Digital transformation the focus at HUG Americas

Emerging connected plant technologies were the highlight during Honeywell’s largest annual gathering of industrial customers this month, with a focus on showing manufacturers how digital transformation can help them achieve new levels of consistently high performance.

More than 1300 delegates from across the oil and gas, chemical, pulp and paper, and metals and mining sectors attended the event, which featured numerous displays of the newest technologies along with dozens of Honeywell- and customer-led sessions and technical discussions.

Throughout the conference, Honeywell showcased how turning data into actionable insight requires more than just upgrading technology; it requires a system for capturing, retaining and sharing knowledge that allows both the plant and its workers to perform at their best every day.

“Digital transformation has to be about more than just moving data into the cloud,” said John Rudolph, President of Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS). “It ultimately has to be about the outcomes, including driving increased productivity and savings for our customers while allowing them to increase knowledge capture, knowledge sharing and knowledge retention among their employees.”

Rudolph was named President of HPS on 31 May, succeeding Vimal Kapur, who was named President and CEO of Honeywell Building Technologies. Rudolph led the Projects and Automation Solutions, and Lifecycle Solutions and Services businesses for HPS over the past six years, driving significant growth. Rudolph also has held leadership roles with TAS Energy, General Electric and Ingersoll Rand.

HUG attendees were shown the company’s ongoing transformation into a software-industrial provider. As part of this transformation, several technologies that have been launched in 2018 were displayed and demonstrated, including:

• Thermal IQ — Enables maintenance engineers and plant managers to more effectively monitor and manage their thermal process equipment, minimising unplanned downtime and maximising uptime.
• Uniformance Cloud Historian — A software-as-a-service cloud hosting solution for enterprise-wide data capture, visualisation and analysis that helps users improve asset availability, optimise processes and increase plant uptime.
• Asset Performance Management — Integrates asset and process data for actionable insights to improve asset performance and plant profitability.
• Immersive Competency — A cloud-based simulation offering that 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 performance, uptime, reliability and safety.
• Personal Gas Safety — A solution that integrates with Honeywell’s plant control system to protect workers and speed emergency response in case of hazardous leaks or worker injury.
• Intelligent Wearables — Hands-free, wearable technology that 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 experts in real time.
• Experion Batch — Combining Experion distributed control, batch automation and new visualisation technology for improved efficiency, quality and throughput.
• Measurement IQ for Gas — Provides measurement under control by transforming metering operations with 24/7 real-time condition-based monitoring.
   

Image: John Rudolph, President of HPS, speaking at the HUG Americas conference.