PlantSuccess Newsletter
Volume III, Issue 9
16 April 2003
Dear Subscriber:
For several years, the process industry, like many other industries, has faced a very challenging economy and has responded with improved work processes, a significant reduction in capital expenditures and cost reduction in many forms. Reductions in employment have been a significant part of the cost cutting and now claims of working harder and doing more than just a couple years ago are valid.
PlantSuccess
and other organizations are dependent on innovative managers from the industry
leaders to participate -- as speakers and attendees. We offer a very special
“thank you” to all who took time from their very busy schedules to participate
with last week’s PlantSuccess Gulf Coast 2003. By all accounts, PlantSuccess
continues to raise the bar with the quality of its presentations and the active
discussions led by senior editors and industry consultants.
Introduced
by Kirk Wilson, Bayer’s VP of Engineering Services and previous PlantSuccess
keynoter, Doug Walker, recently retired ExxonMobil exec, did a great
job “setting the conference table” with a presentation on creating “The
Environment for Competitive Success.” This was a great presentation on
the required relationships between Process, People and Technologies – so relevant
to managers responsible for plant operations and maintenance.
Charlie
Gillard, recently retired from Shell Deer Park
Refinery where he was CIO and VP for Continuous Productivity Improvement,
moderated an outstanding panel discussion featuring Martin Brown, Bayer’s
Manager of Site Engineering, Richard Brod, engineering manager for
Dow Chemical’s Texas Operations, and Kelly Byers, DuPont’s Regional
Engineering Manager.
Johnette
McDaniel, principal
systems analyst, Eastman Chemical, spoke of a successful SAP implementation
and integration with Pi from OSIsoft and other software products. George
Pohle, senior staff engineer, Shell Global Solutions, discussed a major
effort to achieve Ensured Safe Production (ESP).
Since 9-11,
security has had an increased impact on all of us. Concern for security is
nothing new to the chemicals industry and Ben Butchko, senior security
engineer for ExxonMobil, gave us an update from the perspective of one of
the industry leaders. The discussion on security included retired Air Force
Lt Gen Ken Eickmann whose last active duty assignment was Commander,
Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, where he led the nation’s
largest center of excellence for research, development, and acquisition of
aircraft, aeronautical equipment, and munitions. Eickmann has been director
of the Construction Industry Institute (CII) for six years and has been involved
with Homeland Security at the Federal level and with the State of Texas. There
is a broad range of capabilities used by the military that also can increase
the level of security at industrial plants.
The first
day concluded with a series of presentations from our very important sponsors:
Steve Lorenz for AVEVA, Gino Palarchio for Ivara, Mark Wieber
for J D Edwards, and Tom Hosea for OSIsoft. These companies bring important
software solutions and experience to improve plant operations and maintenance
in the process industry.
The second
day began with an absolutely fantastic session on Knowledge Management. John
Voeller, CKO and CTO for Black & Veatch, organized the session and
spoke to many of the concepts from his recently published: Circle of Knowledge
(read a review and learn more at www.PlantSuccess.com).
Voeller was followed by Charles Rowney, CKO for CDM; Jill Kennard,
DuPont’s Global Planning Manager for Corporate Engineering and Operations;
John McQuary, Fluor’s VP of Global Automation and Knowledge Management;
and Kent Greenes, CKO for SAIC.
This session
featured a broad range of real-world commercial successes that document savings
of millions of dollars. The process industry continues to lose the knowledge
and experience of its retiring work force at an alarming rate. Effective Knowledge
Management can and should contribute to solving this problem. These executives
can help your company put this methodology to work.
We concluded
the conference with a presentation by Mike Alianza with Intel’s Capital
Development Group. This semi-conductor industry leader is still implementing
a multi-billion dollar capital expense budget and is meeting schedule and
budget by making use of current technologies in design verification, and reviews
for construction, operations and maintenance.
FIATECH, an
important industry research organization was represented by Charles Wood,
project manager, who gave us an update on the Technology Road Map project
and on the Life Cycle Data Management project.
I will always
remember this PlantSuccess by the falling of Baghdad and the freedom that
was granted to almost 25 million people and by the time and effort that was
given by so many for PlantSuccess. With the unqualified victory in Iraq behind
us and the prospect for peace ahead, I hope we are at the beginning of an
economic recovery that is long overdue. Following the ideas and the experience
of speakers at PlantSuccess conferences will help us get there. The most recent
presentations will be added to all others by the end of next week. Please
visit www.PlantSuccess.com
Best regards,
Carl Howk, Chairman
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Current Links
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We’ve managed
customer relationships as long as we’ve had customers. The tools may be
different but
the goals and objectives are the same. Many have proclaimed CRM to be dead –
killed by a sluggish economy and by CRM software's failure
to live up to expectations. This article
by CSC consultants is worthwhile. READ MORE.
OSIsoft is a success story and a privately-held company whose
performance looks even better when compared to so many engineering software
companies that have experienced the boom to almost-bust phenomenon of the
past few years. Their Pi product has been implemented in more than 10,000
process plants, the company is committed to the Microsoft platform and has
strengthened its stake in the process industry by focusing on a performance
management capability in addition to its traditional historian product. READ MORE
The PlantSuccess
Newsletter generates a substantial number of visits to our website, we welcome the
interest and the access to previous issues of the Newsletter which are available
there. If you'd like to share this newsletter with a colleague, just forward a copy.
Subscribe or cancel by sending a request to Carl.Howk@PlantSuccess.com
Full links to Volume III, Issue 9 Newsletter articles: