Streamlining Modernization Projects–Reduce Risk, Cost & Complexity Podcast

Emerson Automation Experts

Due to the rapid advancement of technology, we face the issue of technology obsolescence in our daily lives. Control systems that have been operating for decades face this challenge. While incremental improvements can be made over time, sometimes a more comprehensive modernization project must be initiated to meet the control challenges and improvement opportunities of the production operations.

Emerson’s Scott Campbell joins me in this podcast to discuss the planning, execution, and follow-up of a successful modernization project.

Give it a listen and visit the Modernization section on Emerson.com for more information on the technologies and services to help you navigate your facility through the project and toward more efficient, reliable, and sustainable operations.

Transcript

Jim: Hi, everyone. I’m Jim Cahill with another “Emerson Automation Experts” podcast. Control systems are the lifeblood of production processes to keep them running safely, efficiently, and reliably. Like all technology, they can come to the end of their lives and require modernization. We shared some ways to simplify the control system modernization process in earlier podcasts, such as Simplifying Control System Modernization with DeltaV IO.Connect and Simplifying Your Path to Optimal Control with REVAMP. Today I’m joined by Scott Campbell, an experienced modernization consultant, to discuss the challenges surrounding modernization projects, the value that can be generated from these projects, and Emerson’s approach in helping customers achieve their business objectives and project goals. Welcome, Scott.

Scott: Thanks, Jim. Nice to be talking with you.

Jim: Well, it’s great having you sharing your expertise with our listeners today. Well, let’s jump right into things. What pains are our customers facing when we start interacting with them?

Scott: Well, like you mentioned, usually it starts with obsolescence. So, there are existing technologies at end of life, and a lot of times at that point they are buying parts off of eBay, trying to source them from other plants in their area, and generally just struggling to keep parts on hand. But in our conversations, we’ve learned that a lot of times, that’s not really enough to justify a project at that point. You know, these plants have lots of projects going on, lots of things they’re trying to fund, and lots of people fighting over capital. So, we’ve learned that obsolescence and fixing obsolescence for its own sake a lot of times isn’t enough to justify modernization projects anymore. So, we kind of have to look at the downstream effects. And we can see a lot of effects that having an aging control system has on a plant besides just that obsolescence. So that failing hardware can cause process shutdowns, can cause process disruptions, you know, loss of product when that happens, and obviously loss of the money-making part of their facility.

So that’s one of the justifications we see with the older technologies within these plants, that production quality limitations to throughput, just not getting everything they could out of their system and equipment, are all drivers to move these projects forward. And, you know, we’re seeing a lot more of a resource crunch in a lot of these facilities, where their staffing has been dwindling over the years and their engineering resources are cut. And to be honest, when they have a control system in the plant that’s 30, 40 years old or more, they struggle to get and retain resources. If you’re a 22-year-old controls engineer coming out of college, you don’t really wanna go work on something that’s already obsolete. So, all of those are drivers to get customers having these conversations.

Jim: Yeah, that sounds like a number of things from, you know, production and the financial impact of that, and just getting people to be able to work on it can all be part of the justification process. So, with all customers are facing, what’s their best path forward?

Scott: So, their path forward really at that point is to take on some kind of obsolescence project. We used to talk about migrations and call these projects migrations, but really, when we use the word “migration,” we’re talking about kind of a replace in kind. So, the customers getting that obsolescence issue fixed, maybe getting some weight off their shoulders that’s not looming over them, but it doesn’t necessarily move them forward technology-wise and they don’t get a lot of value of the new system. So really, we tend to talk now about modernization projects where it’s not necessarily just a replace in kind, but a refresh of the control system overall and a chance for them to look at their control system and really plant holistically. You know, some of these projects, when we go into do a modernization, we’ll touch on instrumentation like networking infrastructure, cybersecurity, documentation, a lot of things that go wider than the control system itself.

Jim: Yeah. That makes sense. You know, that replace in kind seems it kind of limits you to, you know, the thoughts of what you did 20, 30, 40 years ago. So, it seems like, yes, it is an opportunity and take advantage of what modern technology offers, too. Now, I’d assume, you know, with these drivers and the possibility of unplanned shutdowns and process disruptions, and things that the customers would be knocking down our doors for modernization projects. Is this actually happening?

Scott: Well, actually, no. A lot of times, there’s hesitancy from the customer’s standpoint. Even when they know they need to do something, they start looking at this as a possibility and kind of draw back from it. You know, these automation engineers and automation departments within these plants, they spend a lot of their time today just trying to keep the lights on. You know, we’re talking about aging technology that may be having failures that needs a lot more hands-on work just day to day. So, they have a day job, and their day job is running the plant with the system that they have in place. And we talked about, you know, the staffing shortages at some of these plants. They just don’t have the bandwidth to take on a whole nother project.

And most of them have never done this. We’re talking about systems, again, that have been in the plants for 30, 40 years. So, it’s not something that a plant does every 10 or 15 years that they have experience doing. So, when an automation manager or a plant manager at one of these facilities starts looking at this, a lot of times there’s a real hesitancy to get started just because it is so overwhelming.

Jim: Yeah. I can see that. If you got your hands full with just the day to day, that would seem like a huge mountain out there in front of you, and to figure out how to go forward, even if logically, you know, that’s what needs to be done. So, I guess if you’re, you know, breaking through and say, “Yep, we gotta do this,” what are the real challenges in executing a modernization project?

Scott: Well, there’s a lot of them, and they kind of span most of the things in the plant. But we bucket them, to start with usually, into time, money, and space, because a lot of times those are the constraints that drive how we execute these projects or start planning them. So, when we’re talking about time, we’re talking about a couple of different things. One is just the timeline of the project. Depending on how big the facility is or the process area we’re talking about, it could take a year or two years to do the project overall, so they have to start planning ahead. With this idea of obsolescence and unplanned shutdowns looming over them, they have to get started early. But on the project itself, we talk about time in the sense of a plant shutdown and what their timeline is and what their production schedule is. So those two go hand in hand with how long it takes to execute and how you can schedule for an actual planned shutdown. And that’s one of the main drivers for how we need to execute the project.

We also talk about space constraints. You know how it is, if you buy a bigger house and you tend to fill it as you live there for a little while, these plants kind of expand with projects to fit the space that they’ve got. And so, by the time we get in there, most of the square footage is taken up. You know, they’ve taken up with expansions or other projects they put in over time. And maybe their I/O room is full, or the control room doesn’t have any extra space. So, you kind of have to come up with a way to work alongside your existing infrastructure or plan around it to be able to get a new control system in there at all.

And of course, everything’s going to come down eventually to money. And most of these things have a tradeoff for the cost of the project itself. So, in general, we all kind of wanna pay as little as we can for what we need. But just like in real life, there are strategic investments that we can help the customers make to help save money in the long run. So it may be that spending a little more money on a project has a payoff at install. Doing a little more work on engineering makes a project cheaper to run the plant eventually. So, we have to talk about those tradeoffs.

And then kind of as minor challenges, we talk about risk, and we talk about complexity, both, and ways to…those are really kind of cost and time and space all bundled into their own metric. You know, how do we manage the risk? And you can pay more money to manage risk up front, or some customers just say, you know, “We’re willing to live with a certain level of unknown when we get into startup and just manage it there.” So, we’re always taking into account all of those factors and what a project should look like for that specific customer.

Jim: Okay. Now we’ve really hit on the challenges around time, space, and money, and those have to be factored in as well as the risk and complexity of everything. Now, I know those have to be weighed against the real benefits that you can get when doing a modernization project. Can you talk about what some of the benefits could be?

Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. When you’re talking about, you know, moving technology forward 30 or 40 years, there’s a lot that comes with that. And luckily, for a lot of our customers, just by installing DeltaV, a lot of those extra benefits just come along for the ride. So built into DeltaV, we have the ability to do, you know, basic loop tuning all the way up to advanced process control and multivariate control, all things that can improve the way that their plants are running today. Even if they’re not changing the actual structure of the controls, it can help them run tighter to baseline so they can, you know, increase throughput, maintain the quality they’re looking for. They cannot put as many expensive ingredients into the system as they may be doing today if they can run a little tighter to where their planned process variables are. So, a lot of that goes into just really increasing what the process itself can do, even with the existing instrumentation.

You know, we talked about…big data has been kind of a buzz word the last couple of years, maybe fallen off a little bit, but it still is getting a lot of run in the automation space. So, we talk about, you know, getting more data out of things, but getting it, contextualizing it, and using it appropriately is still something that we get asked about a lot, and it’s something that’s not as straightforward in a lot of systems. So just doing a DeltaV upgrade and some of the basics of what Emerson has to offer can help pull some of that data out of the silos it’s in today where it’s inaccessible with the existing systems, and contextualize it, put it in front of an operator or maintenance personnel, and give them access to make those decisions a lot easier. So, it increases the ability of the existing personnel on site to be able to run their plant better, smarter, and a little bit faster.

We talk about cybersecurity, it’s in the news a lot. And cybersecurity attacks on process plants have gone up, and so putting in a modern control system comes with some baked in cybersecurity. You know, the base DeltaV holds a lot of cybersecurity certifications. Just by installing that, you get a lot more control over who has access into your plant, and you have a buffer against the outside world. So, a lot of that just comes for the ride, and that’s before talking about, you know, the more advanced things you can buy and bolt onto your DeltaV system. So, it really moves people a long way forward, and there’s a lot you get out of just doing one of these projects.

Jim: Yeah. It seems like it. You talked about the data and having it contextualized. You know, there’s so many more things, you know, people are trying to operate more efficiently and sustainably, and all that. And data is such a key part to be able to see it, to drive it beyond, you know, what we imagined decades ago and what you need to do, just keep, you know, the plant running safely and everything. So, yeah, you talked about a lot of benefits in there and we discussed the challenges. So, do we get involved or help customers weigh the challenges against the benefits, you know, or what’s that process about?

Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. Emerson has realized, one, how important these projects are to our business, how important they are to our installed base and our customers, and also how difficult they are. So, they’ve really invested in being able to make these projects better, cheaper, faster, and reduce risk there. So, I’m a modernization consultant in the modernization solutions group led by Aaron Crews. And so, this is what I do kind of all day, every day. And what our groups aim is to make those projects run better. In some cases, that means going out to customer sites, coming up with a plan to plan out their project, to plan on what their plan should look like in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, working with our engineering centers and impact partners on estimates, you know, lots of consulting-level work to just come up with solutions for our customers and partners.

We also develop technologies outside of the normal DeltaV product lifecycle specifically to enable these projects. So, we have product lines out of the modernization group that are modernization-specific to help get the barriers to do modernization projects out of the way. Because of the emphasis Emerson puts on these projects, we’ve now done over 7,500 modernizations in 88 different countries. So, one of the biggest values we see is that while customers may do this once in a career, you know, once every 30 years, so having done these projects, you know, our group has a lot of experience that we can bring to the table for these customers who haven’t done this very often or haven’t ever done one of these before. And, you know, our job is to constantly innovate to bring the projects to fruition.

Jim: That’s a real important point where a customer may go through it once in their entire career. But we have a team of consultants that do these 7,500 projects you mentioned. So that’s bringing a lot of experience really across the project, from the planning upfront to seeing it through and being able to take advantage of, you know, what some of these technologies can bring you. Can you share or give us a little bit more enlightenment on the project approach if somebody’s moving forward with one of these modernization projects?

Scott: Sure. So, in coordination with whatever the customer’s normal project execution model is, whether it’s, like, a stage gate or a phased process, we have our own processes and standards behind the scenes that try to make these projects really standardized and remove some of the doubt around how they get executed. And it also helps us take advantage of the efficiencies built into having a set of resources as wide and as knowledgeable as we do. So, the global project management office helps to put together those standard deliverables, and intakes, and processes. And then, you know, across the U.S. and across the globe, we have Emerson engineering centers that a lot of times are doing these projects all the time as well.

So, they’re actually executing modernizations every day. It’s always great to hear about a new multi-billion-dollar brand-new facility that’s being built. And those are great projects for us to be invested in, and we love working on those, but, you know, they’re only so often that someone’s building a facility like that. Meanwhile, you know, if a plant has 100 I/O or 100,000 I/O, at some point the facility is gonna need an upgrade. So, we’re in those facilities all over the country and all over the world constantly doing these projects. So, the engineering centers have a lot of experience and a lot of people who have done these as well day in and day out.

Jim: I know from some of the earlier modernization-related podcasts that I mentioned at the start of the podcast that we have a broad offering of modernization solutions. Can you expand a little bit on how and where these are used and their impact on a project?

Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. So, we have a product portfolio that we call DeltaV Connect. And the portfolio is built in such a way that whatever timeline the customer is on, wherever they’re seeing obsolescence across their plants, and whatever their different installations are today where they may be having issues with it, we have a solution that can help with whatever it is that they’re facing. So, we have products that are meant to address each step along that path. For example, if Console.CONNECT… Console.CONNECT is an HMI operator interface solution for…You know, on the obsolescence path, HMIs, computer hardware, those are the shortest timeline. You know, you may replace a computer in your office or your laptop every three, four, or five years. And a lot of the automation hardware runs on similar platforms.

So, we have Console.CONNECT to come in and address that obsolescence at the HMI and computer hardware solution level. And what that allows us to do is put in a brand new DeltaV interface with some of the benefits that we see in technologies like DeltaV Live. And we can get those operator efficiency benefits right up front in a project without having to go through the three, four, five-year project lifecycle before they start seeing some benefits of modernization. We have a suite of wiring solutions that we call Flex.CONNECT. So, customers who wanna get the most value out of one of these projects, they may want to remove as much of the existing system as possible. So, get rid of everything, the controllers, the hardware, the I/O, and kind of start from the ground up to really refresh the entire system. Unfortunately, it’s pretty labor-intensive, time-intensive, and costs a lot of money.

With Flex.CONNECT, we can address part of that with these wiring solutions that are meant to reduce the amount of time it takes to rewire the I/O. So, what we do is go in and put in some prefabricated connectors, prefabricated cables, and reduce the individual number of screws and wires that an electrician touches on shutdown. So, we’re taking the amount of shutdown time down by quite a bit, you know, 10-fold or so. For some customers, though, even that reduction isn’t short enough. So, Flex.CONNECT isn’t an option because they just can’t be down that long. Or they have a really large facility that even with those advantages that Flex.CONNECT brings, it still leads to a multiple days of downtime, and they just can’t afford that in their production cycle.

So, you know, one of those products that you’ve talked about previously is IO.Connect. And IO.Connect being a software solution that allows DeltaV to control the native I/O of other systems without lifting any of those wires and without doing any of that fieldwork. So, the project then becomes essentially a software configuration project with a little networking on top. And the downtime goes from weeks or days down to hours, potentially. So, with all those solutions, they help with cutover planning and hardware strategy, and how do we go about getting the actual physical DeltaV system into the plant? But that’s only about half of the project, right? So, there’s a whole programming side that we still have to convert from the existing control system into DeltaV.

For that, we have a product that we call Revamp. Revamp is a cloud-hosted machine learning and AI tool that analyzes and documents the legacy control systems that we get from the customers on their running system. More than just documenting, Revamp goes an extra step and converts that through just pattern matching into actual DeltaV code. So, in the most efficient cases, we can go directly from a legacy control system code into DeltaV, all digitally and automated.

Jim: Yeah. That part is impressive. And we did a podcast on that earlier, and incorporating that machine learning and, you know, AI characteristics in there, it seems like it improves with every project we do because there’s more information that sees new configurations or that it hadn’t seen before. So that seems like a really powerful tool. Well, this has been a really great discussion, and I hope our listeners get a keen sense of the value you can get from these modernization projects and really a path forward to plan and execute a successful project for them to really reap some of these benefits. Where can they go to get a little more information?

Scott: Yeah. You can go out to Emerson.com/modernization, and from there it links to all of the different offerings that we talked about, all of the different Connect products. And you can reach out to your local Emerson contact or Impact Partner if you have a project that you wanna talk about or to get one of us out to look through your system, and we’d be happy to talk to you.

Jim: Well, that sounds great. You can learn about the technology offerings and connect in and get some of the expertise to help get you started in there. And I also recommend listening to the “I/O Connect” podcast and the “Revamp” podcast. And I’ll have links here in the transcripts as we post this. But for our listeners, you can also just do a search on “I/O, Connect” podcast or “Revamp” podcast, and you’ll find it that way. Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining me today to share your expertise with our listeners.

Scott: Yeah. Thanks a lot for having me on, Jim.

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