From 15 to 18 April, Sun City was host to Invensys Operations Management’s annual South African User Conference as well as a record-breaking audience of over 400 local and international industry professionals. X-Change has a justly-earned reputation as the largest and longest-running conference of its type in South Africa and this 20 year anniversary event was no exception. Notably, this was the first year that the conference represented the full range of products and solutions from Invensys Operations Management.
Keynote presentations
Dr Peter G. Martin, vice president strategic ventures at Invensys Operations Management, led the keynote presentations with an absorbing talk on minimising time to experience to maximise performance. He explained how the business of industry has changed from stable and transactional to real-time. And, while many executives believe this to be a chaos problem, it is simply a control problem and one that the real-time world of process control deals with routinely. There are variables that contribute to business profitability and they include production value, energy and materials as well as the safety of people, the plant and the environment.
“This represents a multiple objective, highly-constrained optimisation problem, but if we can empower operators with the exact information they need in the timeframe they need it, they can solve the problem,” he stressed. How? “What we now know is that if engineers and IT people collaborate effectively to solve business problems, the ROI on such a project is about six weeks. CFOs cannot get a better deal and will soon recognise that you (the delegates) are the best investment your companies can make. “Industry has to change its mindset from downsizing to empowerment in order to retain the valuable talent required to cope with the requirements of today’s volatile market forces.”
Other keynote speakers included Tim Sowell and Grant LeSueur who spoke about Invensys’ vision and roadmap. Microsoft SA’s Fred Baumhardt who spoke about the future of technology and infrastructure and futurist Clem Sunter captivated the audience with his talk on the identification of factors that could influence the future outcome of given scenarios.
Technology
Invensys Operations Management is the first industrial automation provider to be certified for high availability, disaster recovery and fault tolerance in supervisory control applications through the leveraging of virtualisation technology. An entire presentation stream was dedicated to showcasing the following:
Foxboro
Foxboro offers clients process automation and control solutions to meet the needs of virtually any enterprise in the process industries. From stand-alone processes that need basic, reliable functionality, to complex integrated plants that control critical or hazardous operations. Various presentations focused on the latest Foxboro I/A series DCS and its exciting future, the new PAC (programmable automation controller) as well as an introduction to the Foxboro Measurement and Instrumentation range of products which have almost become a global standard.
Triconex
Triconex provides safety shutdown and critical control systems that provide high-value solutions for critical control and safety applications including emergency shutdown as well as burner, fire and gas and turbo-machinery control and protection. Triconex has been acknowledged as the world leader for more than 10 consecutive years and this presentation was an introduction to its world-leading triple redundancy systems.
Eurotherm
Eurotherm was introduced to delegates as a leading global supplier of control, measurement and data recording solutions and services to industrial and process markets. Eurotherm’s product range includes distributed process automation systems and machine control incorporating single and multi loop control, operator displays, data management and graphic recorders, power control and signal conditioning.
Ecosystem partners and collaboration expo
Twenty-two hardware and software solution vendors from across southern Africa and beyond demonstrated their real solutions to real problems. Invensys acknowledges that its solutions alone may not always be enough. It may require the expert implementation of professional system integrators who are keenly knowledgeable of the problems faced by their end-users. And then there are the complementary hardware and software solutions required to provide end-users the cost-effective value and customised solutions they are looking for. This is the world of Invensys Ecosystem Partners who chose X-Change 2012 to showcase their professional solutions.
Thanks
An event like X-Change takes more than six months to plan and organise. From the invitation of international guests and call for presentations to venue logistics and awareness campaigns, this is no casual event and Wonderware Southern Africa would like to thank everyone who contributed towards making X-Change 2012 the success it deserved to be on this, the 20th anniversary of the longest running and most successful conference of its type on the continent.
To read the complete report-back visit: http://instrumentation.co.za/+C16583
For more information contact Jaco Markwat, Invensys Operations Management, +27 (0)11 607 8100, tech@invensys.co.za, www.iom.invensys.co.za
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