The next step in evolution: delivering the promise of Operational Excellence

The HANNOVER MESSE is the world’s largest trade fair and a central marketplace for automation technologies. With its addition of INTERKAMA+, the process automation industry’s flagship tradeshow, and Factory Automation, this fair now brings together an unprecedented line-up of advanced process and factory automation solutions for all industry sectors. The inclusion of INTERKAMA+ and Factory Automation reflects the growing convergence of process and production automation.

Guests were greeted by traditional Japanese-style bamboo decorations as they entered Yokogawa’s main booth. Over 300 m² in size, the booth featured exhibits of a broad portfolio of world-class plant optimization products and services, and focused attention on Yokogawa’s safety, asset, production, and lifecycle initiatives. This included an exhibit of the VigilantPlant automation concept for operational excellence that showed how safe, reliable, and profitable plant operations can be achieved while eliminating unplanned downtime, improving asset utilization, and enabling businesses to quickly adapt to changing market conditions.

The booth also featured a demo of CENTUM VP, Yokogawa’s latest distributed control system that takes the VigilantPlant initiative to its next evolutionary stage and delivers on our promise of Operational Excellence by bringing together Safety Excellence, Asset Excellence, and Production Excellence solutions into one integrated platform. And last, but certainly not least, Yokogawa’s safety systems, transmitters, flowmeters, recorders, data acquisition stations, analyzers, and wide ranging service suite were on display.

The main topic at the FOUNDATION fieldbus booth was vendor-neutral physical layer integration of diagnostics in Yokogawa systems. There are three solutions in the market from MTL, Pepperl+Fuchs, and Turck, and Yokogawa showed how it integrates with each. The MTL, Pepperl+Fuchs, and Turck modules transmitted diagnostic information via FOUNDATION fieldbus H1, RS485, and FOUNDATION fieldbus HSE, respectively. Customers could also view diagnostic information in Plant Resource Manager R3.02 via device description (DD) or device type manager (DTM) technologies, depending on the vendor solution. To show a working FOUNDATION fieldbus segment, a Samson control valve and Yokogawa EJX and YTA transmitters were connected to our CENTUM CS 3000 R3.08.50 production control system.

Here, Yokogawa exhibited the latest version (1.03) of its FieldMate device management tool. The new FieldMate is easier to use and offers direct connect functionality for HART, BRAIN, FOUNDATION fieldbus, and PROFIBUS devices, making FieldMate the preferred tool for maintenance engineers in the process industries. FieldMate 1.03 comes with new DTM libraries featuring enhanced functions such as Easy Setup and Diagnostics Status windows, allowing quick access to relevant information. Further, synchronization of data with Plant Resource Manager - Yokogawa’s plant asset management solution - provides users with a clear path to asset excellence.

We offered an opportunity to take a break from the bustling atmosphere of the INTERKAMA+ show by inviting customers, business partners, and members of the press to join us for a special VigilantPlant Evening in the quiet surroundings of the INTERKAMA Lounge in Hall 7. Ninety eight individuals accepted our invitation, and were joined at this event by over 30 Yokogawa colleagues. The evening was a great success, allowing us to build stronger relationships with people in our business, and we hope to host a similar event at the ACHEMA 2009 show in Frankfurt.

A number of Japanese companies, including Yokogawa, had exhibits on display in Hall 27 at the Japan Pavilion, which was devoted to the theme of Energy & Environment. Yokogawa exhibited its Enemap Energy Management Package and Enerize Energy Cost Per-Product Management System.