de-velopment and deployment of new technologies across industry in the process.

“We had to dramatically change how we were execut-ing projects: traditional methods simply weren’t sustain-able,” said Sandy Vasser, IC&E manager and advisor (re-tired) in his keynote address, ‘10 Years Before and 10 Years After ‘It Just Happens,’” this week at the 2016 meeting of the North America Yokogawa Users Group in Orlando.

“We’d started ExxonMobil Development Corp. just a few years earlier to initiate major, capital projects up-stream, and these included 15-20 projects per year that had to be successful. So, we checked with other users, incorporated our own best practices, and developed new, detailed procedures we could follow from project to project.”

This initial effort also led ExxonMobil Development to adopt a Main Automation Contractor (MAC) con-cept, in which a highly qualified, well-resourced control systems specialist was contracted to engineer, supply, procure and manage instrumentation, control systems and associated interfaces for all project components and

facilities. MAC was eventually deployed on 17 different projects; MAC teams implemented cost-effective, fit-for-purpose controls; and Vasser reported it also helped reduce project costs by improving the organization’s front-end engineering and designs (FEED) with better definitions and descriptions.

Seeking simplificationDespite these gains, Vasser reported that ExxonMobil Development’s capital projects were still held back by

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inefficiency and rework. “Automation remained on the critical path,” he said. “Dependencies on other disci-plines continued, such as on process, loss and preven-tion, mechanical and process engineers, who were all concerned with their own schedules.” Ongoing design changes meant repeated rework as well. “All of this re-quired extraordinary measures to deliver projects, and though costs and schedules were managed, they were more than acceptable and growing.”

Consequently, Vasser, his colleagues at ExxonMobil Development and their partners like Yokogawa Corp. of America cooperated on realizing the vision of “It Just Happens,” to simplify and standardize project execution procedures for process automation. “We challenged ev-ery process and technology, and eliminated processes and hardware wherever we could,” said Vasser. “How-ever, we didn’t want to just identify problems and bolt on solutions afterwards because we also wanted to reduce customization.”

Vasser reported that ExxonMobil Development’s new approach:

• Reduced customization and reliance on standard solutions by pushing customization to the software and using standard hardware, and eliminating the need for the infrastructure to support customized solutions;

• Reduced complexity and simplified designs by re-ducing component counts and divergent systems, taking full advantage of the capability of installed systems, and reducing and simplifying interfaces;

• Eliminated, simplified or automated processes;• Reduced the number of dependencies;• Reduced automatically generated documentation;

and,• Developed or enabled trust with suppliers and con-

tractors.“The truth about customization is that engineers

believe every non-standard requirement is there to ad-dress a lesson learned, and can be easily justified con-sidering the incremental cost of the physical change. Management, however, believes the high cost of proj-ects is caused by engineers gold-plating their designs,” explained Vasser.

The weight of customization“The reality is that although there are increased costs caused by non-standard requirements, the real impacts to projects are caused by the costs and delays associated with the infrastructure required to support the custom-ization process,” Vasser said. “For example, in the past, we might have 200 cabinets, but they were all different inside, and had to be individually designed, manufac-tured, revised and customized. This method was way too complex, while required specifications also gener-ated massive amounts of paperwork, conflicts, errors and inconsistencies, work out of sequence, redesigns and re-submissions by suppliers. We needed to agree on speci-fications, and order against them commodity by com-modity and system by system.”

As a result, “It Just Happens” focused on several key areas, such as safety and cybersecurity, as well as ar-eas with lots of customization, excessive time and/or resources used, lots of rework, dependencies on other disciplines, and related actions performed multiple times for different reasons. Vasser added that key au-tomation and other technologies aiding these efforts included:

• Smart, configurable I/O in standard cabinets and/or field junction boxes;

• Virtualized computing, both runtime and engi-neering;

• Auto-detect, -interrogate, -configure, -enable, -docu-ment I/O (DICED I/O) via HART and non-HART communication protocols;

• Safety instrumented systems (SIS) logic solver di-rectly programmed using translated cause-and-ef-fects;

• Seamless integration between automation and elec-trical systems;

• Simplified package interface solution;• Wireless field instruments; and,• Increased use of DC power, such as 125 VDC.After consulting with Yokogawa, Vasser reported

that the company’s contribution to making “It Just Happen” include Network-IO for process and safety applications in standard cabinets and/or junction boxes; virtualized computing; Agile Project EXecu-

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tion (APEX) methodology; simplified commissioning procedures; improved integration between automa-tion and electrical systems; simplified package inter-face; and wireless field instruments.

“On the physical side, we now have standard, non-customized components ordered by part number; de-tailed specifications aren’t required. We’ve reduced the number of cabinets by 66% and reduced termi-nations by 70%. Further, no hardware factory accep-tance test (FAT) is required for standard equipment.” He also cited reducing the footprint of local equip-ment rooms by up to 40%, replacing many copper ca-bles with fiber-optic cables and the use of wireless to further simplify and reduce the weight of topsides and modules.

“Meanwhile, we achieved simplified designs with less customization; eliminated the schedule ties and engi-neering dependencies between hardware delivery and plant design; and eliminated design churn.” There also have been fewer opportunities for errors in construction,

less inspection, less troubleshooting, and less vendor data that must be reviewed and approved. “As a result, we’ve reduced automation engineering by 30-40%, construc-tion by 20-30%, and commissioning by 30-40%. Auto-mation schedules have been compressed by as much as 25%, and it’s off the critical path.”

In the future, Vasser concluded that new challenges for the automation industry will include controls that can “age in place” with building blocks that are easier to upgrade and repair, and have cybersecurity built into their designs, as well as proper alarm configura-tions from the outset. He also called for simpler HMI graphics, and self-calibrating field instruments. “We should be able to replace components easily and on a timely basis when they age, which is why we’ve also undertaken our Open Process Automation Initiative,” added Vasser. “The oil and gas industries are all strug-gling, but the real leaders will be those who use this lull in activity to develop transformational solutions to do more with less when conditions improve.”   

NEW VISIBILITY INTO THE DCS LIFECYCLESolvay Green River is developing a 20-year vision for the future of its process control system assets.By Keith Larson

Kevin Kelley learned the value of control sys-tem lifecycle management the hard way. Fol-lowing three losses of control system power in

2012, the process control foreman at Solvay Chemical’s Green River soda ash production facility in southwest-ern Wyoming oversaw the long-delayed replacement of the unit’s heretofore “uninterruptible” power sup-ply (UPS). Replacing the UPS itself went smoothly, but then 64 of 300 associated control system power supplies failed to power back up. After not a little scrambling to

keep the unit up and running, the team discovered that the 14-year-old power supplies in question had a rec-ommended replacement interval of eight years. “It re-ally bit us,” Kelley said.

So began an ongoing journey at Solvay Green River to better understand and proactively manage the lifecy-cle status of the plant’s process control systems. Kelley shared Solvay’s story in his best-of-conference presen-tation, “Solving the Lifecycle Management Equation,” at this week’s  Yokogawa Users Group  conference in

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Orlando. Today, the plant’s CENTUM VP R5 system from Yokogawa encompasses some 12,000 I/O points, 22 Field Control Stations, 17 operator stations, six engi-neering stations and eight plant servers. Further, it con-trols processes spread out across 20 miles.

Staying current a challenge“Industrial control systems are put into operation with the expectation of long-term performance,  often span-ning many years,” Kelley said. During that long  lifecy-cle, maintenance requirements often change due to fac-tors  such as innovations in technology, new releases in software and hardware, end of support for certain com-ponents, and technology refresh cycles for workstations and servers. And for modern control systems that use Mi-crosoft Windows operating systems, patches and security updates represent an added burden. Other complicating factors include system and software release and revision cycles, backwards compatibility with older systems, as well as availability and support of hardware components. 

Because of these many challenges, end-users need a simple way to understand the ever-changing environ-ment of control system lifecycle management, Kelley said. “As a manager it’s my job to get the most value pos-sible out of our control system investments. Users such as Solvay must be able to define a lifecycle strategy for their control systems that provides them the best return on their investment without sacrificing system security or reliability.”

Lifecycle report boosts visibilityEven as Kelley and Solvay struggled to get a better handle on the lifecycle status of the plant’s automa-tion assets, Yokogawa had begun preparing a lifecycle management report that would facilitate far greater visibility into the roadmap and future support require-ments of those assets.

Each of Yokogawa’s new Lifecycle Reports is specifi-cally prepared for each user’s system, explained John Gracia, manager of Yokogwa’s Techncial Assistance Center near Atlanta. “With this report, the customer can see where they are in the lifecycle of each system component, including maintenance and support op-tions available as elements move from current release to maintenance and on to ‘best effort’ support and ob-solete phases. With this information, they can better plan and understand Yokogawa’s support policies for the related system products.” Kelley particularly ap-preciates a color-coded Gant-style summary chart that shows where each system component currently stands in its support lifecycle. Red, yellow and green coding clearly indicates how close each element is to requir-ing attention.

“We’re looking to develop a 20-year vision for the future of the plant’s control system assets,” Kelley concluded. “We are in the middle of the process now and Yokogawa has provided us with a tool that takes much of the work out of defining this path. We be-lieve a well-defined path will save us valuable time in maintaining our control system and it will give us the peace of mind that we have made a great effort to help keep things from slipping past us in the future.”

“Yokogawa has provided us with a tool that takes much of the work out of defining this path.” Solvay Chemicals’ Kevin Kelley is using Yokogawa’s new lifecycle report to help develop a 20-year vision for the plant’s control system assets. 

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“We need numbers we can trust—useful data for operations—and more than just 99% of the time.” Dow Chemical’s JD Tate on the performance requirements for a new generation of process analyzers.

PROCESS ANALYSIS NEEDS PARADIGM SHIFTIndustrie 4.0 is driving demand for capable, reliable, cost-effective new technology.By Paul Studebaker

Process analyzers are just a means to an end, but they have great potential for improving opera-tions if plants can justify, choose and support

them well. The more we use, the less expensive they’ll become, but the path to increased use of cost-effective analyzers has some bumps and curves.

“Our plants profit from safe, reliable, environmentally re-sponsible operations,” said Dr. J.D. Tate, senior technical leader, Dow Chemical, to attendees of his keynote session at the 2016 Yokogawa Users Group Conference this week in Orlando. “Our objective is to make money by control-ling the process using computers, models and measure-ments. Some of those measurements require analyzers—they’re a means to an end.”

Where possible, we should make more money by re-ducing costs such as maintenance and personnel with more and better technology. Production needs fast and timely information to run safely, profitably and reliably, and on-line analyzers often can provide criti-cal information at a lower cost than lab-based mea-surements. They can also satisfy regulatory require-ments for 24/7 analysis of air and water emissions, and provide accurate and relevant online information for big-data analytics.

Dow Chemical has 22,000 analyzers worth $1 billion, and replaces 1,500 of them every year. “But anyone with a big enough checkbook can buy a gas chromatograph (GC),” said Tate. “Can we use analyzers to gain a competi-tive edge? What are the opportunities, where are the ben-efits? Where are your constraints?”

Engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms don’t have much breadth or depth of skills in ana-

lyzers, and even the instrument manufacturers have lim-ited resources for analyzer development, Tate said. “A lot of analyzer technology came directly from the chemical and refining industries—and few suppliers are meeting our needs for the future.”

Dow Process Analytical provides products and ser-vices designed to help plants select and support the best technology for the application. “End users have been telling us for more than 10 years that needs are chang-ing, driven by changes in process control, reliability and Industrie 4.0,” Tate said. Model-based control is a real-ity, and data analytics are changing operations and mea-surement needs. “Clients are still using last-generation technology, and increasingly need cost-effective, simple

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solutions because they’re less educated and have less in-house expertise,” Tate said.

“In 2003, Dow had 15,000 analyzers and 153 people in the analyzer group. Today, we have 22,000 analyzers and fewer than 45 people. Our group is losing 432 years of experience in the next five years,” Tate said. “It’s the same everywhere. Something has to give.”

That something should be technology. Today’s analyz-ers use complex sampling systems with lots of moving parts that are expensive and costly to install and main-tain. “The future will bring smart sampling systems that diagnose themselves.” Tate said. “We need numbers we can trust—useful data for operations—and more than just 99% of the time.”

Dow’s 22,000 analyzers include only a few mass spec-trometers and Raman analyzers, maybe 300 FTIRs, and hundreds of chromatographs, TDLs, filter IRs and simi-lar complex instruments. “We have thousands of pH and conductivity analyzers,” Tate said. “But compare that to our more than a million pressure, temperature and flow transmitters. If we want more analyzers, we need to bring down the barriers so we can treat them more like regular process instruments.”

Plants can see the potential. For example, at a Dow customer plant, the cause of contaminated product was traced to carbon dioxide in the raw material feed. The incident cost $680,000, and the plant wanted to add an online GC to monitor impurities in the incoming product so it would be able to respond before the final QC analysis. The commercial, off-the-shelf solution in-cluded the GC ($80,000), sample conditioning system ($50,000), analyzer building (100 sq.ft., $200,000) and a construction and utilities estimate of 2.5 times the capi-tal equipment cost for a total installed cost of $825,000. The customer could not afford the solution, and the op-portunity for improvement was lost.

Driving forwardIndustry must overcome personnel, technology and cost impediments to satisfy coming needs for more and bet-ter process data. The value drivers for Industrie 4.0 in-clude a long list where analyzers can make material con-tributions, including:

• Smart energy consumption;

• Intelligent lots;• Real-time yield optimization;• Remote monitoring and control;• Predictive maintenance;• Real-time supply chain optimization;• Batch sizing;• Statistical process control;• Advanced process control;• Digital quality management; and,• Rapid experimentation and simulation.Innovative analyzer engineering is also needed to

keep assets competitive. “About 20% of analyzers are at or near the end of support by their suppliers,” Tate said. With replacement and new project rates near 1,500 per year, Dow users need programs for analyzer rational-ization (necessity and reliability audits), recommenda-tions for standardization, and assistance for project de-velopment, resourcing and execution. They also need help to sustain existing analyzers and introduce im-proved technologies.

Tomorrow’s technology“The last fundamental change was lab to field,” Tate said. “Another change is required.” The characteris-tics users need in the next generation of analyzers in-clude:

• Technologies that do not require HVAC shelters;• Faster speed of response;• Technologies that do not need sample transport;• Reliable, simpler sample systems;• Low maintenance cost – field-repairable/replaceable;• System validation designs;• Standards-based communications interfaces;• Asset management system support; and,• Practical solutions for regulatory compliance.Tate offered as a benchmark the Yokogawa tunable

diode laser spectrometer (TDLS). But with few excep-tions, analyzer suppliers have not innovated, leaving it up to the process industries. “Dow and the indus-try generally have more expertise than suppliers, and more access to technology breakthroughs,” he said. “But Dow and the industry do not want to develop technologies. We need a new route to commercially available products.”

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“Our users are facing major challenges to achieving operations effectiveness in the areas of safety and security, human reliability, efficiency, and equipment availability and reliability.”

CENTUM VP EVOLVES TO SERVE USERSLatest release of the Yokogawa process automation and safety system platform includes many enhancements designed to assist users throughout the entire system lifecycle.By Jim Montague

For more than one hundred years, Yokogawa has acutely focused on serving its customers, and no-where is this century-long commitment better

demonstrated than in the investments being made in its flagship Centum VigilantPlant (VP) distributed control system (DCS).

“Our users are facing major challenges to achieving op-erations effectiveness in the areas of safety and security, human reliability, efficiency, and equipment availabil-ity and reliability,” said Gene Chen, product manager for DCS and safety instrumented systems (SIS) at Yokogawa. “They’re focused on productivity, but they need safety sys-tems more than ever; their applications are quickly mov-ing from physical to digital controls; and at the same time, 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every day.”

To help its customers meet and defeat these chal-lenges, Chen reported that CENTUM VP and its sup-porting sensors, I/O, networks, ProSafe-RS SIS and other components continue to offer a rock-solid foun-dation backed up by Yokogawa’s deep knowledge in the control and optimization of process applications. “Yok-ogawa launched the first DCS on the market in 1975, and it’s continued to offer progressive compatibility for effectively aging in place,” explained Chen. “Yokogawa delivers easy upgradeability that’s simple and fast; low complexity and easy expandability; highest proven field reliability with a bulletproof foundation; applications that migrate forward for continued value and reduced lifecycle costs; and knowledgeable engineers to execute,

solve your problems, and ensure benefits throughout the solution lifecycle.”

Chen and his colleagues, Steven Burch, SIS consul-tant at Yokogawa, and Eugene Spiropoulos, systems so-lutions architect at Yokogawa, presented “Advances in DCS and SIS” this week at the Yokogawa North Ameri-can Users Group meeting in Orlando.

Over the past two years, CENTUM VP has pro-gressed quickly from version R6.01 in 2014 to R6.02 in 2015 to this year’s release of R6.03. Numerous new ca-

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pabilities and useful features have been added at each stage. Some of the primary highlights incorporated into and delivered by CENTUM VP include:

• Whole Alarm lifecycle management service, which combines Yokogawa’s Alarm Management Solution Suite and its Global Alarm Management Optimiza-tion program;

• Conversion of big data floods into useful knowledge by using OPC-UA communication strategy, Yokogawa’s data as a service, and its hosted and cloud applications;

• Fire and gas (F&G) applications supported with DCS and SIS faceplates. These are designed to enhance Pro-Safe-RS as well the CENTUM VP Human Interface Station (HIS), and can handle tasks like detector resets and function blocks for F&G devices;

• Safety Lifecycle Management solution, covering a full range of safety services. Its analysis section han-dles site assessment, HAZOP facilitation, layers of protection analysis (LOPA) and other tasks. Its real-ization section has a TÜV-certified execution pro-cess, and achieves point-by-point compliance with the IEC 61511 standard. And, its operations sec-tion does operations performance and compliance assessments, as well as enterprise functional safety

monitoring and override management;• Platform support for Microsoft Windows 10 and

Windows Server 2016 in 2017, and renewed sup-port for its cybersecurity configuration tool for these newer operating systems;

• Incorporation of Trinity Integrated Systems software in ProSafe-RS to prevent unauthorized removal of logic from existing controls;

• Use of iDefine software for system recovery;• Expanson of HIS (Trend) software’s trend graph dis-

play period, increased pens from eight to 16 on a single trend view, improved usability of trend pen displaying, and increased trend software blocks from 50 to 99;

• Display of a shelved alarm list and suppressed alarms in CENTUM VP’s Consolidated Alarm Manage-ment Solution (CAMS);

• Enhanced Automation Design Suite software com-parison editor for sequence tables in the DCS’s his-tory management tuning parameter;

• Upgraded RIO (remote I/O) system in CENTUM VP R6.03; and

• Unified Gateway Station 2 (UGS2) for seamless monitoring and operating CENTUM subsystems, which includes a 1-second switchover time. 

DRONES OPEN NEW CYBER-PHYSICAL ATTACK VECTORWhat happens when a low-power jamming device hovers over a wireless transmitter?By Keith Larson

Worms, viruses and other malware that spread through unprotected computer networks aren’t the only security threat

to the operation of industrial control systems. “Some say that electronic warfare, or the use of directed en-ergy to control the electromagnetic spectrum, attack an enemy, or impede adversary operations, is merging with cyber warfare,” explained Jeff Melrose, principal technology strategist for cybersecurity, Yokogawa, in his session ‘When Drones Attack!’ this week at the

company’s North America user group meeting in Or-lando. And drones, in particular, represent a new, en-abling technology for electronic warfare against in-dustrial facilities.

Melrose cited several examples of industrial process dis-ruptions caused by electromagnetic interferences. In one, the scanning of a naval radar system caused a nearby gas pipeline control system to rapidly cycle a 36-inch valve. “Shock waves induced by the rapid valve movements caused a pipeline rupture,” Melrose explained.

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Sure, most would-be miscreants don’t have access to naval-scale radio systems that could interfere with industrial control systems from a distance. But what if a drone is used to bring the source of electromag-netic interference within a plant’s perimeter—even indoors—and far closer to your plant systems?

Melrose has conducted experiments to prove that using a drone to drop an electromagnetic “disrup-tor” (really just a foil shield) over a wireless transmit-ter’s antenna is entirely feasible. Further, the autono-mous tracking technology of some of today’s drones means they can follow vehicles and workers, staying within electromagnetic distance of their intended tar-gets. Indeed, his calculations indicate that the naval radar-valve scenario described above could be repli-cated with a relatively inexpensive and readily avail-able jamming device maneuvered to within 10 meters of the target.   

“There’s much we’ve long assumed about vulner-

ability of systems based on proximity and movement that with the emergence of sophisticated, inexpensive drones is no longer valid,” Melrose said.

To defend against these possibilities, Melrose rec-ommended that users understand the radio frequency spectrum used by their systems. “Major wireless tar-get jammers will leave gaps in electromagnetic in-ference between certain Wi-Fi channels,” he noted. Mesh networks and other topologies that support re-dundant signals routes also are to be considered, but may negatively affect battery life. Physical locations where a drone could land and persistently obstruct the Fresnel zone between two antennae may need to be sussed out. 

“There’s much we’ve long assumed about vulnerability of systems based on proximity and movement that with the emergence of sophisticated, inexpensive drones is no longer valid.” Yokogawa’s Jeff Melrose on the potential threat of hobbyist drones to industrial control system integrity.

HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IS TRANSFORMING BUSINESSFrom dealing with millennials to finding value on the plant floor, emerging information technologies will change your work.By Paul Studebaker

I t’s well established that the digital technologies propelling the Internet of Things (IoT), Indus-trial IoT (IIoT), Industrie 4.0, Smart Manufac-

turing, etc., are changing the automation landscape. But they’re also transforming how work is being done in the process industries. “Digital technology is ad-

vancing rapidly and pervasive in society, and it’s ris-ing in manufacturing,” said Dr. Thomas Fiske, prin-cipal technology strategist, Yokogawa, to attendees of his session on digital transformation at the 2016 Yok-ogawa Users Conference and Exhibition, this week in Orlando. The rise of IT in operations is bringing new

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business opportunities, Fiske said.For example, a chemical supplier installed sensors

on dispensing units to track how chemicals are being used, and is now able to offer new services to help its customers optimize their use of chemicals. A vi-bration-monitoring equipment company now offers monitoring as a service, with analytics in the cloud so they can tell a customer when their equipment needs maintenance. A polyolefin manufacturer has developed a new business making materials for 3-D printing.

In process industry plants, user challenges includ-ing safety, efficiency and compliance offer great op-portunities for improvement through IIoT, with reli-ability at the top of the list. “Reducing asset downtime is a great opportunity,” Fiske said. “Unscheduled downtime typically takes away 5% of capacity, and a single major incident can wipe out half a year’s profit.” Many incidents (40%) are caused by human error, of-ten due to lack of information or using the wrong procedure. These and others could be prevented by access to better information or through remote moni-toring via IIoT.

Other opportunities include greater agility, flexibil-ity, supply chain synchronization and optimizing as-set utilization by integrating the plant floor with busi-ness systems. “Where are the materials? What should we be making considering current prices and inven-tories?” Fiske asked. “There’s a move to real-time per-formance management.

“We’ve all heard about autonomous operations—those nearly unmanned facilities need systems that predict abnormal situations, automatically correct for them, and manage by exception. They call for more integrated, distributed controls that are information-driven and fault tolerant.” Further, plants can opti-mize and integrate maintenance with operations to perform service at optimum times so it doesn’t disrupt

production. “We can obtain real-time KPIs, design in safety and security, and automate work processes,” Fiske said.

Millennials risingA major force behind digitization is the fact that mil-lennials now outnumber baby boomers in the work-force. Every day, 10,000 boomers retire, and their skills are leaving with them. “Each day industry loses 400,000 years of experience,” Fiske said.

“Millennials think, work and act differently,” he added. They are experiential learners, he discovered the hard way. “We sat them in a classroom, tried tra-ditional ways of training, and the attrition was 50%. They don’t want to look at manuals. They’re social media consumers, so that’s how you train them. They have a different skillset, and you have to take advan-tage of that.”

Immersive and virtual reality are supporting gami-fied training. “It’s a great way to train millennials,” Fiske said. “It creates a realistic environment to learn that’s safe so they won’t destroy a unit.

“Millennials don’t think of boomers as subject mat-ter experts – that’s what Google is for.”

“Millennials don’t think of boomers as subject matter experts – that’s what Google is for.” Dr. Thomas Fiske, principal technology strategist, Yokogawa.

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Cyber security loomsCyber security is “everybody’s top concern when you talk about industrial IoT,” Fiske said. “It has to be designed into the system, but until then, we have to work with what we have, which is bolt-on systems.”

With the proliferation of technologies such as drones, sensors are increasingly miniaturized, smart, multivariable, passive, wireless and intrinsically safe. “Put them anywhere, and you can get a whole host of data you never had access to before. And not just for control. You can sense smells and odors as well as temperature and pressure.” Wearable sensors are com-ing to wristbands, vests, goggles and helmets as well as traditional mobile technologies. “You can get in-formation from anywhere, pushed automatically to a table,” he said. “I’m wearing a tracker right now.”

In the digital world, “We used to abhor the cloud. Now it’s all we talk about,” Fiske said. “Analytics is the hottest commodity in the business right now…search is the new read, do is the new learn, small is the new big, and information is the new wealth. We have to dig into that data, and see what it’s telling us.”

Along with data analysis, the cloud is being used for collaboration. “There’s a lot of interest in novel ways to use it—to share information among facilities, for benchmarking, for analytics within a company and within a sector – we’re seeing a lot of oil companies use it in that fashion,” Fiske said. Data can be moved directly to the cloud, or processed at the edge (near sensors) and the results put in the cloud, where it can be used to perform virtualization and optimization.

“We can go from the Purdue model to two layers with edge computing,” Fiske said. The cloud handles large quantities of data but with latency, and real-time calculations are done with edge computing where la-tency is small. “Fog” lies between the edge and the cloud, and looks at multiple devices.

“Process automation and IT integration offers the opportunity to combine information that wasn’t pre-viously available, in context,” Fiske said. For example,

with IT, a pressure sensor, controller and valve can be used to predict cavitation, stiction and the need for maintenance. IT-enabled smart sensors now include smart motors, drives and pumps: “Smart machines that can learn and tell you when there’s a problem in itself, or in the process equipment, and share that in-formation with other machines,” he said.

Where is the value?To take advantage of digitization, you have to deter-mine where there is value. “What will you do with it?” Fiske asked. “You have to use it to do things in a dif-ferent way, to power innovation or new business mod-els, to get to the transformative part.”

Digitization can change industry structures and boundaries. For example, when farming equipment company John Deere’s revenue dropped 5%, it looked for new business and realized it was already gather-ing data from equipment in the field for maintenance. That data plus other information such as weather, fertilizer, seed characteristics and commodity prices could be used to guide farmer practices. Deere ex-panded to doing farm management – a new business model.

Mining equipment company Joy Global built a similar new business in mine management. Uber dis-rupted taxi service without owning a single car. Phil-lips invented a light bulb that detects intruders.

Fiske said any plan to extract value should follow certain steps:

1. Obtain top management buy-in.2. Form a task group to find opportunities.3. Create an internal structure with language termi-

nology that everyone understands.4. Determine where to start, “Asset management

has low-hanging fruit,” Fiske said.5. Decide who will own, gather and maintain data.6. Do things differently: in new ways, with new sup-

plier and business models.

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“We see KBC as going beyond process simulation to becoming the primary decision-support tool for our users.” KBC’s Mary Lacombe on the value the company’s tools can bring to process industry users. 

Just as two heads are better than one, two com-plementary innovators can accomplish way more than each could achieve alone. So, in the six

months since Yokogawa Electric Corp. and its Advanced Solutions unit acquired KBC Advanced Technologies Inc., they’ve evolved in a fast-moving, mutually support-ive, “co-innovation” environment that’s transforming their decision-support capabilities and their ability to serve and generate value for their customers.

“In the past year, we’ve seen Advanced Solutions evolve more rapidly than we ever imagined,” said Si-mon Rogers, vice president, Advanced Solutions, Yok-ogawa. “Investing in KBC provides huge value and unique knowledge of processes, users and markets, and is enabling both organizations to concentrate even more closely on serving our customers.”

Historically, Yokogawa comes up from the field device level through manufacturing control, while KBC comes down from the strategic planning level. “Now, we’re meeting in the middle at the manufacturing operations management level to provide a complete solution for us-ers,” Rogers said. “Together we have 1,522 employees fo-cused on level three applications across 59 countries for better worldwide coverage.”

Rogers and his colleagues hosted a press conference on the Advanced Solutions’ new vision and mid-term business plan this week at the Yokogawa Users Confer-ence in Orlando.

To maximize lifecycle value for customers, Yokogawa and KBC use industrial consulting services to identify opportunities in business, operations and human perfor-mance, and apply technologies such as oil and gas simu-

lators, refinery-wide reactor models, thermal-hydraulic network simulators and phase-behavior models. Next, they implement automation front-end engineering and design (FFED) and project execution services, and ad-vanced technologies like advanced control and operator training simulators. Finally, they sustain resulting im-provement with performance monitoring and produc-tion/operations support services and advanced solutions, as well as data as a service (DaaS) and software and a service (SaaS) technologies. Similar identify/implement/sustain procedures are applied in Yokogawa’s suites of services and technologies for operational effectiveness, production optimization and energy optimization.

“KBC models refineries and their operations in great detail to advise users how to produce their products bet-

YOKOGAWA, KBC DRIVE DECISION SUPPORTNewly acquired simulation and consulting specialist releases Petro-SIM 6.2 to integrate process and utility modeling.By Jim Montague

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ter, with less energy, and with better organized main-tenance. However, these solutions weren’t embedded, and this is what Yokogawa does. We can take KBC’s ob-jectives and KPIs for users, and automate them so users can sustain them in their refinery operations,” explained Rogers. “In the future, these solutions and their indus-trial know-how, best practices and workforce education will be delivered more and more via the cloud.”

Decision-support with Petro-SIM 6.2While delivering on the potential of Yokogawa and

KBC’s joint capabilities won’t be easy, the two organiza-tions appear up to the task. “We’re new to the Yokogawa family, but we see KBC as going beyond process sim-ulation to becoming the primary decision-support tool for our users,” said Mary Lacombe, product champion, Petro-SIM and SIM Reactor Suite, KBC. “We believe this will allow them to examine how different people and teams are working together, break down organiza-tional barriers, improve their information exchange and collaboration, and provide the right capabilities for tack-ing their challenges. They’ll be able to see that formerly isolated applications are all integrated.”

Lacombe reported that KBC’s main tool for achiev-ing its decision-support vision is its newly released Petro-SIM 6.2 software that is intended to break through the boundaries between process and utility modeling with a fully integrated simulation tool, which lets users debot-tleneck production by 2-3%, reduce energy use by 5-15%, and save capital on new designs, increasing total project internal rate of return (IRR) by 1-2%.

“The vision for our simulation software portfolio has been to deliver a fully integrated engineering suite that covers the entire hydrocarbon lifecycle from conceptual engineering to operations and from wellhead to finished products, and incorporate world-leading technology and workflows,” said Lacombe. “Our ambition is to deliver this suite through our open, integratable and extensible plat-form, and support desktop, browser, mobile and cloud in-teractions that are underpinned by a consistent data envi-ronment and provide rich reporting and analytics.

“Historically, process systems and utility systems were designed and modeled in isolation, typically by com-pletely different teams,” Lacombe said. “Data transfer was done manually and iteratively, which increased cap-

ital costs and increased operating costs due to oversized equipment. Utilities and off-sites represent major costs in design and operation, including 40% of capital costs and more than 60% of operating costs. In reality, process and energy systems are tightly integrated. For example, major compressors can limit unit throughput due to con-strained turbines, which can be further constrained by steam supply and cooling water availability. Now, we’re integrating all these technologies and features.”

 As a result, Petro-SIM 6.2 also expands KBC’s refin-ing capabilities in naphtha and gasoline modeling areas with revised, improved or expanded modeling of kinetic HF alkylation, naphtha hydrotreating, aromatics and isomerization. 

In addition, Petro-SIM 6.2 extends its energy model-ing in the process simulation environment with:

• Combined heat and power configuration templates for efficient modeling of the utilities system in the process flowsheet;

• Modeling of fouling in gas turbines to better man-age performance over time;

• Best Technology Index utility for readily analyzing energy performance in facilities;

• Heuristic balancing of steam networks as part of pro-cess models; and,

• Expanded Excel integration capabilities that focus on energy metrics and reporting on modeling capabilities. 

“Petro-SIM 6.2 also empowers engineers to improve unit performance through better understanding of cur-rent performance and potential optimum performance by improving meter capabilities for better managing ex-traction of process data into process models; expanding reporting and data analysis functions; improving math-ematical techniques for unit optimization studies; and extending capabilities for generating more realistic sub-models,” added Lacombe. “Users want to hit their targets better, and produce as much product as they can at the least cost. Petro-SIM 6.2 achieves our goals of going be-yond simulation to provide a complete decision-support solution in one application, and gives users a standard method for doing things across all their applications and sites. Improved data quality in less time means they can make more and better decisions in less time, accomplish more tasks, and even push into new areas.”

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“You want it to take a squad, not a village, to operate and maintain a system.” Hyonsook Kang, consultant and retired Shell project and engineering manager.

HOW TO SCOPE A MAJOR INSTRUMENT UPGRADEShell brought a 10,000-instrument olefins plant from pneumatics to fieldbus with zero unplanned outages.By Paul Studebaker

When engineers began a three-year project 15 years ago to convert the 10,000 instru-ments at Shell Norco Chemicals olefins

plant from pneumatics to Foundation fieldbus, the first casualty was their preconceived notion that the project would be easy to justify. “Outages were few and small, in large part because the plant was so good at keeping the old system working. It had been obsolete for 20 years, and they were scavenging parts off Craig’s List. But they had a first-quartile olefins plant,” said Hyonsook Kang, consultant and retired Shell project and engineering manager. “How do you get the money? Management was gung ho about it being the right thing to do, but they had no desire to fund it.”

Speaking to her session attendees at the 2016 Yokogawa Users Group conference this week in Orlando, Kang said, “It’s hard to show return on investment (ROI), to prove the risk of leaving the old system in place.” The first step is to involve the right people—make sure the business, the proj-ect and the plant are represented—and that “everyone buys into it,” she said. Consider the cost of maintaining the old system, whether or not it is safe, and the impact of future regulations. How much longer could it last?

Then, what will be the actual cost of the migration? “When we really started looking, the economics were much different than we thought,” Kang said. “The downtime for the migration was also much different—it was mostly done on existing planned outages.”

Top three driversIn the case of the olefins plant, Kang’s team found the top three drivers were obsolescence, safety and operational

excellence. Look for obsolescence in the DCS, SIS, oper-ation stations, field instruments and wiring, Kang recom-mended. “Also look at third-party devices—we found lots of little devices nobody knew how to maintain.”

Safety and environmental monitoring systems may not meet pending standards and regulations. “SIS standards are becoming more stringent. Parts of the world are not al-lowing any grandfathering, and I think that will come to the United States,” Kang said. Look at modular automation for operational safety, considering how a possible accident could affect the owners’ company in terms of workforce safety, equipment damage and loss of reputation. “Loss of reputation is serious,” Kang said. “One time we had a process burp a little oil, just enough to create a sheen and

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make the news. The company stock dropped 10%.”Operational excellence can be improved by taking the

opportunity to implement advanced process control (APC), improve cybersecurity, deal with an aging workforce and increase operator effectiveness. “APC doesn’t cost much to implement and you get a big bang for it,” Kang said. In an offshore emergency, companies increasingly want to be able to move people to the shore and continue to operate. Consolidating control rooms can materially improve oper-ator effectiveness, she said: “You want it to take a squad, not a village, to operate and maintain a system.”

Step by stepCalculating an accurate scope and cost depends on a comprehensive system survey. Kang recommends:

1. Owner to conduct preliminary field survey.2. Owner to complete preliminary system architecture

drawings including field instruments, wiring, ana-lyzers, etc.

3. Owner to engage the main automation contractor (MAC) with preliminary scope.

4. MAC to conduct extensive field survey.5. MAC to develop extensive system and product ar-

chitecture drawing. Review piece by piece, by phys-ical location, whether the re-instrumentation will address key project drivers.

6. MAC to produce the final project scope and exe-cute the project with no trips or incidents.

During the surveys, look at field wiring, third-party com-ponents and backplanes. “After a thorough survey, our scope turned out to be quite different,” Kang said. Look at the existing process equipment. “Do you need manifolds? Are they tight? Do they block and bleed?” she asked. “Look at the process I/O and how it’s organized. Can it be im-proved? Is the cabling old and crispy from UV exposure? It changes a lot of what you need to do. Get the entire scope.”

To support drawings and specifications, “We bought a lot of donuts and awarded baseball caps to get all the old documents out of people’s drawers,” Kang said. “Be sure to include skid equipment, racks and UPSs.”

The olefins project followed a typical pattern for re-use of existing infrastructure in a plant from the 1950s or 1960s, including: 35% reuse of wiring, 20% of I/O panels, 20% of controllers, 7% of workstations, and 5% of monitors.

Finally, before the scope is finalized, “Make a premise document with a definition of success, and review it with all the stakeholders to be sure everyone will be satisfied,” Kang said. “And build in a technology refresh cycle, per-haps every four to five years, to recognize the fact that technology changes and wears out.”

More information on how owner organizations can better understand, plan and scope reinstrumentation projects is available in a comprehensive new Yokogawa e-book entitled “Update, Upgrade, Migrate or Replace: The Road to Successful Plant Reinstrumentation and Control Improvement Projects.” Get your free copy.

STABILIZE QUALITY WITH PROCESS DATA ANALYTICSSoftware reveals changes in processes and materials before product goes out of spec.By Paul Studebaker

Traditionally a quality leader, Japan is being chal-lenged by China and Taiwan. “They’re catch-ing up, increasing their quality, pushing them to

their limits,” said Bradley Ford, global business develop-ment manager, Yokogawa, at the 2016 Yokogawa Users Group Conference this week in Orlando. Meanwhile, in

Japan, “Quality problems are happening and they don’t know why. It’s true that equipment is aging, and they’re running it harder to meet higher demands. But there’s also a problem we call the ‘silent change’”

The Japanese manufacturing industry is traditionally close-knit, with long-established vendor/supplier rela-

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tionships and highly evolved processes. “Then the earth-quake happened, and everything was broken,” Ford said. “Manufacturers had to find new vendors, to go out on the market to other Japanese and foreign suppliers.”

The vendors are meeting the incoming quality spec-ifications, but problems are showing up downstream and in products. “They don’t know why. Sometimes the product is on spec, sometimes it’s not. On working with them, we often find the feedstock was changing. It met the specification, but gave different results. A supplier three levels out was changing something, and it was hav-ing a significant impact.”

Manufacturers can’t just change suppliers until a problem stays away, and waiting until the product is tested is too late. “How can we see the problem before it affects the process?” Ford asked. “We did this as a con-sulting service, and found the existing technology wasn’t good enough. We had false detections and events not oc-curring as they should. And it took a long time to do the analysis, typically days. Production runs were finished and lost.

“Now we’ve established a comprehensive methodol-ogy—advanced analytic software that allows operators to see differences early and take charge, using the knowl-edge of skilled data analysts and engineers from around the world.”

Solution for stabilizationYokogawa began offering a process data analytical ser-vice to its customers in 2008. More than 100 service contracts have been concluded with Japanese chemi-cal and other industry companies, which have come to rely on this service. Based on the insights that Yok-ogawa engineers gained by providing this service to their customers, the company developed an analyti-cal tool to improve its efficacy and thereby help its customers maintain and improve product quality.

This software makes use of the Mahalanobis Taguchi (MT) method, a pattern-recognition technique em-ployed in multivariate analysis.

Called Process Data Analytics, the application can detect a decline in quality or productivity at an early stage of the manufacturing process by analyzing pro-cess data, facility status information, operation history, and other data. Used in combination with the compa-ny’s analytical services, the software can help manufac-turers stabilize and continuously improve the quality of their products.

Process Data Analytics will run on Windows PCs and analyze production operations using temperature, pres-sure, flow rate, liquid level and other process data, as well as data on facility operations and equipment main-tenance collected by a plant information management system (PIMS), DCS or PLC. While data from such sys-tems must normally be converted to CSV format for use in another program, data from Yokogawa’s Exaquantum plant information management system can be used as-is, without file conversion.

The software uses statistical methods to compare the collected data and accurately detect deviations from normal conditions. Any deviation will trigger a warn-ing that quality may have deteriorated. By using the

“We’ve established a comprehensive methodology—advanced analytic software that allows operators to see differences early and take charge.” Yokogawa’s Bradley Ford on the company’s new Process Data Analytics offering.

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“four M” criteria of material, method, machine and manpower to analyze process data, it can visualize changes in production processes and thereby improve operations at manufacturing sites. Key benefits of the software cited include:

• Early detection of abnormalities in production pro-cesses – By detecting changes in production process data, the software can spot quality and productivity issues at an early stage of the manufacturing pro-cess. Based on this information, measures can then be taken to bring production operations back to a normal condition and recover quality.

• Fail-proof quality inspection – By detecting changes in the data from production processes, the software can detect any sign of deteriorating quality and thereby catch any fault that might be overlooked in a conventional pre-shipment inspection. This can help quality assurance departments improve their quality inspection process.

• Extensible via integration with MATLAB – The soft-ware supports MATLAB, the widely used numerical analysis tool from MathWorks. Custom MATLAB calculations can be integrated within Process Data Analytics to leverage unique business and domain knowledge.

• High speed and accuracy through use of AngleTry Associates’ proprietary technology – By using a pat-tern-recognition technology licensed from AngleTry Associates, the software delivers quick and accurate analyses. This technology is particularly useful with consulting and systems construction.

The software is used for production quality control in the oil, petrochemical, chemical, pulp and paper, iron and steel, pharmaceutical, food, automobile, glass, rub-ber, electrical equipment/electronics and other indus-tries, and will be released in March, 2017.

Click here for more information on the Process Data Analytics offering.

CYBERCRIME FROM THE INSIDE OUTFBI white-collar crime expert Frank Abagnale explains why employees are a major cyber risk.By Paul Studebaker

“Most have never met me, but they all told my story from their point of view,” said Frank Abagnale, FBI consultant and subject of

the book and film, “Catch Me if You Can,” depicting his brief career as a check forger and confidence man who successfully posed as an airline pilot, lawyer and surgeon. Then he was caught, convicted, served years in prison and eventually won partial release to consult as an insider white-collar crime expert for the FBI.

“It has been reported that I had written $10 million, $8 million and $5 million worth of bad checks,” Abag-nale told attendees of his presentations at the 2016 Yok-

ogawa Users Conference  this week in Orlando. “The actual amount was $2.5 million.” He committed his crimes between the ages of 16 and 21, and served time in prison in France, Sweden and the United States. Now, “I have been married for over 25 years and I am the proud father of three sons,” he said. “We all grow up. Hopefully, we get wiser. Age brings wisdom and fa-therhood changes one’s life completely. I consider my past immoral, unethical and illegal. It is something I am not proud of. I am proud that I have been able to turn my life around and in the past 25 years, helped my government, my clients, thousands of corporations

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and consumers deal with the problems of white collar crime and fraud.”

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, so this time of year Abagnale is particularly busy, giv-ing presentations at employee gatherings of large bank-ing and insurance companies. “I’m there to tell them the most important part of their job is cyber security,” he said. “When I arrive, I park in the employee lot and strew around some USB drives marked ‘confidential.’ The drives have software that allows me to track them, and invariably, by the time I’m presenting, several have been opened. I tell them it was a test, and they failed.

What happened to ethics?“We live in an extremely unethical society. We don’t teach ethics at home or at school—it’s almost impossi-ble to find a college course on ethics. Every year, ‘Who’s Who Among American High School Students’ interviews 16,500 graduating students, all with 4.0 grade averages. They ask five questions, with yes or no answers, and one of them is, ‘During the past three years of high school, did you cheat, lie, copy or plagiarize?’ Eighty percent say yes, and it’s been that way for the past three years.”

The Wall Street Journal surveyed thousands of 12-year-olds and asked if it was OK to get on a computer and hack into another computer to commit an illegal act. “Forty percent said it was OK,” Abagnale said. “They use cell phones and the internet to cheat on tests. In the UK, only 53% of children think hacking is illegal. Only 50-100 uni-versities have honor codes, and 56% of graduate MBAs have cheated.”

What Abagnale did 50 years ago is much easier to do today, with the internet. “Crime will continue to become more global, easier to commit and more common,” he said. “In 1988, I predicted the rise of identity theft. In 1996, as the word was becoming known, 750,000 people filed po-lice reports, with $2 billion in losses. Now, it’s happened to almost everyone. It is so simple, so easy to do. By the end of

this year, more than 1 billion people will have had their identities stolen. That’s virtually everyone.”

Everyone’s responsibilityEvery breach occurs because someone in that company did something they weren’t supposed to do, or didn’t do something they were supposed to do. “There is no magic hacker in Russia,” Abagnale said. “All they have to do is get one person to make a mistake.” Cyber soft spots are ev-erywhere—99% of ransomware attacks start with someone opening an email message and clicking on a link.”

Abagnale described many ways that criminals can easily obtain enough information to steal your identity (or your child’s), which you can read about in free publications at abagnale.com. One that applies to any business is through the hard drives on digital copiers. Used copiers, including leased machines, have hard drives that store every docu-ment ever copied. “Criminals buy them for the drives,” Abagnale said. “The CBS news story about it is a YouTube video—look for ‘CBS Evening News digital copiers.’ It’s your responsibility to remove, clean or encrypt those drives.”

Despite the rise in cyber crime, check forgery is still very common. “Over the past 10 years, there’s been a 10% de-crease in the use of personal checks, but only a 2% decrease in business checks.” Abagnale said. “We’ll see a paperless society when we see a paperless toilet.” He described in de-tail how it used to be done, and how much easier it is today

“There is no magic hacker in Russia. All they have to do is get one person to make a mistake.” Frank Abagnale, FBI consultant and subject of the book and film, Catch Me if You Can.

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with laser-printed checks, loosely-adhered toner, easily ob-tained chemicals and commonly available scanners, print-ers and software. “You can call any company in America and get their bank information by asking Accounts Receiv-able where to wire them money. You can get the officer’s signatures off the company annual report,” he said.

Abagnale suggested that check writers use a uni-ball 207 gel pen. “It uses Japanese pigmented ink – it resists every-thing, and costs just $2,” he said. For better check secu-rity, “Intuit checks are sensitive to many solvents and if you write only a few checks a month, they’re very reasonable.”

To further prevent fraud, businesses that write a lot of checks should consider Positive Pay. “Every day, the issuer gives a list of written checks to their bank. It’s just a match file, and any check not in the file will not be paid. A per-fectly altered check will be rejected,” Abagnale said.

Personal take-awaysAbagnale concluded by telling attendees some of the ways he protects himself:

1. Use a “security micro cut’ shredder. Straight shred-dings are easy to put back together, and diamond-cut shredders can be defeated with ePuzzler software.

2. Use a credit monitoring service. “That allows me to ac-cess all three credit bureaus any time I want, as often

as I want, so I can check the score and more impor-tant, recent inquiries. And they monitor it for me,” he said. Children don’t have credit records, but their so-cial security numbers can be appropriated. “LifeLock can monitor children’s social security numbers at the wishes of the parent.”

3. Be careful with checks. “I don’t write a lot of checks anymore,” Abagnale said. “They have too much in-formation on them and today, they are converted into an electronic debit. Then the check sits in a ware-house until it’s sent out to be destroyed. Anyone can intercept it and have matching checks made. I’m very careful who I write a check to these days, and not from a retirement or investment account where there’s a lot of money.”

4. Instead, “Use the safest form of payment on earth: a credit card,” Abagnale said. “Not a debit card. With a credit card, I spend their money while mine sits in my account. If you use a debit card, every time you use it, you expose your money, and you earn no credit rating.” Instead of letting your children use a debit card, “Give your college-age kids a card in their name, guarantee it, pay the bill, and that way, you get to review the charges. When they graduate, they’ll have a credit record, and a score of about 800.”

AIR LIQUIDE ACHIEVES SECURE, REMOTE SUPPORTRemote access management solution allows users to collaborate more efficiently, and most importantly, do it securely.By Jim Montague

You can’t be everywhere at once—especially when it comes to managing widely scattered process units—but you can get close. But while

a good remote support solution can provide access and interaction almost anywhere, the crucial trick is doing it securely, according to Arnold “Marty” Martin, control system manager at Air Liquide in Houston, which over-

sees hundreds of the firm’s air-separation and other U.S. production plants.

“We were running into problems with aging assets, and needed to upgrade, but the remote support solu-tion we were using wasn’t migrating well,” said Martin. “Besides having a lot of equipment that was reaching end of life, we also didn’t have enough expertise and

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people. We needed to manage access to control systems on the industrial network to provide maximum security without impacting ease of access for people who need to use them; develop robust, multilayered access proto-cols that meet the needs of internal and external users; and incorporate strengths of the business IT world to improve how users access the industrial network envi-ronment. So, we pursued a privileged (remote) access management (PAM) solution.”

Martin presented “Privileged Access Management (PAM) for Remote Support of Industrial Automation Systems—Evaluation, Selection and Implementation Overview” at the Yokogawa Users Group conference this week in Orlando. He defined PAM as enabling security professionals to control, monitor and manage privileged access to critical systems by authorized employees, con-tractors, and vendors.

Guided by business ITMartin reported that he and Air Liquide sought out IT-based PAM because the business IT side has more ex-perience in developing, implementing and maintaining secure solutions for remote support. He said the upgrade project began about a year and a half ago, included a six-month proof of concept, but only took four months to get up and running.

“Business IT and industrial IT have different methods and models, but business IT has more cool stuff for secure, remote support, and I can implement them without losing my mind,” said Martin. “Frankly, I usually get lost within 15 minutes of talking to business IT people because they have so many unfamiliar acronyms, but PAM helped be-cause we were also expanding facilities like crazy, and sud-denly we might not have the remote access we needed.

“We’re also dealing with a new security landscape. Ev-eryone’s throwing everything on their networks, and so there’s increasing risk of control system cyber attacks and

more stringent authentication requirements, but we still need anytime/anywhere remote support for better work/life balance. We also needed IT-based remote support for the industrial side because even though young staff don’t want to go to bad locations, we still have to monitor them.”

Arguing for remote accessTo convince potential users to buy in and follow up on a secure, remote access upgrade, Martin reported that he and subsequent supporters must build a case for it. This included:

• Assess current methods for logging in and why they need to be changed, such as holding a “why consider a new system” brainstorming session, and examine if travel budgets get in the way of support;

• Identify requirements for remote access by review-ing remote access/control packages;

• Solicit industrial/business IT personnel for adminis-trative requirements;

• Understand company’s existing business and indus-trial IT network architectures, and secure or build network diagrams; and,

• Draft business rationale and risk analysis for remote support upgrade.

“You have to look at how fit your current remote support system is, determine if new requirements are being met and if you’re adhering to enhanced authentication and au-diting requirements,” explained Martin. “We wanted to be virtually in front of the equipment and process applications

“We’re now in a virtual age, but we don’t have to have less fidelity and remote support because now we can pull in anyone.” Arnold “Marty” Martin on Air Liquide’s Privileged Access Management system.

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at our plants—like we were physically there—even if we were seeing everything via cameras. I built the needs case for our remote support project, and it covered why the up-grade was so important and why Air Liquide should spend money on it. I also had to be careful about saying the word ‘cloud’ because the initial response was ‘no.’ Fortunately, it paid for itself in about one year.”

To evaluate remote access requirements, Martin rec-ommended:

• Address security requirements, such as access con-trols for authentication/authorization, auditing, log-ging policies and central management. Also, decide whether to run the new system in-house or on a cloud-based service;

• Determine connectivity for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets PCs, pick an inside-company network such as a virtual private network (VPN) or an outside-company/non-VPN network, and settle on direct- or indirect-networked devices;

• Choose performance features, such as multi-operat-ing system support, timed/escorted access, multiple sessions/users per session for collaboration, session-logging, bandwidth performance management, and remote sound and video and multi-monitoring for using remote HMIs.

“We identified our requirements for remote access, and knew we needed to segment our network with firewalls with rules,” said Martin. “Filling out the IT sheets for risk analysis was difficult because a lot of the language seemed foreign at first and was hard to understand.”

Risk assessment and analysisMartin reported that a thorough risk assessment (RA) will help remote support upgrade projects determine what kind and how much security to implement. “An RA is part of a sound digital security policy, and it’s performed against the pre-qualified packages,” explained Martin. “It helps ensure that all potential solutions are on a level playing field, and that easily overlooked security detail aren’t missed. Its out-come includes a risk mitigation plan, controls risk reduc-tion rating, and a cybersecurity system management docu-ment that is really nice to develop and have in place.”

Martin added that subsequent risk-reduction controls

may include procedural-only security policies that are the least desirable because users will likely neglect to follow them in the future, and system-enforced secu-rity polices that are the most desirable because the re-mote support system and network can’t operate if they aren’t followed. In addition, he advised that a complete security evaluation is crucial. “Risk mitigation is a major component, but consideration should also include the lifecycle costs, maintenance, supportability and essen-tial product features,” said Martin.

Multi-layered access, account managementTo implement a robust, multi-layered access protocol for re-mote support, Martin also stressed using account manage-ment with well-defined account types and an administrator as the central hub; employing local authentication controls and integrating external authentication systems; establish-ing granular access control with access notifications, sched-uled access times and whitelisted and blacklisted applica-tions; deploying forensic functions like session monitoring and audit reports about video sessions and text logs; and using session protocols like Direct, RDP, SSH or Telnet.

“Account management, authentication and granular ac-cess control are what allow us to get in front of our processes virtually and remotely, but we can also avoid giving added rights when they’re not needed because this isn’t distrib-uted control,” said Martin. “This allows our plant manag-ers to decide who gets in or not. Meanwhile, forensic func-tions let remote users see reports, but no one can delete or remove them, so they’re secure. Also, RDP is cool because it shows everyone that’s logged on, so no one can sneak in, and we can shut the RDP port if needed. Likewise, the in-dustrial IT guys like SSH because there are no backdoors, everything is documented, and users are only granted ac-cess to do their specific job functions. We also have dif-ferent levels of administrator and user accounts, and each type can monitor the level below, plus we can get digital logbooks to monitor the activity of everyone on our systems, document who’s allowed in and who’s been on, which we couldn’t do before.”

Martin added that the authorization functions in Air Liquide’s new remote support solution lets it employ

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two-factor authentication, just like the company’s busi-ness IT department. However, instead of going through the IT side and maybe enabling a vulnerability, users on the OT side can now go to a PAM redundant appli-ance/remote access server, which acts as a network de-militarized zone (DMZ) between two firewalls. “This

is a much more narrowly defined pipe, and so it’s a lot more secure, too,” added Martin. “Now, we can identify and fix problems on a smart phone in two minutes, and do it securely. We’re now in a virtual age, but we don’t have to have less fidelity and support because now we can pull in anyone.”   

IDAHO NATIONAL LAB OFFERS CYBER ASSISTHome of the government’s industrial cybersecurity response team amps up efforts to bolster the security of the United States’ critical infrastructure.By Jim Montague

Cybersecurity is serious business, but process in-dustry users often have a hard time identifying and preventing probes, intrusions and attacks

due to constantly evolving threats, lack of security exper-tise and steep learning curves. To give these and other manufacturers some much-needed aid on the cyberse-curity front, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has been rapidly ramping up its efforts, educational resources, alert programs and tools, which can all help users in all industries evaluate their individual security risks and learn how to protect themselves and their facilities.

“We’ve worked with Yokogawa and other process au-tomation and control suppliers on addressing cybersecu-rity, but now we’re focusing even more closely on form-ing partnerships that can help bring better cybersecurity to their user communities,” said Zachary Tudor, deputy associate laboratory director for the National and Home-land Security division at Idaho National Laboratory. “Our partnerships with governments, industries and ac-ademia can make a huge impact on our nation’s secu-rity. These partnerships and collaboration are essential for the continued security of our critical infrastructure.”

Tudor presented “Partnering for Impact: INL’s Approach to Critical Infrastructure Protection” this week at the 2016 Yokogawa Users Conference and Exhibition in Orlando.

National security resourcesAs one the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s 17 national laboratories or “capability engines,” INL is uniquely positioned to lead the way on industrial control system (ICS) security. “INL leads on cybersecurity mainly because of its 40 years of ex-pertise in conducting testing of the nation’s nuclear power infrastructure,” explained Tudor. “As a result, we’ve learned that cybersecurity isn’t just the security guy’s concern—it’s the job of everyone in operations, maintenance and else-where in each plant and process facility.”

Tudor added that INL resembles a well-characterized, reconfigurable city/region where energy and security questions can be addressed at scale. The 890-square-miles INL site presently includes 111 miles of electrical transmission and distribution lines, 579 buildings, three fire stations, three reactors, nuclear and radiological fa-cilities, two spent fuel pools, 300 metric tons of used fuel, classified spaces, explosive range and landfills. Its

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national security profile and capabilities include:• Electric grid test beds for evaluating commercial

feeds and testing loops and spurs;• Water security test beds for examining municipal

water/wastewater systems;• Radiological ranges and first-responder training;• Specific manufacturing for products such as 100%

zero-defects armor made from depleted uranium for Abrams tanks;

• National security test range for conducting vulner-ability assessments; 

• Nuclear materials R&D center, which performs electro-refining and testing;

• Research and education campus, which includes the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security’s ICS Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) and En-ergy Security Labs;

• Integrated testing across multidisciplinary areas, such as radiological, physical security, explosive, power, controls and cybersecurity;

• Access to the full range of support services, includ-ing linemen, engineers, radiological technicians, firefighters and security forces; and,

• Ability to develop prototypes and manufacturing processes.

“INL has a lot of space and isolation, so it has safe test-ing sites that can check for vulnerabilities by testing to destruction large equipment like generators,” explained Tudor. “Identifying vulnerabilities in critical U.S. infra-structure leads to ways to mitigate them.” Likewise, INL and ICS-CERT identifies, analyzes, tests and recom-mends responses to cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the U.S. power grid and other industries, and suggests new approaches and designs to help make the nation’s critical infrastructure more resilient.

In general, ICS-CERT’s mission is to provide focused operational capabilities for defense of control system en-

vironments against emerging cyber threats. ICS-CERT also hosts red team/blue team-style advanced training exercises in a 42-student classroom and lab that includes an integrated substation and chemical plant. Its four pri-mary activities are:

• Providing situational awareness in the form of ac-tionable intelligence;

• Conducting vulnerability and malware analysis;• Responding to and analyzing incidents related to

control systems; and,• Partnering with federal, international and private

sectors to secure systems.• Collaboration and pilot projectsBecause of their ramped-up focus on cybersecurity,

INL and ICS-CERT have undertaken a variety of coop-erative projects with industrial and municipal users and organizations. Some of these include:

• Consequence-driven, cyber-informed engineering (CCE), which is developing an end-to-end approach to integrate risk management, inform engineering designs with cybersecurity, and close the gap on at-tackers by hardening devices, and detecting and dis-rupting threat actor information;

• Machine-to-machine automated threat response, which enables more resilient control system devices via pre-programmed responses to detect illicit be-havior and machine-speed remediation, and miti-gate exploits before there’s an impact;

“Partnerships and collaboration are essential for the continued security of our critical infrastructure.” Zachary Tudor, deputy associate laboratory director for the National and Homeland Security division at Idaho National Laboratory. 

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• Embedded systems and wireless communication links to secure automotive technologies by assessing their vulnerability exposure such as wireless links and unique embedded protocols, and identifying in-novative mitigations and future design changes;

• Smart device integration onto the grid, which help vendors design cybersecurity into electric vehicle power supply equipment prior to commercializa-tion, understand larger energy grid impacts, and es-tablish metrics for communication performance for reliable smart devices in distribution grids;

• Wireless spectrum communication, which consists of developing an innovative waveform for reliable dynamic spectrum allocation with frequency agility, jam resistance and critical controls operating below the noise floor, as well as integrating secure encryp-tion based on the physics of the communications;

• Cooperating with California Energy Systems for the 21st Century (CES-21) to developing automated re-sponse capabilities to protect critical California in-frastructure against cyber-attacks with automated, machine-to-machine communications to assess key in-dicators and develop appropriate responses;

• Grid Security Exercise 2015 (GridEx III) with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the

Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) to execute the electricity sector’s crisis re-sponse to simulated, coordinated cybersecurity and physical security threats and incidents, strengthen utilities’ crisis response functions, and provide input for lessons learned; and,

• Integrated Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center (iJC3) cyber-physical security program to help DoE’s labs assess and secure their own unique control sys-tem assets, develop best practices and protections, and monitor recommendations to address highest-consequence, cyber-physical risks.

“CCE, in particular, is important because while we look at control architectures for vulnerabilities and ways to patch them, this is also an older approach,” said Tudor. “As a re-sult, we’re also examining the consequences we’re trying to avoid, and then considering architectural changes to avoid those consequences. This will let us find vulnerabilities more effectively, and avoid more of them in the first place. We’re no longer simply looking at operations, and adding security afterwards. This why sharing information on cy-bersecurity—including machine-to-machine at millisec-ond speeds—as well as establishing networks of trust, and maintaining partnerships are key to cybersecurity.”  

LEVERAGE HUMAN STRENGTHS IN OPERATIONAL DESIGNHave machines do what they do well, and do the same for your human operators.By Jim Montague

In the search to optimize process operations, it’s be-come painfully obvious that one of the main con-straints on efficiency and productivity is their hu-

man operators. This depressing and ironic situation may seem inescapable, especially when people inter-

act with increasingly complex systems, faster opera-tions, alarm floods, staff limits and declining experi-ence levels.

Despite these persistent obstacles, there are rem-edies and ways to alleviate negative human impact,

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according to David Strobhar, P.E., chief human fac-tors engineer at Beville Engineering Inc., a found-ing member of the Center for Operator Performance. Strobhar presented “Human Factor, Limiting Factor” this week at the Yokogawa Users Conference and Ex-hibition 2016 in Orlando.

“In human-machine systems, it’s important to have people do what they do well, and have machines do what they do well,” said Strobhar. “So have people recognize patterns, detect stimuli against high noise backgrounds, sense unusual and unexpected events, remember prin-ciples and strategies, reason, and continue to function even when overloaded or presented with incomplete in-formation. Conversely, have machines sense extreme stimuli, monitor for pre-specified events, store and re-trieve coded information, make rapid and consistent re-sponses to signals, exert force, and perform repetitive ac-tions over long periods.”

Balancing workload and performanceBecause inexpensive alarm functions proliferated in process control systems in recent years, Strobhar re-ported that classic alarm floods also have multiplied. “Workloads increase quickly with upsets like alarm floods,” said Strobhar. “However, operators can only detect about 75 alarms per minute and can only pro-cess about 25 per minute, so even limiting low-priority alarms typically leaves too many for them to process. The traditional response was simply adding more op-erators, but this doesn’t work either because you end up with under-loaded operators. And bored operators are poor operators.”

Because overloaded and under-loaded operators are both ineffective and potentially dangerous, Strobhar explained it’s crucial for process user companies to base their console staffing levels on steady-state work-loads, and design their applications, process controls

and automation with upsets in mind. Not coinciden-tally, he added, this is one of the main missions and re-search topics of the Center for Operator Performance and its members, including Chevron, Koch Group, Citgo, Nova Chemicals, Yokogawa, Emerson Process Management, Beville and Wright State University, where the center is located.

“Most of our research has been on display areas and developing tools for evaluating them,” added Strob-har. “In fact, we are just about to publish our ‘Data to Information, Refining Edition’ handbook that pro-vides design templates, and covers types of data, data representation elements, arranging elements, display-ing visual information, dynamic graphic symbols, de-signing displays, common processing equipment, re-fining in hydrocarbon processing units, and putting it all together.”

In general, Strobhar added that designing process ap-plications for upsets requires developers to address the following major areas:

• Displays should take into account operator situa-tions, awareness graphics, content selection tools, data-to-information handbook, display evaluation toolkits, radar plots and background color;

• Training should take into account decision-

“Operators can be the limiting component in optimizing system performance, but people have characteristics, and we can design to account for those characteristics.” Beville Engineering’s David Strobhar discussed the many interplaying factors that contribute to optimal operator performance at the 2016 Yokogawa Users Group meeting.

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making exercises, shadowboxing, training strat-egies and mental models to help operators make better decisions;

• Support systems should take into account event pre-diction, procedure warnings, procedure modular-ization, fatigue factors and line labeling;

• Workspaces should evaluate screen clutter, too-large screens, and unneeded screens; and,

• Alarm management, which should include alarm rates, presentation, comparisons of expert versus novice operator performance, and alarm tones.

“We’ve found that during emergency procedures, only

10% of the information presented on displays is unique, and because operator errors increase quickly when op-erators work more than several consecutive workdays, it’s important to focus on improving data-volume pro-cedures for them,” added Strobhar. “We’re also going to study alarm tones, and hope to study “safe-park” meth-odologies for stabilizing applications.

“In any event, while operators can be the limiting component in optimizing system performance, it’s also true that people have characteristics, just like equipment, and we can design to account for those characteristics.”

FLUE GAS ANALYSIS ENTERS NEW ERATunable diode laser spectrometry (TDLS) delivers marked improvements in the safety and control of fired heaters. Even NFPA and API standards-writers have begun to take notice.By Keith Larson

While the control of industrial process heat-ers has come a long way since excess oxy-gen in flue gases was first measured in the

1920s—at 15-minute intervals!—common industry prac-tice still lags what’s now possible, according to Ryan Mc-Sherry, Yokogawa product manager for laser analyzers and gas chromatographs. Indeed, modern analyzer tech-nology can dramatically increase the safety and control of the thousands of fired heaters in use across industry today, McSherry said to attendees of the Yokogawa Users Group conference this week in Orlando.

“The zirconia oxygen sensor and thick-film com-bustibles sensor are the baseline of what’s been done for the past 25 years,” noted Don Wyatt, director of

business development for TechStar, a Houston-based specialist in process instrumentation and analytical systems. “There is now a step-change available that makes it so much better.”

Indeed, the Tunable Diode Laser Spectrometers (TDLS) that Wyatt referenced (and for which Mc-Sherry is responsible) cost more than traditional instru-mentation. But a growing number of industry practi-tioners are finding that TDLS overcomes important limitations of the traditional approach, McSherry said, citing sections of relevant codes and standards from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and American Petroleum Institutes (API) that give a nod to the advantages of laser spectroscopic technologies.

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By way of background, the accurate measurement of both oxygen and carbon monoxides and other com-bustibles in flue gas is important if excess oxygen is to be controlled at an optimal level in order to provide both high energy efficiency and complete fuel com-bustion. Run too rich, and end up with carbon mon-oxide and uncombusted fuel. Run too lean, and form nitrogen oxides. Further, the accurate measurement of carbon monoxide and other combustibles in off-gas is an important early indicator of fuel-rich conditions. Complicating matters even more are fuels that vary in BTU content—paired with volumetric fuel flow mea-surement devices—as well as sensor technologies that can mistake high combustibles for high excess oxygen then drive the system to flame-out. “Many of today’s heaters rely on pretty simplistic control for dynamics that are actually quite complex,” McSherry said.

But perhaps the most compelling argument against zirconia probes is that they must be heated to oper-ate properly, effectively creating an in-process “spark plug” for any residual hydrocarbons. That means that the oxygen sensor is turned off during heater purging and start-up—just when visibility is most needed. La-

ser spectrometers aren’t heated, and provide selective, drift-free measurement of flue-gas components dur-ing all phases of operation. “Now I’m not blind any-more,” Wyatt said. “I’m able to make measurements at start up when I most need them.”

More information on how you can improve the en-ergy efficiency, safety and compliance of your plant’s fired heaters is available in a comprehensive new Yok-ogawa e-book entitled “Combustion & Fired Heaters: An Analytical Approach to Improving Safety & Effi-ciency.” Download your free copy here.

“Many of today’s heaters rely on pretty simplistic control for dynamics that are actually quite complex.” Yokogawa’s Ryan McSherry discussed the advantages of laser spectrometers for improved control and safety of industrial combustion processes.