One of the largest and most ambitious industrial wireless application networks to date helps chemical manufacturer Huntsman strive for zero product defects, zero safety incidents and injuries, zero environmental releases, and zero unscheduled downtime.
Strategy and tactics: Process industry users, vendors discuss obstacles to implementation, appropriate applications, and standards for plant-level wireless.
Installation in a brownfield chemical plant shows interoperability within ISA100.11a and practicality for instrumentation improvements in long-established operations.
Cockrell Ranch Waterflood oil recovery project uses a wireless SCADA system to gather, assemble, transmit information from the wells to produce detailed production models and maximize output.
Editors note: The article Driving Plant Optimization with Advanced Process Control (in this issue) discusses when and how companies might want to create their own process models and control strategies.
Machine vision sensors are often likened to human eyes: They scan and “see” the world around them, then transmit the data elsewhere for some action to occur.
In most process plants there are one or two operators that seem to drive the process better than others. Those operators consistently create the most output at the highest quality, and can manipulate those complex interactions that make up a process.
An international manufacturer of textile, chemical, and related products for the apparel, industrial, institutional, and commercial markets, Mount Vernon Mills employs some 2,600 people and operates 14 production facilities in the U.S., as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.