Honeywell User Group 2015 Focuses on Continuous Evolution

Summary
ARC Advisory Group analysts joined 1,300 attendees from over 300 companies attending the Honeywell User Group (HUG) in June in San Antonio. The well-attended event focused on the company's ability to support its large installed base of customers, while providing advanced technologies and approaches to help drive them forward. The official theme of the conference, "40 Years of Innovation," was not only a nod to 40 years of HUG, but also recognized Honeywell's commitment to supporting legacy control systems, some that are over 40 years old and still operating in the field.

Last year, Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) was moved into the Performance Materials and Technologies Group alongside UOP. The move is creating some interesting new product and application offerings that build on the synergies between technology licensor and engineering firm, UOP, and automation supplier, HPS. Vimal Kapur, President of HPS, kicked off the event with an excellent presentation showing how Honeywell can help reduce both capital and operating expenditures for its customers, building on today's challenging market conditions that force end users to do more with less.

Addressing Today's Challenges
A number of HPS executives, led by Mr. Kapur, highlighted how the new capabilities of HPS solutions and services are designed to help companies operating with strong headwinds, such as a rapidly declining workforce and aging plant infrastructure. Mr. Kapur cited that 50 percent of plants today are over 30 years old; the average asset age is 36.5 years. Information technology (IT)-related issues also continue to beleaguer the industry, with Windows XP hitting end of support in 2014, and an over 48 percent increase in detected cyber-attacks between 2013 and 2014. The regulatory side of the business also remains challenging, with the EPA estimating that it will cost approximately $480 billion for businesses across the country to comply with new regulations on cleaner emissions.

The ability to operate safely and in compliance with regulations while leveraging technology to stay relevant and competitive while faced with a major skills gap, is challenging enough. However, another challenge is moving away from the old, monolithic, "black box" DCS. According to Mr. Kapur, the DCS has evolved to a single platform for multiple islands of control and automation with a single user interface and single system infrastructure. Making a business case for modernizing automation is considerably easier today than it was even five years ago because the functionality of modern systems has expanded to a significant degree.

Mr. Kapur also talked about HPS' cloud computing capabilities. Cloud use at HPS has now expanded to over 2,000 projects and HPS introduced a new cloud service for field devices at the show. The new field device cloud offers a new channel for ordering and download. Transmitters can be ordered to exact requirements and arrive preconfigured right out of the box. Honeywell also announced training through a cloud-based infrastructure with a new virtual operator training simulator (OTS).

ARC frequently discusses the critical relationship between automation and risk management. Mr. Kapur echoed this philosophy by discussing HPS's integrated process safety management, gas detection, alarm management, access control, and emergency shutdown capabilities. He also showed a new cyber-security risk manager dashboard solution. Honeywell's goal is to be at all three layers of protection from detection, control, and prevention for both physical and cyber security.

Operator Optimization
One of the more interesting solutions demonstrated during the conference was the new Experion Orion Console solution developed to enhance operator optimization using new touchpad HMIs. The console is designed to increase operator effectiveness over a greater scope of responsibility by providing faster response, reducing fatigue, and increasing situational awareness. HPS leveraged Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium best practices to design intuitive visual dashboard effects with pan and zoom capability and red, yellow, green graphics to provide quick visuals of operational status. The console supports up to 16 different displays within one system. In the future, HPS will be developing mobile tablet interaction capability to extend operator optimization outside the control room.

Modularization Approach Builds on UOP Relationship
The topic of modularization seems to be popping up everywhere these days. It started with end user demands for more standard and configurable types of I/O and flexible approaches to project execution. HPS made a splash in this area last year with its Lean Execution of Automation Projects (LEAP) approach. This year, Mr. Kapur built on this message by discussing how HPS is taking a more modular approach to automation project execution with modular gas skid offerings and pre-engineered plants that leverage the new, closer relationship with UOP. Honeywell now promises to reduce project timelines by up to six months with standard templates for control system configurations with certain UOP process units. These include templates for LNG plants, gas plants, and naphtha complexes. ARC covered HPS extensive portfolio of integrated solutions for gas in a previous report.

Focus on Oil & Gas
Oil & gas is now the biggest vertical market for HPS. In face-to-face discussions with several oil & gas experts at HUG, ARC learned that the company is particularly focusing on the gas industry right now, which is still experiencing considerable growth in many segments. LNG and gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology are two examples.

HPS executives highlighted a number of industry-specific solutions, including Experion R440, which features more SCADA-rich features and the LEAP concept as ways to significantly reduce project costs and time. The concept includes use of solutions such as Universal Process I/O, a key enabler for modular construction and distributed system architecture (DSA). Among other benefits, it simplifies phased extensions in oil & gas projects. Honeywell has also integrated wireless and intelligent device management into its new 2020 RTU. By integrating device management, Honeywell can reduce costs by up to two to three times compared to a conventional RTU. HPS also claims it consumes less power than any other RTU available today.

Honeywell is also offering more advanced metering technology in its system with MeterSuite. Historically, metering was done with tens of thousands of flow computers installed worldwide. However, MeterSuite allows users to integrate this functionality into the Experion system, eliminating the need for a flow computer. HPS is also making leaps forward in leak detection and pipeline reliability by bringing ASM Consortium concepts to the world of pipeline control. The objective is to provide operators with critical data in an easy to use, intuitive manner.

OPC UA: The "Lingua Franca" of IIoT
ARC moderated a panel discussion for media and analysts in which key Honeywell personnel discussed their view on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and how the company is responding to this new industry challenge and opportunity. Clearly, the definition of what IIoT is today and will be in the future continues to evolve. HPS sees IIoT as a set of technologies and architectural concept that will help customers obtain real value. OPC UA was a key part of the panel discussion (as well as one of the topics during a keynote presentation). Following its acquisition of Matrikon a few years ago, Honeywell is now one of the biggest supporters of OPC UA. One HPS representative stated that the company hoped OPC would be considered as the "lingua franca" of the IIoT.

Addressing Customer Concerns
Edwin van den Maagdenberg, Vice President of Business Operations at HPS discussed many of the improvements that HPS is bringing to its business as a result of listening to its customers. Mr. van den Maagdenberg was fairly open about improvement efforts being made in many aspects of HPSs business that touch the customer. These include revamping the web site, improving spare parts and replacement orders, and improving customer case resolution. The company received 5,000 responses to a "voice of the customer" survey and appears to be taking customer feedback very seriously since Mr. van den Maagdenberg reports directly to Vimal Kapur. Few companies are willing to share such details regarding their approach to the customer and needed improvements to the same degree that HPS has. In addition, the response from customers seems to be improving, with two out of three customers telling HPS that it is improving in terms of schedule delivery, service offerings, and parts.

New Activity at Honeywell's Advanced Solutions
During several face-to-face meetings with executives with Honeywell Advanced Solutions group, ARC learned about new advancements in this business. There is much focus on the KPI dashboards as well as other system- and historian-agnostic applications that are not necessarily tied to Honeywell DCSs. HPS has worked with major oil & gas companies over the years to develop a collection of key KPIs so inexperienced plant personnel can have a good starting point to meet their specific needs.

The new Honeywell Uniformance Asset Sentinel application embeds asset management functionality into the historian, continuously monitoring equipment and process health to help industrial facilities predict and prevent asset failures and poor operational performance. The new offering expands HPS' Uniformance software suite and supports the emergence of the IIoT in the process industry, enabling companies to collect, organize, and analyze data for a specific asset or "thing." These analytics can transform work processes from reactive to proactive, helping industrial plant operators avoid unplanned downtime and improve plant performance and safety. Honeywell claims that Asset Sentinel can help companies increase industrial asset utilization by up to 10 percent by reducing unplanned downtime. It can also cut maintenance costs by up to 15 percent by better predicting and preventing catastrophic equipment failure and inefficient operations.

The newest version of HPS DynAMo alarm management software combines alarm and operator management with functions such as operating envelope monitoring and a better overall window of operations.

Honeywell's UniSim 3-D simulation software can now host generic models on the cloud. Many mid-to-small tier owner-operators do not have resources to do simulation for abnormal situations or even a way to effectively manage competency. UniSim now offers a cost-effective way for these users to keep track of who is trained and who needs to be trained.

Recognizing the continuing importance of energy efficiency and energy monitoring, the company is beefing up its applications that monitor energy usage with enhanced visibility, energy dashboards, and more. The company is also developing specific dashboards for performance monitoring of specific process units with UOP. Eventually, HPS should be able to use big data and analytics to compare performance from unit to unit. Meanwhile UOP has already gone to market with its own performance monitoring solution called UOP OpAware. This provides remote, real-time collaboration with UOP technical specialists to maximize on-stream performance and profitability. Installed at more than 100 process units worldwide, the OpAware system provides standardized data across units or facilities.

Conclusion
ARC observed a lot of interesting and informative presentations and discussions at this year's HUG event. Customers appeared to appreciate the focus on continuous support for and evolution of the installed base, as well as new technologies, services, and other capabilities designed to enable them to do more with less. It appears that HPS is "walking the talk" and taking positive steps to improve its customers' experience doing business with HPS.

SmartLine and Experion are registered trademarks of Honeywell, Inc. MeterSuite and LEAP are trademarks of Honeywell, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

All signed-in ARC Advisory Group clients can view this report in pdf format at this Link

If you would like to buy this report or obtain information about how to become a client, please Request ARC Info

Keywords: Experion Orion Console, Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS), Honeywell User Group (HUG), MeterSuite, Universal Process I/O, UOP, ARC Advisory Group.