Day one of the Emerson Exchange Users’ Conference featured Monil Malhotra, vice president of industrial software, sharing the roadmap for Emerson’s industrial software offerings. Monil explored the reasons and the path forward for Emerson’s initiative to bring standalone software under one umbrella—meeting user needs from end to end.
Today’s process manufacturers are faced with a data tsunami. More devices can collect data from more measurement points than ever before, and 80-90% of that data does not get to the right decision makers at the right time. Often, that data is trapped in silos, or at best collected into a disorganized central repository that resembles a data swamp far more than a data lake.
Monil shared the comprehensive strategy through which Emerson and AspenTech are creating a single software portfolio from edge to enterprise to democratize data and make operations safer, more reliable, and more sustainable. The key is to collect the right data from the field, move that data with all its associated context to a central, standardized location, and then transform it into actionable information.
Data to meet the most difficult challenges
As the world population rapidly increases, demand for resources continues to skyrocket. Energy demands, mining resources, demand for chemicals, and access to medicine will drive the need for dramatic increases in manufacturing. At the same time, the world has come to understand the need for more sustainable operations in everything we do. This will create an inflection point. As Monil states,
“Challenge number one is how do we help our customers? And challenge number two is how do we do it while ensuring the carbon footprint is coming down?”
We do it with software that is purpose-built for driving efficiency, throughput, and sustainability in industrial operations. Many software solutions exist today to help meet these needs by focusing on:
But deploying a wide variety of disparate software packages to meet these needs creates a fast track to siloed data. Custom engineering to allow intercommunication often creates fragile systems that can be hard to use and even more difficult to maintain.
And even when individual plants have good control of their data, they often still lack the capability to use that data to drive bigger organizational changes. Monil elaborates,
“What makes Site A more efficient might not be what makes the enterprise efficient across the board.”
What organizations need, Monil explains, is to
“get data from all facilities across their enterprise, and treat it as one ecosystem so actions and decisions are not isolated. We need holistic decisions to improve operations across the enterprise.”
A better way
Emerson’s industrial software portfolio creates a connected ecosystem to move information anywhere in the enterprise seamlessly. The solutions combine Emerson and AspenTech expertise, bringing the strengths of each company to bear to create a comprehensive automation foundation. Some examples include:
DeltaV Live with integrated Aspen DMC3: Intuitive integration that lets operators view DMC3 screens using DeltaV Live.
Ovation integrated with Aspen Mtell: Powerful software can predict equipment failure with 90% accuracy up to 70 days ahead of time.
Mimic Simulation Software and Aspen HYSYS: A multipurpose dynamic simulator with virtual reality capability—perfect operator training and design assets before you procure them.
AgileOps Alarm Management: Alarm software with best-in-class dynamic alarm management, managing alarms in real time based on current process state to eliminate alarm floods and nuisance alarms,
Real Time Modeling Software: Powerful predictive modeling to visualize the facility constraints, eliminate bottlenecks, accommodate variability, maximize production, and understand the implications of any change in the manufacturing process.
Process and Knowledge Management Software: Intuitive software to electronically capture every decision made in the product development process. Standardize data in format and access method, making it more intuitive to locate, share and comprehend development and manufacturing data.
Zedi SaaS SCADA: Advanced software to rescue stranded data from hard to reach or hazardous assets. Simultaneously improve visibility and safety, and do it on your own timeline and within your budget constraints with software-as-a-service.
You can learn more about Emerson’s industrial software offerings by visiting and subscribing to the Industrial Software page on LinkedIn.
And I’ll be here all week, bringing you more highlights from Emerson Exchange, so if you are here, be sure to say hello, and if not, stay tuned here and across the Automation Experts blog for more updates!
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