Product category:
Process Control and Monitoring
News Release from: SPECIAL REPORT by the Editor | Subject: CentumVP review
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 12 February 2008
The Yokogawa CentumVP presentation to
journalists
Nick Denbow provides a view of the Yokogawa presentation in Amsterdam on 7 February where they outlined the direction of the extended Roadmap for their VigilantPlant, with the CentumVP DCS
7 February 2008: This week, Yokogawa assembled most of the European Process industry journalists in Amsterdam for a major presentation on their achievements and plans for the future, in terms of the VigilantPlant concept, and their Centum DCS systems First there was a presentation in Orlando, for US based journalists, and another in Singapore for the Eastern hemisphere: then their staff flew on to Amsterdam to present in Europe, with a video link to South Africa, to provide the closest possible to a simultaneous multi-centre world-wide journalist briefing
Yokogawa understand the need for such simultaneous information presentations to news media across the world, a new requirement because of the internet, with blogs and world-wide news websites like Processingtalk: this was just the first evidence of the considerable thought and market planning that has gone into their latest developments.
Yokogawa were the first to launch a DCS to provide plant control, in 1975, with the original Centum system: they reckon their launch beat the Honeywell launch by 3 months.
In another press launch last week they announced the first elements of the next generation - the 8th generation of the Centum system, the CentumVP (Ref 1).
EUROPEAN BACKGROUND.
Harry Hauptmeijer, the President of Yokogawa Europe, presented the report on the recent Yokogawa performance, naturally from a European angle.
The latest turnover figures for Yokogawa (FY06) show total sales of USD2790Million, +26% on the year before: with an average growth of industrial automation and control exceeding 10%pa over the past five years.
Their target is still to be number 1 in this industry by 2010.
Sales outside Japan were USD1400M, +19% on the previous year: in Europe the sales were USD400M, on schedule for USD500M in 2010.
Total Group profitability has been held/stabilised at 8% of sales for many years.
New Yokogawa offices have been opened in the last year in Aberdeen, and Bulgaria: there are others now being opened in the Czech Republic, and Turkey, plus an office in Switzerland to support the fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals business they see developing in the region.
In Africa the existing offices in South Africa and Angola will be supplemented by a new one in Nigeria, and there are many engineers based in Morocco and Algeria.
The Bucharest value resource centre is being expanded from 90 engineers to 200.
A new office in the Netherlands will consolidate the three existing offices into one complex.
The Rota flowmeter manufacturing facility in Wehr, in the South of Germany close to Zurich, is to be expanded to double in capacity, necessary since the sales output from the factory has already doubled in the last three years: the factory produces VA flowmeters and Coriolis mass-flow meters.
Major business activity has come from the BP Global Agreement, with significant BP projects on Wytch Farm and offshore on Bruce: then Saudi Arabia is a major centre of growth, with many major projects.
VIGILANT-PLANT.
VP, for VigilantPlant, has been the branding for the software features and overall planning introduced by Yokogawa over the last three years, part of their VigilantPlant Roadmap.
This is all presumably the result of the business planning and marketing activities led by Satoru Kurosu, who was originally systems sales manager for Europe, based in Amsterdam from 92-96, and then moved into these other functions.
VigilantPlant has used the standard strong brand phrasing "See Clearly, Know in Advance, Act with Agility" so much that these phrases are popping up in unexpected places elsewhere in the industry (we will return to this later).
Over the last three years Yokogawa have added to the capability of the Centum system.
These steps started in 2005, with the seamless integration of ProSafe safety systems, followed by the PRM, Plant Resource Manager which added Asset Excellence in 2006, then CAMS as a computerised alarm management system for Production Excellence with Centum, in 2007.
The objective now is to move towards plant 'Operational Excellence' with CentumVP, by the next steps of adding Production Supervision and Tracking, followed by a Real Time Production Organiser in 2009, with the objective of providing a software platform integrating VigilantPlant into business planning.
The Yokogawa plan is based on a solid evolutionary path, which means that all Centum systems are fully backwards compatible, and systems can be upgraded as needed, to provide a simple customer development route.
The Yokogawa commitment is to build the future to last, not throwing away the older technology, but building on it, allowing such user migration.
The new CentumVP introduces compatibility with Microsoft Vista, as well as working with XP, and uses one databse and real time operating core, which should allow quicker access and easier maintenance.
The objective is to provide more actionable information, and less data, to the future operators: Yokogawa recognize that experts are starting to retire, and that skilled people are more and more in short supply.
CENTUM VP HMI.
The HMI is the first element branded as CentumVP to be launched, and brings more Microsoft desktop capabilities into the operator environment, like the use of tabs to retain recently used view sets, favourites as display formats, sizeable graphics, trend lines of selected variables and alarm viewer, with up to five different screens shown on one display.
The VP HMI is designed to enable operators to work smarter, giving prioritised, actionable information instead of a flooding of data.
One of the Yokogawa German sales engineers demonstrated the new HMI to us, and was obviously keen to run off with the unit to show his clients who have been waiting to get the new features available, added on to their existing Centum CS3000 systems: the main advantage seemed to be to make the screens easier to use by the operator, to make watching the plant performance easier.
This guy had an interesting background, in that originally he had been the customer, and the DCS Manager in one of the main Fuji film processing plants for Europe.
Naturally the Fuji plant had a Yokogawa Centum system, so when digital photography killed off the colour film industry, he moved over to selling the systems.
FURTHER COMMENTS.
* The only instrumentation news discussed was a review of the TruePeak laser based gas analyser, and the Rotamass XR Coriolis meter (Ref 2), which were both covered by Processingtalk last year, the TruePeak in another Special Report (Ref 3).
* There was little discussion about wireless instrumentation, this was dismissed as something that might be useful for simple monitoring applications only.
* Similarly with EtherNet systems, CentumVP works with the Yokogawa Vnet/IP (1GHz Ethernet) for LAN communications, which has been certified and approved by a 'third-party organization'.
The Vnet/IP comms from the Yokogawa industrial recorders and data-acquisition equipment was certified by ODVA, according to a report on Processingtalk earlier in February (Ref 4).
* Associated with the CentumVP release, Yokogawa announced new IO modules for turbomachinery control applications: installed on a CentumVP field control station, the new IO modules provide powerful features for the high-speed control and protection of turbomachinery (Ref 5).
Obviously this capability was developed to satisfy one of their current power plant projects: major power projects were quoted to be located in Australia, and Central and Eastern Europe.
* Cisco is collaborating with Yokogawa particularly in the area of safety and security.
* Further releases in the CentumVP family might be expected in the Autumn: possibly associated with the next Yokogawa User Conference and Technology Event scheduled for Barcelona 23-26 September.
BACKGROUND DATA: NUMBER 1 IN 2010?.
The Yokogawa US launch of the CentumVP took place at an ARC Forum in Orlando: so the obligatory ARC white paper, an expensive background document, was provided to journalists with the launch pack.
As a view of the history and background to the Yokogawa development and future in the area of process automation this is quite well written: it also studies and explains the way Yokogawa has changed from a Main Instrument Vendor to a Main Automation Contractor.
Typically the report does not get to a conclusion, particularly not expressing a view as to whether Yokogawa will achieve the desired number 1 status in the industry by 2010: that is the US culture.
What it does conclude is that Yokogawa is driven by a high level of integrity and dedication in its MAC projects, which, ARC conclude, comes from the Yokogawa Japanese culture.
Maybe ARC could take a note of their own conclusion even?.
Since the ARC report provided by Yokogawa is liberally sprinkled with "Copyright ARC Advisory Group" on every page, I will spare you a full copy of the 22 pages.
Interesting therefore that with the automation competitors listed by Yokogawa being Honeywell, Emerson, Invensys, Siemens and ABB, several of these organizations also use similar ARC reports to validate their claims to the position of their industry.
How they define this 'industry' varies to suit their own business profile, but this week ABB have launched a news release (Ref 6) that touts ARC as the authority stating 'ABB are the number one automation contractor' currently, in a market that also includes AC drives (The Emerson definition would not include drives, but does include valves).
ABB quote the ARC report: "ABB was also the top supplier to the cement, pharmaceutical and pulp and paper industries in the Asian market, with sizeable market shares in all other process industries".
It is interesting to consider this against the Yokogawa total business in Japan alone of USD1390M: maybe Asia does not include Japan? But more telling is the comment from ARC, in the ABB text, that says "....(manufacturers) need to act quickly and with agility" - a phrase straight from Yokogawa VigilantPlant marketing.
References for further reading.
Ref 1: http://www.processingtalk.com/news/yog/yog148.html .
Ref 2: http://www.processingtalk.com/news/yog/yog142.html .
Ref 3: http://www.processingtalk.com/news/whp/whp194.html .
Ref 4: http://www.processingtalk.com/news/yog/yog147.html .
Ref 5: http://www.processingtalk.com/news/yog/yog149.html .
Ref 6: http://www.processingtalk.com/news/abb/abb252.html .
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