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Honeywell USERS GROUP

AMERICAS2018

The editors of Control report on breaking news and session highlightsJune 17-22, 2018 • San Antonio, Texas, USA

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Honeywell rises to ExxonMobil challenge ............................................................... 3

Realize the power of Honeywell Connected Plant ................................................ 5

John Rudolph tapped to lead Honeywell Process Solutions .............................. 8

Visualize batch like never before ............................................................................... 9

Greater than the sum of its partners .........................................................................11

What’s in store for next Experion PKS release ......................................................13

Batch meets the real world ........................................................................................15

BP to pilot wireless networking on Gulf rig ........................................................... 17

User panel grapples with digitalization ..................................................................19

Visualization drives the refinery of tomorrow .......................................................21

Consider managed services to fill cybersecurity gaps ....................................... 22

From wireless-shy to wireless high .........................................................................24

Millennials put the ‘now’ in knowledge capture ...................................................26

New tech needs stakeholder buy-in ........................................................................ 28

Who wants $1 million in savings? ..............................................................................31

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The state of ExxonMobil’s distributed control sys-tem (DCS) fleet is not unlike that of the pro-cess industries overall. The oil & gas superma-

jor still has in operation a significant number of older systems installed as far back as the 1980s—systems that have served the company well for more than 30 years, but as older electronic components have been replaced by more modern alternatives, spare-parts shortages and looming obsolescence put ExxonMobil and other owner operators in a difficult place.

When facing obsolescence, rip-and-replace is clearly the option of last resort—incurring high costs, protracted downtime and the loss of all the intellec-tual property invested in developing a system’s dis-plays, databases, control strategies and third-party interfaces, according to David Patin, distinguished engineering associate – control systems, ExxonMobil Research & Engineering.

The company’s installed base of Honeywell TDC 3000 systems, in particular, looked to be facing a criti-cal shortage of spare parts in the year 2025, Patin ex-plained. “So in 2011 we met with Honeywell regard-ing the future of TDC 3000,” Patin began, addressing a plenary session of the Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018 conference this week in San Antonio.

Challenge issuedUnwilling to settle for rip-and-replace, “We challenged Honeywell to develop and prove a method to migrate

TDC forward,” Patin said. The two companies estab-lished a joint task team to investigate the problem.

ExxonMobil’s wish list of deliverables included avoiding wholesale system replacement (especially the I/O); preserving the company’s intellectual prop-erty investment; allowing for on-process migration of system components (meaning without shutting down the process); enabling new capabilities not currently possible with TDC; and unifying TDC with Honey-well’s current state-of-the-art Experion platform.

HONEYWELL RISES TO EXXONMOBIL CHALLENGEBy Keith Larson

“It’s the best example of Honeywell’s commitment to continuous evolution that I’ve ever seen.” ExxonMobil’s David Patin discussed how Honeywell had successfully paved the way for the company to preserve and bring forward its legacy TDC investments.

Live from Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018

https://controlglobal.com/industrynews/2018/hug-6/

This last item encapsulated a desire for a solution that would “be usable by a younger workforce, yet stand the test of time,” Patin said. “I picture a third-grader who’s also a future TDC engineer,” he said. “They just don’t know it yet.”

Also implicit in ExxonMobil’s requirements were continued “rock solid” reliability and security, Patin added.

Solution identifiedSince the technical obstacles to bringing TDC forward hinged on hardware obsolescence, notably controller microprocessors and communications chips that would no longer be available, the team settled on an emulation approach that would effectively abstract TDC system functionality from the specifics of the older hardware.

And in February 2018, seven years after that first meeting of the minds—and two years ahead of sched-ule—Honeywell answered ExxonMobil’s challenge with the release of Experion LCN R501.1. The Ex-perion LCN, or ELCN, effectively emulates the TDC system as software. “It’s 100% binary compatible and interoperable with the old system,” Patin explained. “Current TDC code runs unmodified in this virtual environment, greatly reducing the technical risks. Intellectual property such as application code, data-bases and displays are preserved.”

In the end, the Experion Station, Server, ACE and APP nodes can take the shape of Windows-based “physical” applications or virtual machines. Applica-tion Modules, Network Gateway and Network Inter-face Module functionality is redeployed on Universal Embedded Appliances or as virtual appliances. Only the Enhanced PLC Gateway cannot be readily virtu-alized because the emulation of serial network con-nectivity is not well behaved, Patin explained. “This means you can build an almost 100% virtualized or 100% physical system—or somewhere in between.”

With the new solution, LCN and UCN messages are now encapsulated in standard Internet Protocol.

“All the old networks now exist as logical constructs on Fault Tolerant Ethernet,” Patin said. “We’re no longer locked into proprietary networks.”

And to address the challenge of on-process migra-tion, Honeywell has also introduced several bridge devices that effectively facilitate the virtualization of TDC system node functionality—without the need to interrupt the process under control.

Benefits achievedVirtualization of the TDC environment has come with some added benefits, including the ability to use Hon-eywell’s cloud-based Open Virtual Engineering Plat-form to engineer TDC solutions; lower cost, smaller footprint training simulators; peer-to-peer integration of virtualized HPM controller nodes with current-generation C300/ACE nodes; support for OneWireless (ISA 100 and WirelessHART) connectivity; and inte-gration with ControlEdge and Unit Operations Con-trollers.

“It’ll be a game-changer,” said Patin. “We don’t know all that’s possible as yet.”

Other benefits include a drastic reduction—or elim-ination—of spare parts, as well as reductions in cabi-net space requirements. “We’ve gone from two nodes to six in a single cabinet,” Patin said. “We’ve not fully realized unification with Experion, but that process has begun.”

Overall, Patin gave high marks to the Honeywell team for its response to ExxonMobil’s needs. “The challenge was met, and expectations exceeded,” he said. “The need to replace an entire system is elim-inated, future component issues are virtually elimi-nated (pun intended), intellectual property is pre-served and on process migration is supported.

“ELCN technology essentially resets the odometer on your TDC 3000 investment,” Patin added. “It’s the best example of Honeywell’s commitment to continu-ous evolution that I’ve ever seen. And if it were a final exam, I’d give Honeywell an A on this one.”



“Honeywell Connected Plant allows us to seamlessly integrate process, assets and people, so we can make every day your best day of production.” Honeywell’s Jason Urso discussed how the company’s latest technologies allow all employees to contribute to gains in productivity, reliability and process safety.

Anyone only now becoming focused on digita-lization, IIoT and Industrie 4.0 is late to the party by Honeywell’s standards, and not just a

little late. “We’re on a 50-year journey of digitalization,” said Jason Urso, vice president and chief technology of-ficer, Honeywell Process Solutions, “from TDC 3000, through the integrated operator console, software tools for advanced control and optimization, alarm manage-ment, and operator training—always enabling greater throughput, higher reliability and improved safety.”

Urso spoke at the opening keynote session of the Hon-eywell Users Group (HUG) Americas conference this week in San Antonio. The 43rd HUG lists 1,300 attend-ees representing 32 countries.

“Now, the fourth generation of process control is bringing a new generation of benefits, and we see these in three areas,” Urso said:

1. Capital projects are moving from mass custom-ization to mass standardization with more effi-cient, automated engineering tools and systems.

2. “Infinite longevity” is replacing rip-and-replace with upgrade-in-place, protecting intellectual property while enabling great new capabilities.

3. Connecting data to knowledge is providing new, more effective ways to sustain maximum through-put.

Honeywell is expanding and supporting each of these three areas with new product introductions.

LEAP and capital project standardizationFive years ago, the LEAP methodology (for Lean Execu-tion of Automation Projects) standardized I/O, facilitat-ing the move from customized cabinets to modular cabi-nets based on I/O count. This allows the design process to be front-loaded and reduces the impact of late changes on project timelines. The C300 controller extracted soft-ware from hardware, allowing systems to be hosted in a cloud for design flexibility and remote access.

“Now we’re introducing the S300 SIL 3 safety logic

REALIZE THE POWER OF HONEYWELL CONNECTED PLANTBy Paul Studebaker

https://controlglobal.com/industrynews/2018/hug-1


solver, which extracts software from Safety Manager so we can design and validate safety systems without physi-cal hardware, then land it on safety hardware with in-tegrated safety I/O,” Urso said. “and we’ve added the highest level of cybersecurity on both the hardware and software.”

Experion has been encapsulated and virtualized, re-ducing server hardware needs by a factor of 10, allowing less frequent updates and making it easy to copy onto new hardware. Instead of people going away on-site for 12-18 months, working on physical equipment that’s also aging and may be nearing the end of its product lifecycle by startup, “we can engineer in the cloud, host a digital version of the system in a data center and work on it from anywhere in the world,” Urso said.

The factory acceptance test (FAT) is also changing form. “We have the opportunity to standardize it using digital twins of control, safety and edge PLCs,” Urso said. “We can plug into simulation to completely vali-date the whole system, using people located anywhere in the world—a virtual system FAT. Using standardized hardware further simplifies the hardware FAT. We can download the system and do a final test, and we’re done.”

The open, virtual engineering platform also provides the customer a digital copy for application engineering and control improvements. “There’s no need to man-age physical apps, hardware or site upgrades. They can use the simulator, test the virtual system and load it,” Urso said.

Using automated commissioning instead of people in the field doing loop checks “improves productivity by a factor of 10,” Urso said. “The digital replicas are useful for the life of the system, to get projects done faster, with lower risk.”

The last migrationThe Experion local control network (ELCN) has “infi-nite longevity, enabling the last migration,” Urso said. With the shifts from TDC 3000 to Experion Station to Enhanced High Performance Manager (EHPM) and Ethernet, “the legacy hardware is gone, and the intellec-tual property is preserved,” he said. ELCN emulates the remaining legacy hardware with software, eliminating

component obsolescence and using software versions that can run on any platform. “Instead of rip and re-place, you can upgrade the system in place, before your eyes,” Urso added.

“If you rip and replace controllers, you have to recreate the control strategies, which may be 25 years old. Can you do that? Instead, plug in EHPM modules and run the same strategies,” Urso said. “Recreate the displays? A typical plant might have 1,000, and 950 are never used. ELCN will preserve it all, and you can evolve and up-date only the ones you use going forward.”

Then there’s the downtime that rip and replace en-tails, plus the effort to retrain operators. “Rip and replace costs 10 to 20 times as much, with no quantifiable ben-efit,” Urso said.

Empowered operationsIn our daily lives, knowledge is always improving, and we have instant access to the world’s best. Yet, in our plants, knowledge remains locked in people’s heads. “Can we give access to the best plant knowledge across the enterprise?” Urso asked. Industry needs to convert the data in spreadsheets, systems and people’s experi-ence, to capture it and make it available. “Honeywell Connected Plant allows us to seamlessly integrate pro-cess, assets and people, so we can make every day your best day of production,” he said. “Everybody can be an expert at raising productivity and reliability, and we can make the next step change in process safety.”

For example, using Honeywell’s Profit Suite software can reduce variability, but benefits tend to decline over time as plant conditions change. Honeywell Connected Plant uses data to identify deviations and can apply UOP process expertise and plant experience to highlight op-portunities for improvement. A new Unit Performance Monitor describes these opportunities in economic terms, say, $20,000 per day, to help plants prioritize and act on them. “Instead of degraded performance going unrecognized, it notifies operations and allows it to fo-cus on the most profitable opportunities,” Usro said.

A new Asset Performance Dashboard provides a sin-gle, integrated dashboard for a unit, a plant or an en-terprise, giving performance in context of the process.


Using UOP process expertise, empirical and customer knowledge, the asset performance management system compares expected to actual performance, identifies faults and provides drill-down to see where the problem lies. “You can connect to experts, share information in-side and outside the company and issue a work order di-rectly from the console,” Urso said.

To get that work done right, on-demand virtual real-ity (VR) training can provide “immersive competency,” Urso added. Instead of training for jobs they don’t do or do so seldom they forget how, technicians can use VR to get last-minute preparation, to practice a job they’re about to do and to guide and verify the job as it’s per-formed.

Training is in the form of operator-guided task execu-tion, using digital rather than written procedures, that can be delivered as a mobile app to an AR intelligent wearable—an eyepiece that allows hands-free procedure information and can transmit the operator’s view to a remote expert.

For those attending HUG, visit the on-site Knowledge Center to see these new products on display:

• Thermal IQ – Enables maintenance engineers and plant managers to more effectively monitor and manage their thermal process equipment, minimizing unplanned downtime and maximiz-ing uptime.

• Uniformance Cloud Historian – This software-as-a-service cloud hosting solution for enterprise-wide data capture, visualization and analysis helps customers improve asset availability, opti-

mize processes and increase plant uptime.• Asset Performance Management – Integrates as-

set and process data for actionable insights to im-prove asset performance and plant profitability.

• Immersive Competency – This cloud-based sim-ulation offering uses a combination of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to train plant personnel on critical industrial work activities, empowering them to directly improve plant per-formance, uptime, reliability and safety.

• Personal Gas Safety – This solution integrates with Honeywell’s leading plant control system to protect workers and speed emergency response in case of hazardous leaks or worker injury.

• Intelligent Wearables – This hands-free, wear-able technology allows industrial workers to more safely, reliably and efficiently accomplish their tasks in the plant or the field. It uses a head-mounted visual display that responds to voice and brings live data, documents, work procedures, as well as health and safety information into view and can connect field workers with remote ex-perts in real time.

• Experion Batch - Combines Experion distributed control, batch automation and new visualization technology for improved efficiency, quality and throughput.

• Measurement IQ for Gas - Provides measurement under control by transforming metering opera-tions with 24/7 real-time condition-based moni-toring.


“Digital transformation has to be about more than just moving data into the cloud.” John Rudolph, new president of Honeywell Process Solutions, is committed to delivering measurable outcomes on behalf of its customers.

This week’s Honeywell Users Group Ameri-cas comes on the heels of John Rudolph being named president of Honeywell Process Solu-

tions. With only a couple of weeks under his belt in the new role, the HUG main stage provided a timely oppor-tunity for Rudolph to re-introduce himself to the HPS user community, and share his vision for the future of the company.

“In preparing for this talk, I was reminded of a quote attributed to Steve Jobs of Apple,” began Rudloph. “He said, ‘Don’t hire smart people and tell them what to do.’ I’d qualify that statement by adding that even smart peo-ple need data, and they need an aggregation of experi-ence in order to make the informed decisions. And that’s what Honeywell Connected Plant is all about.”

Rudolph was named president of HPS on May 31, 2018, succeeding Vimal Kapur, who was named presi-dent and CEO of Honeywell Building Technologies. Rudolph has led the Projects and Automation Solutions business for HPS over the past year, driving significant income growth. Previously, he led the Lifecycle Solu-tions and Services business for five years, where he com-mercialized Assurance 360, the industry’s first launch of a true outcome-based contract; launched the rapidly growing Cyber Security business; and introduced an ar-ray of e-commerce tools to better serve customers and expand revenues. Before joining Honeywell, Rudolph held leadership roles with TAS Energy, General Electric and Ingersoll Rand.

Rudloph’s no-nonsense demeanor, together with his

experience in pioneering new business models and growing the company’s digital services business, make him an inspired choice to lead a new Honeywell Process Solutions forward into the digital age.

“Digital transformation has to be about more than just moving data into the cloud,” Rudolph said. “It ul-timately has to be about the outcomes, including driv-ing increased productivity and savings for our custom-ers while allowing them to increase knowledge capture, knowledge sharing and knowledge retention among their employees.”

JOHN RUDOLPH TAPPED TO LEAD HONEYWELL PROCESS SOLUTIONSBy Keith Larson

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He shared some of the lessons he’s learned from years spent visiting customer sites and implementing new technologies. He’s particularly passionate about the need for organizations to always question the way things are done, and investigate new processes continually. He also encouraged HUG attendees to embrace digitaliza-tion now. “The cost of delay is real,” he added. “What if you don’t update your technologies or change your pro-cesses, and your competitors do?”

“Going forward, I want to change the norm,” Rudolph added. “I want to share risk and reward, and I want to be challenged. Share your objectives with us—on safety on yield, on energy, on the environment—and we’ll partner with you to achieve them.”

“Honeywell Process Solutions is not just a DCS com-pany, we’re an enterprise optimization company,” he concluded. “We are Honeywell Process Solutions and we are connected.”

Henry Ford and Steve Jobs were leery of asking customers what they want—Ford thought they would ask for better horses, and Jobs said they

didn’t know what they wanted until you showed it to them. So, Honeywell took a different approach to bring “the voice of the customer” into the design of its new Ex-perion Batch control system.

“We visited users and system integrators—a total of 25 firms in batch operations from pharma to food and spe-cialty chemicals,” said Alicia Kempf, engineering man-ager, Experion control and tools, Honeywell Process So-lutions (HPS). “We asked them about their problems, issues and workflows—what’s keeping you up at night?”

Kempf co-presented with HPS colleagues Matthias Maaz, director for pharma and specialty chemicals, and Graeme Laycock, user experience director, at Honey-well User Group Americas 2018 this week in San An-tonio.

“We also observed their operations,” Kempf said. “Of-

ten, what they say they do and what they actually do are two very different things.”

Distributed batch controlThe customer surveys fed development of six initial re-quirements for the new system:

1. Get up and running quickly and easily2. Test systems from anywhere3. Plan and execute batch production accurately

and efficiently4. Plan shifts to when things will be happening5. Notify operations quickly when there are delays6. Access data on the go“The team geared up to solve them all,” Kempf said.

“When listening drives innovation, a revolution can occur.”

Honeywell has been in the batch control business for a long time, and its current DCS-based Experion Batch Manager has been around for years. “But this new sys-

VISUALIZE BATCH LIKE NEVER BEFOREBy Paul Studebaker

https://www.controlglobal.com/industrynews/2018/hug-7/


tem is built entirely for batch, centered on a distributed batch engine,” Kempf said. “It’s all in the controller—there’s no batch server, no Windows, no patches, no up-dating.” This minimizes risk, with less to go wrong, and uses a controller on each unit so if one does go down, the others can continue to run. The controller is scaled to unit operations with a small footprint.

The ControlEdge Unit Operations Controller (UOC) offers optional redundancy, embedded firewall, redun-dant power supplies, Ethernet communications and seven rack options. It’s rated to 60 °C and can work with both classical and Universal I/O from Honeywell. A vir-tualized version—vUOC—can be used for simulation and training.

“It’s designed for increased availability, simplified batch workflow, easy I/O configuration, easy validation and one-touch deployment,” Kempf said.

Time-based visualization“The touch-sensitive display has a timeline view along the top that shows what’s coming up in the future—phases and operations—and when,” said co-presenter Laycock. “It lets the operator see the future.”

Operators can see batches across multiple units in the same view, as well as a view that shows all the actions the operator will need to do in sequence. “Everything the operator needs to see to know what’s coming up and respond faster,” Laycock said.

Any delays are highlighted, and the system supports faster, easier troubleshooting. “They can see exactly

what phase is stuck, pull up the equipment status down to the logic level and see, for example, that a pump is in standby, and they can put it in run mode,” Laycock said.

Operators can see in the timeline if there’s time to leave the control room, or they can take the interface with them on a mobile device. “This gives them the flex-ibility to conduct more tasks concurrently, which can improve productivity,” Laycock said.

“Time-based batch visualization lets users see their batch operations like never before, with intuitive vi-sual analytics in the virtualization technology,” added Kempf. Detailed, sequential instructions also reduce the needed level of operator experience, for example, to make the “golden batch”—a batch in which recipe, process and execution are ideal, Kempf said. “Experion Batch might make every batch a golden batch.”

See a clear, concise video demonstration of Experion Batch at www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGcJscfdNrs.

“Often, what they say they do and what they actually do are two very different things.” Honeywell’s Alicia Kempf on how they used interviews with operators—and observations of their behavior—in researching user needs for a next-generation batch automation system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGcJscfdNrs


“The Aria Assurance 360 agreement was a great visualization of our relationship.” Refining NZ’s strategy to build a high-performance culture includes pursuing the benefits of strategic alliances with key suppliers such as Honeywell.

Refining NZ is the only oil refinery in New Zea-land, producing 130,000 barrels per day. Half of its production travels through a pipeline to

Auckland, 90 miles away. Part of that is used to supply the jet fuel for aircraft at Auckland Airport.

In September 2017, when the pipeline to the airport was split inadvertently by a digger, causing more than 100 flight cancellations and stranding thousands of pas-sengers, the damage was contained and minimized, thanks largely to Refining NZ’s strategic partnership with Honeywell Process Solutions.

“It demonstrates the value of a strategic partnership in times of crisis,” said Peter Smit, head of process control at Refining NZ, who explained how his company has benefited from its Assurance 360 outcome-based, coop-erative-service-agreement program in his presentation at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018. “Thousands of people’s travels were affected because we couldn’t sup-ply the airport with fuel. As soon as it happened, Hon-eywell understood the importance of it. We didn’t have to ask them to do something. They came and said, ‘How can we help?’ That was very encouraging. This incident happened less than a mile from a major river, and noth-ing got to the river.”

In operation for 57 years, 30 of them with a Honey-well distributed control system (DCS), Refining NZ’s re-lationship with the automation giant has seen changes over time. Following an initiative to develop and en-hance the relationship, culminating in the signing of a relationship charter, Refining NZ committed even fur-

ther with the Aria Assurance 360 program, which is a framework agreement with a five-year term and options to extend.

“One of the current strategies of Refining NZ is to embed a high-performance culture within its organiza-tion,” said Smit. “This includes pursuing the benefits of strategic alliances with key suppliers. Honeywell, as one strategic partner, was well positioned to provide significant value. The Aria Assurance 360 agreement was a great visualization of our relationship, and the charter was signed at the Honeywell Users Group Asia-

GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTNERSBy Mike Bacidore



Pacific in 2014.”The three major components of the agreement fo-

cus on sustaining support, stable platform and innova-tion. The program required governance structures to align with relationship governance, which were already in place. A detailed 90-day transition plan was imple-mented to consolidate policies and procedures, finalize KPIs and conduct an initial cybersecurity vulnerability assessment.

The systems and applications included in the scope of the initial program were:

• Honeywell DCS (TDC 2000, TDC 3000 and Experion PKS),

• Operator training simulator (OTS),• Advanced alarm management (AAM),• Uniformance PHD,• Profit Suite,• Refining and Petrochemical Modeling System

(RPMS), a linear-programming MES,• Fail safe controller (FSC),• Process control network infrastructure, level 2 to

level 3.5.Recently added to the program were OneWireless,

DynAMo software, Control Performance Monitor and UniSim Tutor.

The Aria Assurance 360 program added detail to the three key areas of focus, as well. Sustaining support included managed service for the existing DCS plus Benefits Guardianship Program (BGP) for advanced solutions. The stable platform aspect of the program in-cluded the migration program for Experion consoles, including HTML displays, integration of safeguarding migration and migration for six of the refinery’s eight Data Hiway implementations. The innovation aspect of the agreement included a Honeywell global consulting study to identify opportunities and provide seed funding for initial projects.

On the plus sideSome additional benefits of the Aria program included reduced risk and “last-time-buy” Data Hiway spares.

“We’ve been relieved of that risk by Honeywell,” said Smit. “That’s been going really well.”

Honeywell also set up a proactive maintenance pro-gram. “Since Honeywell took over the maintenance of the system, the average fault count has come down,” said Smit. “We’ve also gotten significant benefit in ramped-up cybersecurity. Honeywell completed a vulnerability assessment, and we embarked on a program of remedia-tion.” Because the business-network-to-control-system firewall was identical to the outward-facing firewall, an issue with the DCS firewall identified by Honeywell and addressed was also present in the outward-facing fire-wall, so that was also fixed.

“We set up some focused webinars on subjects we were interested in—Profit Suite, PHD and Control Per-formance Monitor,” explained Smit. “We use PHD as a data collector for our PI system. We also removed waste and streamlined the commercial process. Whenever we needed Honeywell to do a piece of work in the past, we needed a proposal. Now we could cut a purchase order immediately. When we had a new project, we were able to get Honeywell involved early in the project with the design. We’ll also save a lot of money with our OneWire-less infrastructure.”

New opportunities for innovation also mean increased revenue. “We’re benefiting about $2 million a year with continuous catalyst regeneration (CCR) advanced pro-cess control (APC) success. The DynAMo operations suite rollout has started, too.”

Honeywell also participated in Refining NZ’s annual Hive Days gathering, bringing in a wireless access point and demonstrating a virtual reality (VR) headset to the entire organization, including the CEO.

“Our first program finishes at the end of 2019, so we need to prepare for the next steps,” said Smit. “We re-cently completed another relationship survey. We identi-fied a few things we need to work on. We need to identify what we need to do in our next program period. On the commercial side we really need to look at how well this program has done and learn from what has happened. We’d like to broaden that scope and include UOP.”


Honeywell’s Joe Bastone outlined new enhancements scheduled for the September Experion PKS release, including seamless integration with ControlEdge PLCs and RTUs, new patent-pending batch management functionality, and native integration of multi-protocol wireless access points.

The upcoming release of Experion PKS brings more flexibility and expanded options that make it easier to integrate more devices and take ad-

vantage of increased functionalities.The Experion PKS R510 September release builds

on the R501 release this past February. It includes in-tegration of the ControlEdge Unit Operations Control-ler (UOC), as well as ControlEdge PLC, which supports IEC 61131-3 languages.

“The ControlEdge UOC is a new family of process controllers in a variety of form factors,” explained Joe Bas-tone, director of product management for Experion at Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS). Bastone guided par-ticipants in a packed session through the roadmap for Ex-perion at the Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018 con-ference this week in San Antonio. “There’s a rack-mount version and a rail-mount version. The UOC includes the control environment from the C300 controller.”

Other features include controller redundancy, as well as rack redundancy (in rack format); built-in firewall; built-in Ethernet interface that will connect to industrial Ethernet networks such as EtherNet IP; multiple I/O op-tions; and a virtual controller option. “We can package it up as a virtual image and connect to an EtherNet IP network and do standard control,” said Bastone.

“We support a traditional ring network for customers with I/O in a confined network and a traditional star net-work for customers that have distributed I/O throughout the facility,” explained Bastone. “The drawback of the

ring network is, if you want to add something, you have to revise the ring. We’ll also support a universal analog input. We support smart motor control centers, Rock-well PLCs and a couple versions of Turck I/O; and in the future we’ll support other versions of Rockwell I/O, too.”

The UOC isn’t really new. It’s based on technology that’s proven out by the C300, but how do you decide between using a UOC and a C300 controller? “If you need redundant I/O, critical process control or advanced functionality support, use the C300,” advised Bastone. “For simple process control, skid or on-equipment form

WHAT’S IN STORE FOR NEXT EXPERION PKS RELEASEBy Mike Bacidore



factors, typical PLC control and common engineering environments, use the UOC.”

ControlEdge PLC supports the best of both worlds. It’s a stand-alone PLC and has the ability to integrate with the Experion system. It features redundant control, communications and power. It also supports Universal I/O, uses shared builder tools and supports standard IEC 61131-3 languages.

“The ControlEdge PLC integrates with C300,” ex-plained Bastone, “and can share a common HMI. It’s also the first PLC with a level 2 certification from ISASecure, which means it has passed rigorous cyber-security testing. And we have that same certification for the UOC now, too.”

Next-generation batch controlThe September Experion release also will include Unit Timeline and Procedure Explorer enhancements to the Experion Batch offering. “We get rid of the dedicated batch server,” explained Bastone. “We support central-ized or distributed batch architectures and have bump-less redundancy, visualization that really leaps over com-petitive offerings and a lower operator learning curve that helps them to come up to speed quickly. We’re building standard libraries that we can deploy and ex-ecute in the controllers. We’ve deployed ‘swim wings’ in the Unit Timeline, giving easy indication of when some-thing needs more attention. And then Procedure Ex-plorer gives a hierarchy of the process, so you can zoom in where you see issues.”

The operator can zero in on detail and go from a high-level view to focus on where the issues lie. “Instead of an operator just seeing a light that says something needs at-tention, it will give the information on who to call to get the right support,” said Bastone. “Operators will move from the Unit Timeline to Procedure Explorer and then to Point Detail or a faceplate or the parameters to see who can provide the help.”

The Universal Process Cabinets (UPCs) have been available for several years. “They’re designed to be put in the field and use the Universal I/O (UIO) mod-ules,” said Bastone. “They support extended tempera-ture ranges from -40 °C to +70 °C.” Accelerated life testing on the cabinets also included 90% humid-ity testing and calculated an expected useful life of greater than 30 years.

New UPC configurations can include as many as 96 redundant UIO-2 modules in the cabinet, up from 64 previously. “We can support up to 128 low-level signals for temperature I/O,” explained Bastone. “And we also have a combination option of up to 64 UIO-2 and 16 low-level analog input (LLAI).”

There’s also support for powering a OneWireless field device access point (FDAP) using the same infrastruc-ture. “OneWireless supports all wireless standards, in-cluding ISA 100 Wireless, WirelessHART and Wi-Fi,” explained Bastone. “We get a low cost of ownership with native integration into Experion PKS. The next-gener-ation wireless device manager, OneWireless R310, sup-ports up to 500 devices. And we’ve now introduced the ability to expand an FDAP into a field-expandable wire-less I/O module, collecting Modbus data from legacy equipment.”

Field Device Manager (FDM) can be used for con-figuration and diagnostics of smart devices over HART, Foundation fieldbus and Profibus, for example. This re-lease of FDM R501 also includes integration with Asset Sentinel. “FDM templates build the Asset Sentinel data-base, enabling easy integration and synchronization and reduced configuration effort,” said Bastone. “You can take configuration and feed it into Asset Sentinel, which gives an easy way to get started.”

The September 2018 release of Experion 510 will in-clude OPC-UA support on the Experion server as a cli-ent. “Next year, we’re looking at Experion 511, and we’ll introduce OPC-UA support as a server.”


“The Timeline view gives us better tracking with less screens and clicks, which allows operators to be more proactive.” BASF’s Dave Vollmer discussed the company’s recent implementation of Honeywell Batch, which features a range of innovative visualization tools tailored specifically to batch operations.

As part of its development process for the new Experion Batch control system, Honeywell gathered input from potential customers and

tested the system on real processes in real plants with operators. Some of that testing was performed at BASF polymer-manufacturing facilities.

“Our products are reactive mixtures. If you do them right, they’re like a suspension of rubber in water. If something goes wrong, you get a Superball and the ag-itator seizes up,” said Dave Vollmer, technology man-ager, BASF, to attendees of his session at Honeywell Us-ers Group Americas 2018 this week in San Antonio.

The BASF facility manufacture polymers in semi-batch operations using many raw materials and paral-lel steps. They have many unique product variants for recipe structure and needs, as well as class-based reci-pes across different-sized trains. The operators allocate units dynamically during batch execution, and “active step changing is very common,” said Vollmer. “There is a safety instrumented system (SIS) running in the background.”

BASF offered two sites for tests, with different histo-ries and needs. Site A is a less-complex batch island in a continuous plant. Based on Experion and Sequential Control Module (SCM) programming from the start, it is now on Experion Batch Manager. “They’re working on getting it up to where it can be,” said Vollmer.

Site B is more complex. Originally TDC 3000, it was converted to Experion, running TotalPlant Batch. “It’s

stable, proven and closer to where we want it to be, but it’s been a painful process,” Vollmer said. “Its challenges are to find a migration path and timing.”

While their control needs and priorities vary, both sites are looking for improvements in several areas:

• Active step capability• Operational stability that avoids major lockups• SFC-consistent view and ability to manipulate an

active batch• Speedy build of new recipes• Flawless unit arbitration, consistent ownership

EXPERION BATCH MEETS THE REAL WORLDBy Paul Studebaker



behavior and nulls• On-site maintainability and ability to upgrade

without special experience• Failure and “first out” detection• Quick and intuitive systems for new operators and

engineers• Batch reporting, with quick and easy query at

time of disruption• Simulation system availability and usabilityVollmer emphasized that any new system should be

carefully considered. “Some of the decisions you make can lock you in and make it hard to change,” he said. “Take the time at the beginning to get it right.”

Operators weigh in“The user interface testing on a real process was like Disney World’s ‘Imagineering,’” Vollmer said. Instead of just trying to fix problems, “We were asked, ‘What could be?’”

In May 2018, tests were conducted using actual plant products and databases at both sites, with both engi-neers and front-line operators. “We were testing features planned for the next release, as well as possible future features,” Vollmer added. “It was a two-way learning op-portunity.”

Readers can familiarize themselves with the new Ex-perion Batch operator interface in in a clear, concise video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGcJscfdNrs.

“Our existing systems have screens galore, for oper-ations, business and safety systems. It’s a problem dur-ing upsets,” Vollmer said. The new system’s Notification Center screen puts critical information in one place—operators can see that there’s a problem, see where in

the logic the problem is occurring and often correct it.“The Timeline screen was new to us,” said Vollmer.

“Our existing system has multiple views. You can get a picture in your head, but this gives us better tracking with fewer screens and clicks, which allows operators to be more proactive. Instead of letting the system come to them, it lets them look out ahead and see what’s coming.”

Among the operators, “The timeline view generated considerable conversation,” Vollmer said. “The across-units view let them find problems closer to when they occurred, with a good balance of the current details needed for individual batches.”

The Reference Batch feature compares current opera-tions to a set of stored parameters. “It provides continu-ous asset effectiveness and improvement tools,” Vollmer said. “In our existing system, we have the data some-where, but this puts it right in front of us. And when we’re running multiple batches, things can get away from us—a step can stall without tripping an alarm. That can add up to a lot of lost reactor hours and money.”

Users are able to change and refine the reference batch. “If it’s too strict, you get too many notifications, which can annoy the operators. The ability to refine the settings helps,” explained Vollmer.

The Procedure Explorer view is similar to previous systems and helps to “bridge the gap for operations,” Vollmer said. “It allows for quicker engagement and fo-cus on the functionality of interest to experienced opera-tors. They feel like it’s already their system.

“When it comes to new things, usually you have to drag the operators through it. Here, they were clicking away and engaged. We had to drag them away for the next guy to have a turn.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGcJscfdNrs


“Modernization’ and ‘transformation’ are buzzwords, but they’re also opportuni-ties,” said Jack Ellison, control and au-

tomation engineer, BP. “Today, all our instruments are wired and our diagnostics are stranded. Technicians can access them with a Fluke [handheld], but unless it’s al-ready a problem, they never get back to the engineers. We have robust valve diagnostics, but failures we could have foreseen end up causing lost production.”

Ellison works in BP’s Houston office, which serves multiple platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and is in the midst of installing wireless on the company’s Atlantis platform, which has a nameplate capacity of 200,000 bbl/day, a 161,000 sq.ft. main deck, and seven decks in all. He described the project’s motivation, method and progress at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018 this week in San Antonio.

“We have other equipment—heat exchangers, pumps, etc.—where we would like to add vibration, temperature and additional pressure information if we had wireless,” Ellison said. The platform’s maintenance group has re-placed paper rounds with tablets. “They download the rounds in the office, do the round, then synchronize,” he said. “They wanted us to do wireless.”

Without wireless communications, when you need a wiring diagram or a data sheet, you have to walk back to the office and bring it up on a computer. “During troubleshooting, the technician is our eyes on the plat-form, and we communicate by e-mail,” Ellison said. “We might get a picture or two, and if we’re lucky, it

might show what we need to see. Something that would take minutes by video can take hours or days by e-mail.” He would also like to streamline calibrations and loop checks, which now take multiple people communicat-ing by radio.

“A project to add wired vibration transmitters took two years. With wireless, the PO would take longer than the install,” Ellison said. “With wireless tablets, we could have digital procedures, collaboration and live video for troubleshooting.”

BP TO PILOT WIRELESS NETWORKING ON GULF OIL RIGBy Paul Studebaker

“A project to add wired vibration transmitters took two years. With wireless, the PO would take longer than the install.” BP’s Jack Ellison summarized progress on a wireless networking pilot due to go live in July on the company’s Atlantis platform in the Gulf of Mexico.



It takes more than hardware“With any new project, there’s some hesitancy,” Elli-son said. “On a platform, there’s a perception that wire-less won’t work.” To prove it would, they scoped and designed a pilot that covers just the production deck, where most of the process equipment is located, with integrated WiFi, WirelessHART and ISA 100 networks. The system is designed to pull diagnostics into the asset management system, provide mobile HMI on intrinsi-cally safe tablets, allow new wireless instruments to be deployed quickly at lower cost, and support live video for walkdowns and troubleshooting.

“The wireless instrument network supports both HART and ISA 100 with the same access points,” Ellison said. “Most of our instruments are HART, but the Bently Nevada vibration system is ISA 100, and we expect much of the additional instrumentation will be ISA 100.”

The project called for more than technical exper-tise—it also had to be sold. “Management, engineering and offshore each have different concerns and need a different pitch,” Ellison said. “Management is looking for ROI, engineering wants to know, ‘Will this even work?’ Everybody has security concerns, and you need to be ready to address them. You need to know how you will integrate with the distributed control system and as-set management systems, and to decide who owns the wireless. Will IT own it? For us, everything below the offshore firewall—the DMZ and lower—is owned by operations. That simplifies maintenance and lifecycle management.”

Start small, and don’t overpromise the initial use cases. Do just control valve diagnostics or digital field

instruments, and build on that. “Find valves or instru-mentation with a history of a problem, and make sure they’re covered in the pilot,” Ellison said.

When rolling out the project, cater your presentation to the audience. “We had a big meeting with everyone in the room having different concerns and using differ-ent jargon,” Ellison said. “It went on for an hour, and we didn’t get a lot done.” Instead, hold a series of smaller meetings and be the middleman translating the jargon from one group to another.

Finally, have a definition of success, and a plan to communicate it when it happens.

Current status and plansThe Atlantis pilot project is almost ready. “We expect to go live in late July,” Ellison said. “We have strong buy-in, and our digital security test was a success. We’re working with IT for Skype support, testing with ValveLink soft-ware, and testing the mobile HMI software.”

After a successful pilot, the plan is to install full plat-form wireless (estimated to require 20 access points). El-lison wants to add vibration and corrosion monitoring, as well as wireless personal gas detectors. “That will al-low personnel tracking, but that’s controversial,” Elli-son said. “We also want to add materials management, which will help us find the things we need to do our projects. And we’re looking at CCTV so we can see the process in an emergency.

“Beyond that, who knows? We can’t tell what new ap-plications will be available in the future. We do know that we see value now, and expect it to be greater a year from now.”


What’s your key driver for digitalization—what business problem are you trying to solve? What help do you need along the

way? What have you learned from your experience? These are among the questions answered by an end-user panel discussion for media at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018, this week in San Antonio.

Panelists ranged from 10-year digital journey veteran Claudio Zamora, president, Kairos Mining, and brain drain victim Mike Carroll, vice president, Georgia Pa-cific, to Shannon Robinson, director of engineering ser-vices and owner of nine obsolete distributed control sys-tems (DCSs) at Valero Renewable Fuels, and Ali Raza, chief digital officer, Apergy, which among other things, provides automation for oil and gas wells.

The panelists were joined by Honeywell Process Solu-tions (HPS) representatives Karim El-Naggar, vice presi-dent and general manager, Honeywell Connected Plant, and Paul Bonner, vice president, Honeywell Connected Plant Con-sulting & Analytics. The panel was moderated by Ujjwal Kumar, vice president, global sales, HPS.

What’s your problem?“Many people, like me, are retir-ing, which is why I’m here today,” said Carroll. “Georgia Pacific ex-

pects 40% of our knowledge to walk out the door in the next five years. For new talent, we’re competing with the armed forces for the same three in 10 people of military age who are eligible for service: who have a high-school education, can pass a drug test, aren’t in jail and are fit enough to do the physical work. Manufacturers are find-ing it hard to fill the entry-level jobs, and we’re feeling the stress. We have realized that steady-state will not pre-vail. Our knowledge is leaving, and today’s technology can let us do something about it.”

At Valero, “We have 11 ethanol plants, nine with ag-ing DCSs near obsolescence,” said Robinson . “We need to replace them, and improve our alarm management and user interfaces. We need to increase operator effec-tiveness.”

At Kairos, “Our mining operations use big machines that are hard to access. We want increased visibility, to keep workers out of risky areas. We need to make real

USER PANEL GRAPPLES WITH DIGITALIZATIONBy Paul Studebaker

Some have acute problems to solve, others are quite mature and want a partner on their journey. Panelists described a range of reasons why and how they are embracing digitalization at Honeywell User Group Americas 2018 this week in San Antonio.



improvements in a sustainable way, in productivity, ef-ficiency and safety, to take workers out of there,” said Zamora. “Also, the average age of our workers is 50 to 55; in mining, we expect them to make it to 60 or 65 at the most before they retire.”

At Apergy, “We have an aging workforce and the same concerns about safety, reliability and efficiency, but we also need cost-effective solutions for wells that may only produce five to 10 barrels a day. We can’t spend $10,000 to $20,000 per well, and we need to stop travelling mil-lions of miles a year to visit them so we need exception-based monitoring,” said Raza. “Honeywell provides the ecosystem, and the technology makes our customers think more broadly about the possibilities.”

Are your drivers problems to be solved or opportunities?“In pulp and paper, we are more defensive—it’s easier to describe the drivers to management. From there, we’ve evolved to a more mature, opportunity-driven mindset,” said Carroll.

“It’s both. Our obsolescence problem is allowing us to drive efficiencies, to get some gain out of solving a prob-lem,” said Robinson.

“It comes from a need for survival, but we soon re-alized a long-term vision would open opportunities. There’s no specific end to the project—it’s an evolving thing that has moved from operate and maintain to im-provements,” said Zamora.

Raza said a large percentage of wells have no automa-tion. “It’s a great opportunity to optimize production, to get higher yields with lower operating costs,” he said.

“Successful companies are on a burning platform,” added Carroll. “The ones that had problems first have now accumulated an advantage.”

What lessons can you share?“Over the past 10 years, we’ve learned the company has to believe, and have courage to make things happen,” said Zamora. “You need a structure with support in the company, in ownership, and an innovation director in-dependent of the plants. That’s a key element.

“Implementation is bottom-up. You have to team up,

engage operations and help them innovate. And you need a proper partner for technologies, who’s not just looking to sell products, but to provide elements in a plan you make together.”

How do you get people on board?“It takes time. You won’t have all the answers in one pass. Put money up front, choose something achievable, prove the concept, and go from there,” said Zamora. “Politics are everywhere. You have to sell the value, and have the metrics to capture it. And keep the story alive—senior management changes, and you’ll have to tell the story again. The bottom line is, be able to support the story.”

Robinson added, “We knew a change was coming, and spent a lot of time thinking about how to manage it. We got operations and engineers across a large segment of the facility involved in the design. We got their input, and their ownership.”

How can vendors help on the journey to a solution?“Some have acute problems to solve asap, for example, acquiring 400 new wells with no visibility—that’s a cri-sis. For that, we were able to roll out a straightforward solution,” said Honeywell’s El-Naggar. “Others are quite mature, and want a partner on their journey. We under-stand and share an overall vision and a core strategy, and break it out into pieces that we can solve together. Those companies have the same vision as us—a platform they can use to put things in place.”

Why Honeywell?“Solving our skills shortage problem is a matter of lead-ership, not technology,” said Carroll. “We have a budget and a problem, and don’t know all the answers. If you have a car and cash, to find and get to your destination, you need information. We went seeking knowledge.”

Raza said, “We can get the data off an asset, Hon-eywell has the data off the process. We focus on what we are good at, and let others do what they are good at. Whether it’s Microsoft, Google or Honeywell, we don’t re-create from scratch, we find partners and op-portunities.”


Robinson said, “We were looking for business partners where results would be mutually beneficial. Not just an exchange of goods, but knowledge we would both find useful now, and down the road.”

At Georgia Pacific, “We always need to buy things. Honeywell challenged us to see where we were in the

industry, not just to sell us technology,” said Carroll.“Digitalization projects don’t get a free ride, they need

to compete on ROI with other projects,” said Bonner.El-Naggar added, “The business case doesn’t take

very long. Typical returns are less than a year.”

Shell’s Martinez refinery employs 700 people and sits on the bay near San Francisco. “We have pretty strict regulations. Not just California reg-

ulations, but also San Francisco Bay Area regulations,” said Janae Adams, process control engineer, Shell. “We’re also surrounded by tech companies, so we need to be creative to be able to afford to run the plant.”

Adams spoke to attendees of her session, “Using visu-alization tools to drive the refinery of tomorrow,” at the Honeywell Users Group Americas conference this week in San Antonio.

At Shell Martinez, Honeywell’s Collaboration Station has been applied for over six months in a Level 4 (L4) operator field office, and for several years in an L3.5 se-cure staff room. “We’ll focus on the L4 application be-cause it’s more interesting,” Adams said.

“2018 sees us firmly in the age of digitalization,” Ad-ams said. “We have a tremendous amount of data, but it’s scattered everywhere. It’s hard to use scattered data in any facility, but this is also a highly secure plant, with the levels firewalled.” The Collaboration Station allows the refinery to view L2 and L4—process control data and

general business information—at the same time and in the same location.

“This opens a lot of opportunities so, to narrow it down, we designed our installation for one depart-ment,” Adams said. “We were able to take a messy, scat-tered web of information and make it into a single, or-ganized stack.”

At the same time, employees tend to work in silos, Ad-ams noted. Finding and using data takes power and ef-fort, so plants usually provide them personal computers. “This makes individuals productive, but it also makes collaboration hard,” Adams said. “So, we designed a sin-gle screen to replace multiple computers—a single, mas-sive, 80-in. touchscreen so all can see, touch and inter-act with the same information at the same time. Every single person can contribute, and touching it makes the information come to life.”

Benefits and visionThe example Adams shared was the screen for a de-

layed coking operator. “The Collaboration Station streamlines the presentation to the operator, energizes

VISUALIZATION DRIVES THE REFINERY OF TOMORROWBy Paul Studebaker



them and shows them how we make decisions,” she said. “The operator navigates using dials, and the middle one accesses the L4 information.”

Benefits include being able to access mixed data “on all levels, with robustness,” Adam said. “It also replaced LCN-connected stations, which saved us money be-cause they took a lot of maintenance.” The operator can connect with others through Skype, and the visibility improves operator training, which improves safety.

Adams’ team vision is to add searchable commentary and flags, to allow local operators to edit script, and to put the display information on a mobile phone or tablet to use in the field. They also want to allow two people to interact at the same time.

“Our other system is an older, L3.5 deployment for a technical team, for operations support and control engi-neers,” Adams added. It’s also on an 80-in. touchscreen

and gives a refinery-wide overview with inter-unit flow rates and other information.

Next steps include adding a new Honeywell drill-down capability to the L3.5 installation, and rolling the L4.0 deployment to additional operator stations.

“2018 sees us firmly in the age of digitalization. We have a tremendous amount of data, but it’s scattered everywhere.” Shell’s Janae Adams discussed the implementation of 80-in. Collaboration Station displays to spur interaction among refinery employees.

While cyberattacks on industrial infrastruc-ture continue to escalate both in frequency and sophistication, many facilities simply

lack the skilled manpower and bandwidth needed to properly assess and implement—much less monitor and

maintain—an appropriately robust cyber defense. Indeed, an honest accounting of the time, effort and

costs attributable just to timely patching and antivirus updates—much less potential safety, downtime and reg-ulatory compliance implications of a breach—reveals

CONSIDER MANAGED SERVICES TO FILL CYBERSECURITY GAPSBy Keith Larson

https://www.controlglobal.com/industrynews/2018/hug-13/


that for many organizations outsourcing some aspects of one’s cyber defense makes sense financially and from a risk-management perspective.

Leveraging its acquisition last year of remote connec-tivity specialist NextNine, Honeywell has continued to build out the industry-leading range of managed cyber-security services it can provide on behalf of its custom-ers, including those with a heterogeneous mix of auto-mation solutions from different suppliers.

“The idea behind our CyberVantage Managed Secu-rity Services is to deliver a consistent approach to cyber-security practices,” said Mark Littlejohn, global leader, managed security services for Honeywell Industrial Cy-ber Security, who discussed the company’s cybersecurity offering at this week’s Honeywell Users Group Americas in San Antonio. “Plus, we provide a team of special-ists that can help you out, make sure you’re successful,” Littlejohn said.

The company’s team of cybersecurity specialists now number more than 200, and with the recent opening of a third operations center in Singapore (in addition to Houston and Bucharest), the company can now pro-vide manned, 24x7 support for its customers around the world—including some 400 sites that already are active subscribers.

Secure remote connectivity for the company’s services are provided by ICS Shield, Honeywell’s top-down OT security management platform for remotely securing In-dustrial Control Systems (ICS)/SCADA environments. Based on NextNine technology proven in more than 6,500 installations over the past 15 years, connectivity is provided by a local Virtual Security Engine (VSE) that routinely polls the Security Center back at the Honey-well operations center. If the VSE discovers that a patch download or connection request is pending at the Secu-rity Center, the VSE then initiates a secure outbound tunnel to the Security Center. Because the VSE never

accepts an inbound connection, a high degree of secu-rity is maintained.

The new CyberVantage Managed Security Services now available over this secure connection include:

• New Threat Detection and Vulnerability Identifi-cation – Honeywell collects, monitors, alerts and reports on customer Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) log data, providing expert threat correlation and analysis in combina-tion with an intrusion detection solution.

• New File Transfer Service – Honeywell securely connects and transfers plant information to cus-tomer-designated sites or to third-party cloud providers. The security and operational data can then be safely reviewed by experts to uncover plant productivity, reliability and availability in-sights. Honeywell site-to-site transfers provide added security controls and policies, as well as en-cryption, offering an alternative to less secure cor-porate intranet shares.

• Expanded Security Device Management – Hon-eywell cyber experts help install, configure and manage security devices to support in-house en-gineering teams, now adding ICS Shield to exist-ing firewall, IDS/IPS, Honeywell Risk Manager

“We provide a team of specialists that can help you out, make sure you’re successful.” Honeywell’s Mark Littlejohn discussed how the company’s new CyberVantage Managed Services offering can help customers keep their plants secure 24x7.


and Secure Media Exchange offerings.• Expanded Multi-Vendor Support – Honeywell

cyber experts perform ongoing security services to manage across multiple vendor systems and multiple sites. Multi-vendor support is now avail-able for interactive activity and trend reporting, secure remote access and support, automated patch and antivirus updates, and continuous se-curity and performance monitoring.

“A key aspect of the Honeywell approach is that all these services are provided through a single, secure, out-bound-only connection – IT can close down all other ports,” stressed Littlejohn. “As a former chief cybersecu-rity officer for a refining company, this approach is ex-tremely appealing to me.”

What a difference a decade makes.In 2008, Nova Chemicals’ facility in Joffre, Canada,

was merely dipping its proverbial toe into the icy waters of wireless connectivity. It started exploring wireless in-strumentation for new projects where it had no existing wiring and for applications in some remote locations.

“In 2011, we expanded our vision, looking at other ap-plications,” said Cilius van der Merwe, process control engineer at Nova’s Alberta plant, which produces ethyl-ene and polyethylene. “In 2013, we kicked off a major ex-pansion to add another production line, and we justified wireless. Since we were putting in infrastructure, we did a little bit of future focus and put something in to enable other opportunities such as tablets later on.”

Six months ago, Nova rolled out its Mobile Operator infrastructure and registered more than 400 field-initi-ated sessions over a two-week period by the latter half of May. “The proof of concept was beneficial,” van der Merwe explained during his presentation at the Honey-well Users Group 2018 conference this week in San An-

tonio, Texas. “We’re in the process of quantifying the benefits now so we can cookie-cutter this into other loca-tions in the future. We’re measuring things such as how much time we save and improvements in error rates.”

Wireless infrastructureThe Mobile Operator infrastructure includes Panasonic Toughpad wireless tablet PCs, five Cisco Aironet 1552 outdoor wireless access points and Honeywell Flex Sta-tions. It uses the Honeywell DCS wireless systems archi-tecture. “Everything on the Flex Stations is configured, so it’s really just a thin client,” explained van der Merwe. “We knew there would be benefits to the tablet devices, including a reduction in radio traffic between the field and the control room, as well as reduced risk of miscom-munication.”

It also provides instant feedback to field users who can view operating procedures and access documentation for troubleshooting automation equipment.

“We have a mix of old technologies, including man-

FROM WIRELESS-SHY TO A WIRELESS HIGHBy Mike Bacidore



ual processes like swinging a mallet and then radioing the central control to do some next step,” said van der Merwe. “Initially we targeted field operators as the main users for troubleshooting automation equipment and looking up standard operating procedures. Also, main-tenance technicians could use it for calibrating field in-strumentation or troubleshooting. The next phase will be project teams loading up the displays with informa-tion for the loops we’re commissioning.”

Van der Merwe wanted to make the user-interface (UI) design as low-cost as possible. Using Abnormal Sit-uation Management (ASM) design principles, including gray scale and alarm colors, trending and tab naviga-tion, information is designed to fit on one 10-inch dis-play screen.

“We targeted read-and-write, not a view-only tool,” ex-plained van der Merwe. “And we designed the UI to ac-commodate touch. There’s a keyboard that pops up for entering tag names and an oversized numeric keypad for analog data entry. The screens are capacitive touch, but operators typically have to take off their gloves to enter data. There’s also a stylus. But most of the input opera-tions are done indoors.”

The displays were designed to be very task-oriented. “The mobile library is not intended to mimic every con-sole display,” explained van der Merwe. “And there’s no requirement to display every Honeywell DCS tag or alarm.”

Future-proofed designOne of the primary intents was to future-proof the de-sign. When display options were being considered, there were no de facto standards for tablets. The device that was purchased, the Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1, has a 1920 x 1200 pixel, 19:10 display. The average width of the human finger is 16-22 mm, and Microsoft touch-dis-play research and UI guidelines dictate the ideal touch

target to be 9 x 9 mm or 15 x7 mm, with padding be-tween targets set at greater than 2 mm. Nova’s HMI li-brary shapes are designed for 24-inch monitors at 92 ppi, so they had to be scaled for 10-inch displays and then have font sizes increased from 12 to 16.

“Space is at a premium compared to 24-inch moni-tors,” said van der Merwe. The main display focus was on content to support a task, rather than on process-flow diagrams. And links to documentation were provided. To save space, a numeric keypad pops up automatically when it’s required for input. “We wanted to keep the design simple,” explained van der Merwe. “Otherwise operators would not use it. We knew we had a single window for display. We designed with very user-specific profiles.

“We wanted operations to really adopt this and love this from the start,” he continued. “I took the initial de-sign to them and got input. They requested some ad-ditional data input steps. They identified opportunities, such as improvements to procedures that require a mix of field and panel operation; field tasks that would ben-efit from Honeywell DCS monitoring; commissioning; and troubleshooting. The main display layout was also based on operator sketches.”

When the project was rolled out, operators gave in-

“The mobile library is not intended to mimic every console display.” Nova Chemicals’ Cilius van der Merwe told the story of his facility’s Mobile Operator interface deployment at this week’s Honeywell Users Group 2018 meeting in San Antonio, Texas.


put on friction points. “We’ve made lots of little tweaks, including layout improvements; zero-friction remote login; additional shortcuts to tablet utilities such as the calculator, Wi-Fi and battery indicators; and elimina-tion of battery-saving hibernation,” said van der Merwe. “The batteries are good for 12 hours, and the operator shifts are only eight hours. Hibernation was a problem because, each time it woke up, the Toughpad had to re-

connect to the network, which took about a minute.”The largest complaint from operators has been loss of

connection, which will be corrected by improvements to Wi-Fi coverage planned for this coming summer. “We have five access points now, and we’re moving them around to try to improve that,” said van der Merwe. “We’re thinking about adding more.”

How do you equip every field worker with the same resources and skills that your best one has? Because the next generation of workers,

the millennials, prefers the ability to access informa-tion in a video format, the most efficient and productive strategy could be outfitting veteran operators and techni-cians with video-camera-equipped hardhats and asking them to record what they’re doing, said Youssef Mestari, global strategic marketing director, Honeywell Process Solutions. These videos can then be used to create a li-brary of captured knowledge for younger workers to ref-erence after experienced employees have retired and their working expertise is gone.

Mestari and Honeywell Product Manager Annemarie Diepenbroek led a roundtable discussion on field-worker effectiveness at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018 in San Antonio. “It’s not so much about what you need to know,” explained Mestari. “It’s more about where that information is. We need to enable knowledge that can be accessed from anywhere at any time. Millennials are the smartest, most dedicated generation we’ve seen. We have

to put the right tools in their hands. What they want are the tools to capture and store knowledge and the ability to give that back to them how they want it. Some people like to watch information in videos. That’s the holy grail.”

Newer technicians and operators learn differently from the people who have been there a number of years, commented one of the roundtable participants. “How do we make them better trained employees?” he asked. “Cell phones and mobile devices are the norm for the new generation.”

The younger the worker, the more they have a base of knowledge but without experience, said another partici-pant. “They don’t need to have the information. They just need to know how to find it. That is how they work,” he explained. “We began our careers memorizing set points and parameters, but that’s not how it’s done any more. They just need to know how the system works and where to find the set point.”

Mobile devices the normThe ability to access information, whether it’s in written-

MILLENNIALS PUT THE ‘NOW’ IN KNOWLEDGE CAPTUREBy Mike Bacidore



word form or in a visual format, in the field requires a mobile device with the ability to deliver that content. Many of the participants had already equipped workers with tablets and shared their anecdotal results.

“All of our operators and technicians do their rounds with tablets,” said one individual. “They like it. It works well. They like to be able to take pictures. But we had to ensure all of the GPS was turned off because they didn’t like being tracked. If an operator is hot, for exam-ple, and goes into a building to cool down, that is being recorded.”

All mobile devices are not equal, however. Another participant reported that his facility had recently loaded one particular type of industrial tablet for its field techs. “It wasn’t real user-friendly, so now we’re using iPads and iPad minis,” he reported. “They got way better reception than I thought they would. Every operator has a device and is responsible for it. We discourage them from tak-ing them home, however, because then they might not remember to bring them back.”

Another participant’s plant tried cell phones, but the small screen created a lot of problems with miskeyed in-formation. And sometimes the devices overheat and shut down if they’re left in a truck on a hot day.

Bet your bottom dollar“In terms of the technology, our younger folks adapt to it pretty quickly, but our older folks are fighting it tooth and nail,” admitted one participant.

“For those workers with standard operating proce-dures, how do you know they are complying?” asked Mestari, following up. “How do you know someone has done an assigned round? How do you monitor execution and capture it?”

Years ago, one participant commented, his company got rid of its hard copies and went to an online data-base—but the older workers can still print them out and

check boxes. “Like safety, that procedure is instilled in them: When the paperwork is turned in, the initials and checkboxes are turned in, too.”

Another participant admitted a couple of his organi-zation’s sites also initial and check off hard-copy docu-ments, but the reality is that those documents are often filed away or put on a shelf, never to be used again.

Mestari questioned the bottom-line benefits of some existing practices, as well as newly implemented ones. Measurement is the only way to be sure, he said.

Digitizaling rounds“We’re committed to digitalizing 25 new procedures a month,” contributed another roundtable participant. “Finding the subject-matter experts (SMEs) to work on these is challenging. It takes 12 hours per procedure. And there’s a lot of repetitive information in there.”

Turning analog documents into usable digital forms is a one-time investment, but it’s still a cost that can be measured. “As soon as you digitize, you have the time-stamp, which enables analytics. You can see how long things take,” explained Diepenbroek.

But whose responsibility is that initial cost of conver-sion? “Is it something we should do or something the equipment manufacturer should provide to us?” pon-

“It’s not so much about what you need to know. It’s more about where that information is.” Honeywell’s Youssef Mestari explained where millennials’ expertise lies at this week’s Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018 in San Antonio.


dered one participant. “You look at the cost and the per-ceived benefit and how much work it’s going to take to implement it. Is it something we want to pursue? It’s a huge task, but it’s great once something is set up.”

However, the clock is ticking. There’s always a risk of retirement with SMEs. Until then, how are they de-ployed? Do you need an SME for each site? How do you share that expertise across sites?

One participant said his company has a knowledge center for each site. “We don’t standardize across sites,” he added.

Another participant’s company has operations experts who travel. “That really doesn’t work very well,” he ex-plained. “We’re trying to do it within the plant so each person has some ownership. A lot of times they’re just disconnected. In mechanical rotating inspection, for ex-ample, it’s a struggle. Sites like their own people. There’s a trust issue.”

One company had three sites all overseen by the same manager. “We help each other out,” the partici-pant explained. “We all have the same overall boss, so he makes sure we share equally.” The organization re-

wards the SMEs with bonuses for going to the other fa-cilities when they have to be away from home for mul-tiple weeks, but, while that knowledge is being shared, it isn’t being captured.

Message in a bottleRecording the knowledge of seasoned workers and transferring that knowledge to new ones is the one-two punch of effective operations. But roundtable par-ticipants differed in their opinions on preferred ap-proaches. “It needs to be a mentorship approach to capture that. There’s no point in writing procedures,” said one. “When you write procedures, the next person coming along doesn’t look at them and will write their own. You can’t read the book if you don’t even know where to find it.”

Another company starts early, training prospective employees when they’re interns. “We’re going to lose a lot to retirement,” he warned. “It takes five years to have a good technician trained out in the field and three to four years for an operator. We just hope that they stay. Some will, but others will chase salary around.”

New technology can be enticing and alluring. But someone’s got to see that it’s implemented and integrated effectively. And, before any of

that can be done, its cost needs to be justified and ap-proved by stakeholders.

Enter Winston Meyer, manager, gas measurement ser-vices, CenterPoint Energy, which operates in six Midwest-

ern states. “It’s a diverse geography,” he explained during his presentation this week at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018 in San Antonio. “We have about 3.5 mil-lion gas users and customers, 8,000 employees and over 75,000 miles of piping in the ground. In the United States, we have a lot of regulatory bodies we deal with. Our rates are determined by how well we run our business.”

NEW TECH NEEDS STAKEHOLDER BUY-INBy Mike Bacidore



A variety of recent technology implementations and projects at CenterPoint required Meyer to convince a corral of stakeholders of the benefits of those upgrades.

“Implementation of technology is a concept for your whole business,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of different departments to deal with and a lot of hands to touch. When we go out with it, we have to have a great plan as well as confidence.”

One such upgrade has been the replacement of me-chanical meters with advanced metering infrastructure. “Regulators saw that as a safety improvement for our me-ter readers, and it yielded more accurate data collection for rate payers,” said Meyer. Regulatory bodies and rate payers are just two of the stakeholders who must shake hands on new technology considerations.

Winds of changeAdvanced leak survey technology allows CenterPoint to pinpoint methane leaks using sensor-equipped vehicles, GPS and wind direction. Putting stakeholders in the ve-hicle to see the technology in action went a long way to-ward gaining credibility and buy-in.

Because 2G and 3G support is going away soon, Cen-terPoint has to upgrade its cellular infrastructure to 4G. “We’re doing some rip-and-replace for that, but it’s justi-fied,” said Meyer. In addition, he’s been able to get his organization’s stakeholders onboard with an HMI mi-gration and upgraded measurement data systems, but, given the distance between the six states his company serves, regional acceptance can sometimes be a chal-lenge. And employees’ age differences can be just as daunting as geographic hurdles.

“I’m looking at implementation and how we’re going to maintain that new technology across a widespread ge-ography,” said Meyer. “Someone who’s been at a plant for 40 years has probably been involved in writing standard operating procedures. What about the new employee

who’s been there for two weeks? I love the new guys who come in out of college. They’re very intelligent. They can tell us how things are going to behave, but they’ve never touched a piece of physical equipment.”

Geography also creates pockets of isolation. “When you’ve got a large area with employees that are spread out, they may not see their supervisor in several weeks,” warned Meyer. “They may not check a procedure with their counterparts. I have to get him trained with knowl-edge and give him the resources.”

Common vision neededIntegration requires a common vision. “Without that, you have no chance of good training and consistent be-havior,” said Meyer. “You must define the types of prod-ucts you’re going to deploy for what purposes. We do product evaluation to make sure we can handle it expe-ditiously. It can be very complicated. If I’m training 40 people over a large area, we have to make sure we’re us-ing a format that helps to make a measure of success for those individuals.”

Meyer loves new technology as much as the next engi-neer, but he still has to answer to his stakeholders, espe-cially given the industry he’s in. “I like to get my hands on the equipment,” he said. “But I still have to think

“We learn from each other, so we don’t make the same mistakes.” CenterPoint Energy’s Winston Meyer explained how to gain stakeholder buy-in for new technology implementations.


about the public arena in which I’m operating. I have to start with change management. Why are we doing this? Where is the payback for the rate payer? Stakeholder management starts at the corporate level, but then you

have regulatory stakeholders as well. I have to be able to defend what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Once you get regulatory approval and finance approval, then you can budget and source.”

Refineries and petrochemical producers desire peak performance. They track it and hunt it like wild game. Every day is an opportunity to re-

duce downtime, improve underperforming assets and address the challenges introduced by the human ele-ment.

Since the end of 2014, as crude oil prices dramatically shifted, many operating companies have scaled back in-vestments in new equipment and technology. As they run closer and closer to constraints, assets become more likely to break down, making an unplanned shutdown more likely. This has a profound effect on peak perfor-mance, not to mention the bottom line.

If producers could detect and solve potential problems before they occurred, while optimizing engineering ca-pacity and operations, the spoils of the hunt would be much more bountiful. Increasingly, operating compa-nies are looking at new data-related technologies to at-tack these critical problems.

“Over the past year, we’ve seen some tremendous changes in the industry,” explained Katie Jones, senior product line manager, Connected Performance Ser-vices, Honeywell UOP, during her presentation at Hon-eywell Users Group Americas 2018 in San Antonio.

“The industry is looking to apply IoT or Industry 4.0 in order to access data like we’ve never done before.” Jones cited the convergence of key technologies, including digitalization, analytics, virtual reality, connectivity and the cloud, as an opportunity to match tools with exper-tise to achieve gains that weren’t possible until now.

“It’s changing day by day, month by month,” she said. “Through our communications with our core customers at UOP, we’re hearing similar challenges, such as reac-tive maintenance practices and the retirement of sub-ject-matter experts (SMEs). We’re seeing a 50% loss of SMEs in the next five to 10 years. How are we going to deal with our SMEs retiring?”

The concept of using a cloud-based platform is quickly becoming the foundation for connected solutions and services that address these kinds of customer needs, pro-viding performance through the most advanced moni-toring, analytical and predictive capabilities.

“We can address these issues and enable our cus-tomers through the Honeywell Connected Plant,” said Jones. “We’re committed. Each of our organizations has a connected aspect that we’re unifying under the Hon-eywell Sentience IoT Platform.

“But we’re not starting from zero,” Jones added. “We

WHO WANTS $1 MILLION IN SAVINGS?By Mike Bacidore



have an extensive number of existing products and ser-vices, enabling our customers to better understand pro-cesses, assets and people. We’re elevating those into a connected solution.”

From 100 years to $1 millionUOP is a process technology provider in the oil & gas, refining and petrochemicals space. “We’ve been around more than 100 years,” said Jones. The two primary Hon-eywell Connected Plant solutions that UOP brings to its customers are Process Optimization Advisor, which maxi-mizes profitability through evaluation and analysis of pro-cess changes, and Process Reliability Advisor. “Process Reliability Advisor is used to preempt process issues with embedded root cause analysis,” said Jones. “It can help fa-cilities to operate closer to constraints and can drive best operating practices.” It can be tuned and configured to match your operation, so it acts as a digital twin.

“We also embed in the Advisors a fault model that re-flects work we’ve done to model how your specific yields or production rates are affected,” explained Jones. “This enables our customers to get actionable recommenda-tions and push more feed through those units.”

In the cloud-platform architecture, Process Reliabil-ity Advisor can take process and lab data from the his-torian. “It’s a read-only access point,” Jones assured. “It’s an open-configuration architecture. We pull that into the cloud, remove any outlier errors, and make sure the data’s in good condition. Then the results are translated into a visualization layer, which customers have access to.”

One Process Reliability Advisor user that Jones shared was Al Waha Petrochemicals in Saudi Arabia, which produces 450,000 metric tons per year of polypropylene.

“In the first month, we uncovered more than $1 mil-

lion by relaxing the constraints and improving effective-ness,” said Jones. The outcomes were realized by ana-lyzing and validating cold-box constraints and providing operational guidance to improve production, as well as using the process model to identify gaps and mitigate operational risks.

“Our customers that are using Process Reliability Advisor are driving and improving their profitability,” said Jones. “We’re doing that through a proactive en-gagement supported by the dashboards on the screens and our service as well. And we’re doing this through three key areas—rigorous process models, tuned ki-netic models and fault models with embedded UOP insights.”

With 37 engagements currently underway across the world from the Americas to Asia, that number is more than double the engaged units from a year ago. “In many cases, our customers are operating conserva-tively,” said Jones. “We work with them to understand and provide recommendations, but they have to be comfortable with any changes. At the end of the day, we want to improve reliability.”

“We’re seeing a 50% loss of SMEs in the next five to 10 years. How are we going to deal with our SMEs retiring?” Honeywell UOP’s Katie Jones explained how Process Reliability Advisor is helping facilities to address people, process and technology issues at Honeywell Users Group Americas 2018 in San Antonio.


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