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2022 EMERSONGLOBALUSERS
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October 3-5 • Anaheim, California,
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Live from Emerson Global Users Exchange 2022

For more information, visit Emerson’s Boundless Automation web pageTOC
and the Emerson Industrial Software Showcase on LinkedIn.

TABLE OF CONTENTSBOUNDLESS AUTOMATION
Past innovations power a boundless future

3

The Boundless Automation toolkit

5

INDUSTRIAL SUSTAINABILITY
Automation, digitalization to power sustainability innovations

8

PureCycle’s ‘born digital’ platform builds its future

10

END USER PERSPECTIVESHow Biogen, Syzygy and Tesla unleash automation

12

Thermo Fisher advances gene therapy with DeltaV automation

15

New small-batch Genentech plant relies on Emerson controls

17

FujiFilm fast-tracks America’s largest cell culture CDMO

19

GSK Hamilton’s digital twin journey

21

Bayer rolls out a ‘one-stop shop’ to manage asset health23

Novo Nordisk debottlenecks with Emerson’s RTMS software

25

CPS Energy modernizes SCADA to transform gas distribution

28

PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Panelists share how OT can leverage the cloud30

AI likely to augment humans, not replace them32

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

PAST INNOVATIONS POWER
A BOUNDLESS FUTURE
By Jim MontagueJ

ust as past events and behaviors are good indicationsof the future, Emerson’s long history of innovation isgood evidence that more is on the way.

many people thought such tools were just toys,” explained
Pettus. “And now, everyone uses some kind of commercial,
off-the-shelf product.”“I’ve gained many perspectives over 25 years with
Emerson from operations to services, and most recently
with emerging markets, so I know that we co-create with
our end users every day,” said Vidya Ramnath, senior
VP and chief marketing officer at Emerson. “Innovation begins with customers and mindfully listening tothem, and deeply considering their voice to find thepathways and innovations.”

Even as computing and software made other inroads,
Ramnath added they’ve also moved out to the field and
up to cloud services, where users can interact with themto further enable plant productivity and reliability. “Wejumped in to pioneer smart devices that could measure
flow, pressure, vibration and corrosion, and gathered diverse
groups to develop and transform protocols like HART,
Foundation Fieldbus and WirelessHART into industry
standards,” said Ramnath.

Nathan Pettus, president of process systems and softwareat Emerson, added that, “Innovation is critical to the combined success of our customers and ourselves. Together, weare the stewards of the process industries.” But, he added,
innovations that can really move the needle and change
the world are difficult and rare, requiring both collaboration and domain expertise on both sides.
Ramnath and Pettus delivered the second-day keynote at
Emerson Exchange Immerse this week in Anaheim, Calif.

A history of innovation

Ramnath reported that historic innovations inspired anddriven by Emerson’s customers in recent decades include
greater use of microprocessor-based instruments and DCSs,
and open standards for fieldbus and wireless instrumentation protocols. “Emerson Fisher-Rosemount was one of thefirst automation companies to take a chance on general-purpose microprocessors and Microsoft software when

“We can form cohesive links from the edge to the cloudand provide the data and semi-autonomous systems
that users need to optimize their processes.” Emerson’s
Vidya Ramnath, together with Nathan Pettus, put thecompany’s Boundless Automation vision into the context
of past innovations during a keynote address at Emerson
Exchange Immerse this week in Anaheim, Calif.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

“Emerson has long supported open, non-proprietary
standards, so that everyone can use them,” Ramnathcontinued. “Whether it’s conveyed via wires or wireless,users always need data to support their analytics, better
decisions and improved performance. Working together,
we’ve always persevered, and that gives us the energy forwhatever lies ahead. The best is yet to come.”

Presence in the present

Extending its tradition of innovations at Emerson Exchange
Immerse this week, Pettus and Ramnath highlighted thecompany’s vision for Boundless Automation. This software-defined, data-centric, flexible, automation platform
consists of a simple architecture that enables operational
excellence by removing former obstacles. Its main featuresin the field, edge and cloud include:• Cohesive software platform,• Spans cloud, edge and field,• Democratizes data,• Holistic security,• Broad interoperability,• Extensibility for innovation, and• Unlimited scalability.

“Even though Emerson came up with capabilities likeelectronic marshalling, today’s challenges to productivity
and sustainability are driven by macro forces that require
even more innovative solutions,” said Ramnath. “Today,
users have to do even more with even less. Plus, they have
net-zero goals, and many infrastructures aren’t ready.
Emerson lives these same realities every day, too.” Thegood news is that Boundless Automation and the Emerson
innovation it represents can help users maintain productivity and profitability without sacrificing sustainability.
Pettus added that Emerson is focused on developing
the inspiration and purpose that can solve today’s problems, along with the tools required to achieve these goals
in reality. For example, Emerson has launched DeltaV
IO.Connect, which can seamlessly integrate its DeltaV
automation system with legacy devices, such as Honeywell
TDC3000 or other third-party I/O modules, substantiallycutting modernization costs. Likewise, the company ispursuing Ethernet-APL communications technology tosafely extend the reach of high-performance Ethernet
into the field.
“This all starts with Boundless Automation that canaccess oceans of data, including information that used
to be stranded,” said Ramnath. “Reaching devices out
in the field is still vital, and whether it’s Ethernet-APL
or upcoming 5G, we can reach them faster and cheaper,
form cohesive links from the edge to the cloud, and provide the data and semi-autonomous systems that users
need to optimize their processes.”

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

THE BOUNDLESSAUTOMATION TOOLKIT
By Jim Montague

A

journey with no boundaries grants tremendous
freedom, but such a long trip also requires serious
commitment and capable tools.

For instance, Emerson embarked on its Boundless
Automation a year ago, and is already well on its way to
overcoming the traditional barriers that make it hard forend users to gain efficiencies and streamline operations.
“We’ve been busy breaking down the silos between control, networking and safety, and doing the same for silosthat generally align with the multi-layer Purdue reference
model for industrial control systems,” said Claudio Fayad,
technology VP for process systems and solutions at Emerson. “Our vision is to replace those silos with a cohesive
platform for intelligent field, edge and cloud devices thatwill allow users to optimize their assets. We’re bringing
that vision to life by combining remote terminal units(RTU), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA),
distributed control systems (DCS), manufacturing execution systems (MES) and safety instrumented systems (SIS)in our rebranded DeltaV process automation platform.”

Intelligent Field innovations

Lindhjem reported that Emerson’s Intelligent Field innovations primarily expand connectivity between sensors andapplications. This includes new field devices that cost lessto install, can be easily added to running processes, andare simple to integrate into existing systems.
Chief among these smarter field solutions is DeltaV
IO.Connect that was released in October 2022, and reduces
DCS modernization costs, complexity and time by preserving I/O connections and introducing third-party I/O
as DeltaV natives.

Fayad presented the “Boundless Automation Unleashed”
press event, along with Erik Lindhjem, reliability solutions VP at Emerson, and Kristel Biehler, life sciences VP
at Emerson, at this week’s Emerson Exchange Immerse
event in Anaheim, Calif.
“Boundless Automation is a software-defined, datacentric, flexible automation platform that includes key
innovations in three main areas—intelligent field andedge and cloud computing,” explained Fayad. “This unifies our broad portfolio, combines our deep experience,delivers consistent user experience, and shapes the future.”

Boundless Automation with AI will unleash even more
tools and streamline even more workflows.” Emerson’s
Claudio Fayad led a press briefing on the company’s latest
innovations in the field, at the edge and in the cloud.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

TOC

Maintaining links to legacy I/O, such as Honeywell’s
TDC 3000, can reduce project schedule by 90%, andcut modernization capital spending by 40%. IO.Connect
also simplifies and speeds up transitions to DeltaV control technologies and software, future-proofs operations
by allowing opportunistic I/O updates, and enables flexible subscriptions.

Likewise, Emerson is also working on wireless devices
that are easier to drop in for pervasive monitoring. They’ll
run on 5G and feature increased density, longer range,
reduced costs, wider geographic dispersion, anytime communications and more rugged products.

Likewise, the DeltaV PK Controller gained native
PROFINET, Modbus TCP, OPC UA, EtherNet/IP and
Ethernet-APL connectivity in September, which enable amore flexible approach for I/O integration and communication. They allow the DeltaV PK Controller to:

A step up from the field, the edge computing realm iswhere operations technology (OT) personnel typicallymeet up and clash with their information technology(IT) counterparts. To ease these former conflicts, Fayad
added that Emerson’s innovative DeltaV Edge solutions
simplify networking, enhance security, democratize data,
accelerate co-creation efforts, better align IT with OT and
improve overall robustness.

• Support up to 250 devices,• Simplify installation,• Employ star, ring, hybrid and APL network topologies,• Seamlessly connect with AMS (coming soon), and• Support S2 redundancy (coming soon).
Launched this past July, AMS Device Manager Data
Server is a digital enablement tool for smart field devices
that can:• Replicate AMS data outside the process control network,• Integrate with other data sources for advanced analytics
and machine learning,• Perform continuous, automated collection of field
data, and• Operate a centralized management program with asecure infrastructure, and• Use instrument diagnostics for early detection of underperforming equipment.
“AMS Device Manager connects data from intelligent
field devices to any application, which simplifies maintenance, reduces complexity, and democratizes data,”
explained Lindhjem. “This means there are a lot fewer
configuration tasks and hurdles.”Thriving on the edge

“We’ve always been on the edge, but the Industrial
Internet of Things (IIoT) has been changing approaches.
What makes the edge powerful is it lets us rethink how
OT and IT can work together,” said Fayad. “Data thatused to go from the edge to the cloud can now come backwith responses and instructions, and use of more of theedge’s layers. We’re working with several partners to reassess what the edge can do. This can include simplifying
networks and/or enhancing security.”
The solid foundation that Emerson’s present and futureedge solutions are built upon is a virtualized, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). Released in September 2022,
Emerson’s HCI can be built with two, three or four servers.
Software running on HCI eliminates the need for muchof the hardware necessary for traditional virtualizationarchitectures, creating a more unified virtualized system,
incorporating compute, network, and storage into a single,
tightly integrated software system to reduce overhead andimprove performance. This allows users to perform easy,
scalable virtualization with improved performance. It
also lets them:• Reduce deployment time by 50%,
• Easily maintain, expand and upgrade applications,• Improve performance by more than 20%, and• Reduce energy use and carbon footprint.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

“Many users collect huge amounts of data, only to throw
away 99% of it later because they didn’t figure out how to
use it,” explained Fayad. “The edge lets users democratize
data, and distribute it more easily, so anyone can use it,
instead of tossing it. This also fuels co-creation that canbring OT and IT together. The edge aligns them because,
instead of one or the other owning particular data andproblems, they all own them together. We want to help
them both with solutions.”
HCI and its servers also act as the base of Emerson’s
software-defined control system that it’s developing toallow easier upgrades and reduce carbon footprint. This
innovation was launched in September 2023 for DeltaV
DCS and PK Flex Controllers, and includes flexible, subscription-based licensing, and decoupled hardware andsoftware. This strategy will be released for DeltaV DCS in
the next 12 months with a software-defined controller forthe process and hybrid industries. It will also be releasedfor Emerson’s Ovation DCS in the second quarter of 2024.
“This software is still tied to the controller, but it’s more
flexible, and can run on an HCI like VMware,” said Fayad.
“This means no more bottlenecks at the controller for
DeltaV or Ovation.’
Fayad added that Emerson’s efforts at the edge are aided
by its recent majority stake investment in and integration of
AspenTech, which is driving synergies between their portfolios that can improve operations. For instance, Emerson
is integrating AspenTech’s historian, advanced control andanalytics platforms software. This will soon allow AspenTech’s software to run on virtual machines in Emerson’s
HCI, deploy quickly and easily via DeltaV, and scale up
and expand data sources with IP.21 Historian.
Even though its other on-the-edge innovations are
impressive, Fayad reported that the most important innovation is likely its DeltaV Edge Environment that’s launching
now, and delivers enhanced OT connectivity and runtime
capabilities. Its features include:• DeltaV DCS runtime and configuration data,• Handles up to 300,000 parameters,• Bridges IT and OT technologies and policies, and• Enables both centralized and remote management.
“We’re the most excited about DeltaV Edge Environment
because it really changes the role of the DCS,” stated Fayad.
DeltaV’s first Linux-based node, the edge note is secured
with a data diode. “And once data gets to the edge nodeand is available, users can work with it using Python, PowerBI, RESTful API or other analytics or programming tools,
and allow other users to easily see it via MQTT publishsubscribe protocol, or feed dashboards in the cloud,” Fayad
said. “In fact, users can even install 10 or 20 edge nodes,
and deploy them anywhere with one click.”

Cloudy connections

Once field and edge processes and networks are secure,
Fayad reported that links to cloud-computing services canenable consistent services across large regions. Emerson’slatest Cloud innovations create a connected enterprisesystem that can perform fleet management, collaboration,
reduce upfront costs, ease deployments, scale limitlessly,
and centralize security monitoring and management.
For example, Emerson’s Integrated Engineering Environment (IEE) leverages the cloud for improved projectengineering, easier acceptance of late changes, improved
project speed, seamless collaboration, data sharing between
disciplines, and security by design. Its parts include:• E&I Studio for browser-based I/O configuration,• Sequence Studio for automated sequence data and configuration management,• Project Data Link for common single instance data andconfiguration generation, and• Test Studio that enables remote factory acceptance tests(FATs) and management.
Likewise, Emerson’s Guardian software and subscription-based, lifecycle-management and support uses similar
methods, such as single sign-on (SSO), software downloads,
subscription management, personalized and enterprise
dashboards, and AI-powered search and recommendations,said Fayad. “Boundless Automation with AI will unleash
even more tools and streamline even more workflows.”

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

AUTOMATION, DIGITALIZATIONTO POWER SUSTAINABILITYINNOVATIONS
By Keith Larson

If society’s ambitions to curb carbon emissions and stem
climate change are to be achieved, industry will haveplayed a leading role. The effort must include optimizing the energy efficiency of traditional facilities andfinding ways to capture or sequester what carbon emissions
remain; integrating new sources of clean and renewableenergy into the industrial value chain; and developing andscaling entirely new processes that fundamentally transform—in quantity and/or nature—the energy required tosupport society’s needs.

A ‘greening of’ update“When you look at all the dramatic climate change
events happening around us, it’s clear we need to do something—and fast. But it’s also a great time for engineers
who enjoy a challenge,” said Emerson Chief Technology
Officer Peter Zornio, addressing a conference center hall
packed full of just that sort of engineers. Zornio, together
with Mike Train, Emerson chief sustainability officer,
delivered the closing keynote address at Emerson Exchange
Immerse 2023. Together, they discussed how automation
plays a critical role in enabling the innovations that willstem the tide of climate change.

Train first updated attendees on Emerson’s own greening, which features a reduction by half in scope 1 andscope 2 emissions since 2018 largely from energy efficiency
gains (53%), renewable electricity investment (22%) andgrid decarbonization efforts (25%). “It’s about activating,unleashing our people to identify opportunities,” Trainsaid, citing more than 50 employee treasure hunts toIndeed, Emerson’s sustainability pledge consists of threepillars of concerted effort: the greening of, by and with
Emerson. The greening of Emerson refers to how thecompany improves its own internal sustainability performance. Greening by Emerson relates to how Emerson
technologies, solutions and expertise enable customers’sustainability journeys. And greening with Emerson
encompasses how the organization fosters collaborationand innovation among its global value chain partners.

“Sustainability is a conversation everyone is having,”
added Train. “And we have both a front row seat and thehonor of participating in many of them.”

When you look at all the dramatic climate change
events happening around us, it’s clear we need to
do something—and fast. But it’s also a great time forengineers who enjoy a challenge.” Emerson’s Mike Trainand Peter Zornio took the Immerse keynote stage todiscuss the role of automation in achieving industry’s
sustainability transformation. But first, they drew a laughfrom the crowd as brothers Jake and Elwood “Green”—
recycled monikers for a new industrial age based on pastmusical cameos as the Blues Brothers.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

TOC

identify opportunities for efficiency gains and 4,200 Earth
Month Challenge participants.
The company has pursued a series of gatherings to sharesustainability ideas with its suppliers and customers, Trainsaid. “These include Greening Together Supplier Summits,
Sustainability Executive Summits, and Green Innovation
Days held around the world,” Train explained.

Transformation of industry

Emerson has also been active in road-mapping sessions tochart the innovations that can remake the current industrial
energy landscape. “For traditional industries, the focus ison enabling the decarbonization and clean energy transition of a broad range of critical industries,” Zornio said.
The four pillars of this effort include:• Energy source decarbonization, including low carbon
power (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, biomass), low carbon
fuels (biofuels, biogas, LNG), plus hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels;• Energy & emissions management, including emissions monitoring & control, carbon capture (utilization,
storage, removal), plus advanced controls, analytics
and simulation;• Electrification & grid systems, including smart grid andnetwork management, energy transport and storage,
workforce safety and productivity, plus critical mineralvalue chains; and,• Circularity & waste management, including new molecule production, materials and minerals recycling andcirculation, water and waste management.
Zornio and Train went on to highlight a range of projects where Emerson has participated in the transformationof representative industries—not only with establishedplayers who know Emerson’s standing in the automation
arena, but with start-ups that stand to reinvent how industry operates. With Neste, for example, where Emerson
technologies helped the oil refiner to expand capacity forsustainable aviation fuels and green diesel. With Albioma,
where Emerson expertise helped the independent renewable energy provider convert a coal-fired facility to 100%

renewable electricity from biomass. With Burns McDonnell, where Emerson helped the engineering firm to design
and build the world’s largest battery storage facility. And
with PureCycle Technologies, where Emerson technologies are helping transform polypropylene recycling to yieldnear virgin-quality resins.
Further, on the green energy front, Emerson is working
with Mitsubishi Power to create green hydrogen storage facilities to augment electrical supply during peakdemand periods, with KoHyGEN to build the first of 35
high-capacity hydrogen refueling stations in South Korea,
with Li-Cycle to build recycling capacity for spent vehicle
batteries, and with Origin to convert biomass to chemicals
with zero carbon loss in the process.
These and other industry players are using Emerson technologies to get new projects up and running
quickly, leveraging “born digital” methodologies suchas automatic commissioning, electronic marshalling,robust data foundations and a reliability architecture tobuild new processes that are optimized from the start.
“Some of these start-ups may not know Emerson, butthey know experience counts when it comes to project
execution,” said Zornio.

Digital today, boundless tomorrow

While Train and Zornio are justifiably proud of the Emerson innovations that are transforming industry today, theyalso pointed to the company’s Boundless Automation
vision that will continue to break down the last obstacles
left by the automation industry’s analog, proprietary past.
To take automation further, Boundless Automation iscentered on a cohesive software platform that spans theentire enterprise—from field to edge to cloud, Zornio
explained. Siloed system architectures will yield to Boundless Automation, data islands to a unified data model,
defense-in-depth cybersecurity to inherently secure
designs, a focus on hardware to data-centricity, device
administration to fleet administration, single-site operations to cloud-enabled enterprise operations, and frommostly CAPEX spending to mostly OPEX investment.
“Today’s architecture is good, but issues remain,” concluded Zornio. “Boundless Automation is designed tocapitalize on the opportunities.”

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

PURECYCLE’S ‘BORN DIGITAL’
PLATFORM BUILDS ITS FUTURE
By Len Vermillion

P

lastics recycling has been around for decades, butthat doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. An eightyear-old company, PureCycle Technologies, hasmade it its mission to do exactly that, and it’s received a
big assist from an Emerson DeltaV control system andother Emerson technologies to develop not just a smart
plant but what the company refers to as a “smartest” plant
as production ramps up around the globe.
PureCycle was founded in 2015 in Ironton, Ohio, anddeveloped a unique purification process to transform polypropylene plastic into a versatile, replenishable resource.
Its process lets recycled plastic be reused multiple times,
whereas traditional recycling is limited in scope. Whilepeople around the world use polypropylene every day,most of it goes unrecycled and much of it ends up in theoceans. PureCycle’s patented process separates color, odor
and other contaminants from plastic waste to transform
it into ultra-pure recycled resin. This process helps close
the loop on plastic waste while making recycled plastics
more accessible at scale.

beyond traditional smart facility standards and take it one
step further, and faster.
Being “born digital” means its plants must not only bebuilt with traditional qualities, such as integrated control and safety systems, process historians and condition
monitoring, but also advanced attributes, such as designfor mobility, a sound alarm management philosophy,
predictive analytics, simulation models and digital twins.
Bagby pointed to the need to accommodate remoteworkers and cybersecurity measures as requirements forplants that go beyond traditional digitalization efforts. In
short, the new plants must be future-ready, even though
no one can be sure what the future holds.

But as a young company on a fast track to growth andwith little time to waste while attacking a rapidly growing
worldwide problem, it’s had to be creative while planningfor new facilities. As Ronetta Bagby, senior automationengineer with PureCycle, told an audience during thisweek’s Emerson Exchange Immerse conference, “We
don’t have time for a digital transformation. We must beborn digital.”
For the company, that means it must be ready to rapidly
scale its operations. So, as it grows to include additional
facilities in the U.S. and internationally, it must move

We don’t have time for a digital transformation. We must
be born digital.” PureCycle Technologies’ Ronetta Bagby
shared how the company is using Emerson’s DeltaVcontrol technologies to rapidly scale its innovative
polypropylene recycling process.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

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The whole purpose of the born digital program is tomake sure the company is providing its operators, company
and the organization with a system that will self-diagnose,
solicit help when it needs it, and eventually, help build
itself using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, according to Bagby.

about an hour. Most important is the fact that virtualization gives the company the ability to quickly scale up its
process when it is ready, without interrupting production.
PureCycle also takes advantage of electronic marshalling toconnect its field devices to DeltaV. This cuts cabling costs
as well as increasing flexibility and redundancy, Bagby said.

One of the enablers of PureCycle’s efforts is Emerson’s DeltaV automation system, which is designed tosimplify operational complexity and lower project risk.
The Emerson products and services increase plant performance with intelligent control that is easy to operate
and maintain, Bagby said.

Bagby also pointed to the changing nature of the industry workforce, particularly post-COVID. None of herteam lives in Ironton, so the company had to stand up a
secure, third-party network that not only allows them tocommunicate with more than 50 devices across its network, but also allows remote access for all its engineering
department, operations, and external business and supplemental organizations.

Virtualization meets remote access

PureCycle has 13 workstations on its Ironton, Ohio, production unit, and with traditional methods each workstation
would need a server, power and cabinet space—and forall of that to be connected. But with virtualization, up to
40 machines can run on a single host, Bagby said. “Thatgives us redundancy,” she added. “If one of our virtual
machines fails, it automatically switches to another host.
We see minimal downtime.”
She also pointed to time and cost savings during commissioning, as each virtual machine can be stood up in

The company also hosts its electrical system data on
DeltaV Mobile, a read-only platform that allows managers,
engineers and operators to access operational data whenever they need it. “It lets us view our electrical usage andremotely troubleshoot electrical equipment that’s runningin our facility,” Bagby said.
It’s another step toward creating that “smartest” plant thecompany values, and it’s another step toward expanding
adoption of the company’s innovative recycling methods
around the world.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

HOW BIOGEN, SYZYGY ANDTESLA UNLEASH AUTOMATION
By Len VermillionT

he world is changing more rapidly than ever, andtechnological innovations are leading the industrial
sector into a more productive, efficient and sustainable future. Automation is at the forefront of transformation
efforts as companies seek solutions that are simultaneously
productive, predictive and prescriptive.

“Eliminating emissions is difficult,” said Trevor Best,CEO of Syzygy Plasmonics, which manufactures allelectric chemical reactors powered by light instead of
combustion. “We do not have a modern society without
the chemical and energy companies, but they are synonymous with emissions to most people.”

The good news is that process automation technologies
are no longer far-flung dreams, but today’s reality. “Thetechnology is here today. The innovation is here today,”said Nina Golder, vice president of lifecycle services for
Emerson, who along with Liam Hurley, the company’s
vice president, process systems and solutions in North
America, welcomed some 1,500 attendees to Emerson
Exchange Immerse 2023 this week at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The Pearland, Texas-based company’s technology isbased on 30 years of research and development at Rice
University. “This is a platform that, by changing out what
the nanoparticles are made of, we can adapt it to do manydifferent chemical reactions,” Best said.

Emerson backed up the claim as a trio of end-users took
the stage at the general session of the annual gathering toattest to how process automation technologies are helping
to tackle some of industry’s—and the world’s—most pressing problems, such as reducing carbon emissions, scaling
electrification and leveraging cloud technologies and AI
to create value from data.

Eliminating emissions

Perhaps no issue requires the attention of the processindustries, such as oil and gas and chemicals, than mitigating carbon emissions. As climate change data pours in,governments and consumers have taken increased noticeof industrialization’s role. The question is, what can bedone to turn the tide?

We always start with a well-defined problem statement
and consider the purpose-driven intent behind the
products we make.” Tesla’s Chuck Fortner was oneof the keynote headliners who shared how industry
is partnering with Emerson to accelerate innovationand transformation at this week’s Emerson Exchange
Immerse event in Anaheim, Calif.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

TOC

Syzygy is developing reactor technology and scaling it
for commercial use. Best said that the company has scaledup the reactors at an unprecedented rate and gave credit
to Emerson for helping deploy the company’s product, theRigel reactor, which notably is made of non-exotic steel
alloys, glass and aluminum together with nanoparticles of
select catalysts. “To start with, it’s being used to generate
green hydrogen more efficiently than electrolysis and to
take CO2 and put it back into many innovative products,”
he continued. The company expects to deploy into thefield within the next 12-18 months.
The same Emerson process automation technologythat enabled Syzygy’s rapid development from laboratory
to commercial scale, Best said, will enable the company
to scale the reactor well into the future.

Purpose-driven development

Another response to climate change concerns is the ongoing electrification of many systems formerly powered byfossil fuels. Perhaps no company is more synonymouswith such efforts than Tesla, the all-electric vehicle manufacturer made famous by its founder Elon Musk. The
company’s leader of advanced innovation, Chuck Fortner,
described the targeted efforts the company has taken to
pursue its industry-disrupting innovations.
“Innovation doesn’t just happen,” he said. “We always
start with a well-defined problem statement and consider
the purpose-driven intent behind the products we make.”
Tesla’s well-documented work includes innovations that
accelerated the electric vehicle market such as electric-vehicle batteries, self-driving automation and super-charging
abilities. “These are all products that are not only transformational in the problems that they solve, but also novelin the way they are made,” he continued.
Fortner, whose expertise is in automation engineeringand cell manufacturing, said many of the problems thathave always hindered automation engineering during theinnovation process, still exist. These include field connectivity, computing capability, network throughput, storage
capacity, system security and operational excellence.

The effective use of data is also a hindrance, Fortner
said, noting that accelerated value creation based on datais paramount to transformation. The sheer volume of data
produced by industry is expanding faster than its ability
to adopt effective data analytics software.
Manufacturers generate thousands of petabytes of data
every year, but effectively “throw away 99 percent of thedata,” according to Fortner. That means most manufacturers are missing an opportunity to create better value
from data collection to better be able to efficiently pursue
transformational innovation opportunities.
Fortunately, software technology is continually developing to help manufacturers gain actionable insights from
data. Tesla, according to Fortner, works with Emerson tolook at solutions for modeling and simulation, digital twins,
data analytics and machine learning. “What better place
to start to solve this problem than with a trusted technology partner like Emerson.” he added.

Mastering the cloud

Implementing data analytics is an issue unto itself.
Cloud computing offers a cost-efficient means for collecting and storing valuable data. However, adoption ofcloud technologies is often messier than it seems prior
to implementation.
Tim Alosi, head of lab IT and data analytics at life sciences leader Biogen, told the Exchange audience that
selecting and deploying new cloud technologies can be
not only a benefit to companies, but also a burden on their
IT and OT service delivery teams. Cloud technology haschanged the infrastructure for companies from locallyinstalled software to subscription-based licenses to largescale software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms that cover alarge swath of their businesses.
“In a perfect world, cloud adoption would be complete
and seamless,” Alosi said, “but we end up with a mix ofold tech, new tech and everything in between. There aremany vendors and multiple components to stitch together
to deliver end-to-end solutions and drive benefits.”

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The result is dilution of the potential value gained by
the technology adoption. Just as Fortner pointed out,
companies continue to adopt new technology faster thantheir skill sets allow for effective use.
“We need to increase our ability to deliver value fromthe technology,” Alosi added.
To increase value, Biogen developed an integrated
system intended to maximize its ability to deliver theright skills for the new software. It also constrained its
technology options to further limit the developing skills
gaps between legacy technology and new technology.
Finally, it sought tricks to help increase the speed tovalue of the new technology.

One of those tricks was to embrace pre-trained language models of AI. Alosi said Biogen has used themsuccessfully in its cloud strategy. Alosi said vendors suchas Emerson are creating solutions to help automaticallywrite code. “How exciting will it be if your automationteam can automatically generate some DeltaV code froma process description?” he asked. For its part, Emerson isdisplaying such technology on the show floor at Emerson
Exchange Immerse.
All three speakers stressed how automation solutions
from Emerson have helped create better value and scalability for their companies. And as technology continues
to accelerate, even more companies will be able to tackle
those big innovations that transform the world.

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THERMO FISHER ADVANCESGENE THERAPY WITH
DELTAV AUTOMATION
By Keith Larson

For decades, the foundations of cancer treatment
have been surgery, chemotherapy and radiation
therapy. These continue to be critical mainstays oftreatment, but in recent years new categories of treatment
have helped transform the treatment outlook for many
people with cancer.
CAR T cell therapy, in particular, has been revolutionary, producing durable and effective clinical responses
in patients. However, the T cell therapy manufacturing
process is complex, labor-intensive, and traditionally has
involved many open processes that can impact regulatorycompliance and lead to inconsistencies in the final product.

And to orchestrate the necessary processes they partnered with Emerson to create an off-the shelf software
solution called Cellmation that allows users to connect
their Thermo Fisher Scientific cell therapy instruments
within a standard DeltaV network to control and sequence
workflows across multiple cell therapy instruments in a 21
CFR Part 11 compliant environment.
“We selected DeltaV control technologies because we
see Emerson as the leading automation provider to thelife sciences industry,” Bhanap said.

“The therapy is also logistically challenging,” according
to Prajakta Bhanap, software engineer for Thermo Fisher
Scientific, who spoke this week at the Emerson Exchange
Immerse event in Anaheim, Calif.
The process starts with leukapheresis, the extractionof a patient’s white blood cells, and ends with geneticallyaltered cells transfused back into the patient’s body. But
the manufacturing workflow in between consists of a seriesof complex separations, gene transfers, activations andreplications. “And it’s always batch size 1,” Bhanap added.
A paradigm shift was needed in cell therapy manufacturing, Bhanap said, and Thermo Fisher Scientific set out
to create one. They started with a portfolio of modular
instruments designed to support a diverse range of celltherapy manufacturing workflows and efficiently scale tocommercial manufacturing.
We selected DeltaV control technologies because we
see Emerson as the leading automation provider tothe life sciences industry.” Prajakta Bhanap of Thermo
Fisher Scientific discussed the company’s creationof Cellmation, a digital solution that dramaticallystreamlines the manufacture of cell therapies.

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The DeltaV automation system works with the modular
Thermo Fisher instruments in a supervisory role, capturingcGMP batch records in a DeltaV Continuous Historian.
All communications are via standard OPC UA, with a
DeltaV PK Controller and Emerson Ethernet IO Card
(EIOC) also playing the respective roles.
Together, the Cellmation software, Thermo Fisher
Scientific instruments and DeltaV control technologies integrate and manage the manufacture of celltherapeutics, ensuring traceable, reproducible andsecure data storage and easier data transfer to thirdparty MES and ERP systems. The full system has
been in beta test with several users and is now being
released to the market.
“We invest a lot in innovation,” Bhanap said in closing.
“And we look to help guide our partners in their journeys,
to accelerate cell therapy through industry partnerships.”

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NEW SMALL-BATCH
GENENTECH PLANT RELIESON EMERSON CONTROLS
By Jim Montague

I

t’s never simple to build new pharmaceutical manufacturing and support plants, but as you might imagine,
it was even trickier during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite epic challenges, Genentech broke ground in February 2020 on its new Clinical Supply Center (CSC) at
its headquarters in South San Francisco—where it basically invented biopharmaceutical manufacturing just a
few decades earlier.

do more small-volume production of more personalized
medicines in disposable containers. This allows quicker
turnover, which is especially helpful when our scientists
have a new molecule they want to try,” said Tiffany Button,
quality chapter lead for computer systems validation at
Genentech. “Of course, quick turnover was also essential
during the pandemic, when vaccines had to be developed
and delivered with unprecedented speed.”

The CSC uses several types of advanced manufacturing technologies, and employs a modular, agile design
to enable on-demand delivery of Genentech’s medicinal
pipeline to patients in clinical trials. It was also designed
for easy reconfiguration and future technology implementation. Naturally, all of these quicker and more variable
operations must be performed by personnel that are justas agile and adaptable at operating its lab, quality andcontrol systems.

Button and Nimit Amipara, validation engineer andengineering supervisor at Valspec, presented “Commissioning and qualification of Genentech’s International Society
for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) Facility of the YearAward (FOYA) 2023 Winner for Pharma 4.0” this weekat the Emerson Exchange Immerse in Anaheim, Calif.

Genentech and its partners integrated several Emerson
platforms at CSC to meet these requirements, including
DeltaV DCS, Syncade MES and Fluxa PKM, along witha range of software platforms from third-party vendors.
Genentech and Valspec, a provider of system validation and lifecycle services, implemented an innovative
commissioning and qualification strategy based on theirdetailed knowledge of Emerson’s solutions and industry
best practices.
“The world of biopharma is changing. Where we previously used large-capacity, stainless-steel reactors, we now

The automation objectives for the CSC’s single-use
technologies included having a highly integrated andfully paperless automation solution.” Valspec’s Nimit
Amipara, together with Genentech’s Tiffany Button,
discussed the ambitious new validation processes thattrimmed plant completion from five or more years to
only two and a half.

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Small but mighty automation

To produce a greater variety of smaller batches, such as
gene therapies and other medicines with widely variable
costs, Button reported that CSC must:• Enable rapid and seamless transfer of products fromresearch to its clinical and commercial departments,• Maintain colocation of CSC with Genentech’s R&D
partners for speedy interactions and problem solving,• Exploit the benefits of technical advances in single-use
technology and digital manufacturing,• Provide a design template for facility, equipment andautomation for rapid and cost-effective, copy-and-paste
deployment at Genentech’s future commercial, smallvolume facilities, and• Accommodate a range of known and unknown future
process platforms and therapeutic modalities.
“The automation objectives for the CSC’s single-use
technologies (SUT) included having a highly integrated
and fully paperless automation solution,” said Amipara.
“It would also need built-in flexibility for clinical, ad hoc
activities and be enabled for commercial launches. We alsoneed to be able to introduce new technologies as simplified standards for functions, such as review by exception(RBE), process and knowledge management (PKM), datavisualization, analytics and collection (DVAC). All ofthese requirements meant we needed to create a standard
automation platform to minimize customization, as wellas support rapid deployment of future sites.”
Consequently, Amipara added that Valspec and Genentech envisioned implementing a four-layer automation
landscape with controllers and I/O points at Level 1;
HMIs, batch management and SCADA system at Level2; historian and manufacturing execution system (MES)at Level 3; and corporate applications at Level 4.

Innovative testing and commissioning

To achieve the speed and flexibility its new facility required,
Button added that Genentech also adopted an innovative
procedure for testing and validating new equipment. This
involved more testing of high-priority devices with lesscertain performance, and less testing for common devices
with well-known performance characteristics.
“We used the ASTM E2500 risk-based approach that’s
highly driven by subject matter experts, integrates quality

into the team early, and leverages as much vendor qualification as possible,” explained Button.
“We sought agreement and approval of acceptance criteria with our quality department during design phase.
We employed quality approvals at planning and releasestages only, and focused on the value-add in the compliance. We also conducted forward-looking verification
planning with the SMEs and sought quality department
feedback and approval.”
Button added that Genentech’s team minimized risk
assessments to complex systems only, and applied standards to simple and well-understood systems. “Standard
systems received streamlined testing without gating
requirements,” said Button. “We also performed endto-end, development run tests as a main operational
qualification activity. Most importantly, we used aminimal-viable-product approach that accepted the
MES and DCS systems with a known list of punch
items that were determined to be low-risk to good
manufacturing practice (GMP) operations. Our project
mantra was to isolate high-risks and fix them immediately, and accept low-risk or items with acceptableworkarounds to be fixed later.
“Instead of doing the same old testing, we looked where
we could add the most value. Once we devised that list,
Valspec did the testing and streamlined the process. Quality also wasn’t held up because I was able to do it for 12
systems. We did ‘pulse checks’ to make sure we were still
adhering to the guardrails we agreed to earlier, so we didn’t
need as much traditional oversight, and we still had all
the documents and reports we might need at the end.”

Future cookie cutting

Button reported that DeltaV DCS, Syncade MES and
Fluxa PKM all worked well together at the CSC as Genentech and Valspec implemented their new processes. They’ll
serve as a pilot plant and template for a fleet management
strategy for other upcoming facilities. In fact, Genentech
conducted the groundbreaking for a second iteration in
Oceanside, Calif (OSUT) this past February.
“From breaking ground to going live, the CSC took
two years and eight months, instead of the five to 10 years
that similar projects usually require,” concluded Button.

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FUJIFILM FAST-TRACKS AMERICA’SLARGEST CELL CULTURE CDMO
By Len VermillionM

ore than 2 billion people worldwide do not haveaccess to medicine, and it’s only getting worse.
The COVID-19 pandemic showed that ramping
up the production of medicines at breakneck speed canbe of vital importance. The next time a pandemic hits,
the life sciences industry must be equipped and ready.
The good news is that they will be, thanks to efforts
such as the one being put forth by FujiFilm Diosynth
Biotechnologies, a global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) and provider of cell andgene therapy and viral vaccine products. FujiFilm doesn’t
make its own products, it quickly gets them to market forothers. It offers solutions for cell line development, processdevelopment, late phase activities, clinical and commercial
manufacturing of a wide variety of biopharmaceuticals.
CDMOs can be a vital cog in a well-orchestrated effort toquickly manufacture vaccines, such as happened during
the pandemic.

“We change products, so we need to have flexibility in
our facilities,” he said.

Replicate to gain efficiency

FujiFilm has been through this process before. The Holly
Springs site is a nearly identical clone to its Hillerød facility. “We take a different approach. We want to reduce thetime to completion,” Grønnegaard said.
That’s why FujiFilm uses a cloning-across-sites systemthat is built on utilizing Drug Substance Manufacturing (DSM) modules. The modules are designed withidentical automation concepts intended to allow for fast

FujiFilm is looking ahead and building the largest
cell culture CDMO in North America, located in Holly
Springs, N.C. The 1 million-square-foot facility will beready for production in 2025. The company has additional
U.S. locations in Cambridge, Mass., College Station, Texas,
and Thousand Oaks, Calif., in addition to Hillerød, Denmark, and Teesside, U.K.
Jacob Grønnegaard, director of automation for FujiFilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, was on hand at Emerson
Exchange Immerse 2023 in Anaheim, Calif., and told acaptivated audience that the company has speed and flexibility in mind as it builds its latest facility.

The ultimate goal is to deliver the completed project inless than 24 months lead time, 50% of the working hours
and 85% of the installed costs of the previous facility.”
Jacob Grønnegaard of FujiFilm Diosynth Biotechnologies
discussed how the company’s unique cloning processes
dramatically reduce project execution time, effort andexpense at this week’s Emerson Exchange Immerse.

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scalability for production and agility and redundancy forsupply chain management.
Grønnegaard said the company increases cloning percentage as a project progresses. “As we move from DSM
expansion to completion, we increase the percentage withthe ultimate goal of delivering the completed project inless than 24 months lead time, 50% of the working hours
and 85% of the installed costs of the previous facility.”

DSM modules

What is a DSM module? The modules are the core of the
facility, and it’s where the production takes place. Each
module consists of two upstream trains, four productionbioreactors, a harvest suite and a purification suite.
Such a highly sensitive environment needs a high-levelsystem architecture. Each DSM module has its own Emerson DeltaV automation system and two DSM modules
will share an Emerson Syncade manufacturing execution system (MES).
The DSM modules in Holly Springs will be the same asin the Denmark facility. Both facilities have the same layout
and process equipment. They have the same process andinstrumentation diagrams (P&IDs) and 3D engineeringmodels. Most notable is that they will have the same DeltaVand Syncade application code. The only localization,according to Grønnegaard, will be for required buildingcode differences between the U.S. and Denmark, suchas electrical standards. Both facilities will be governed by
the same standard operating procedures.

Application code process

Grønnegaard outlined FujiFilm’s DeltaV application codedevelopment process utilizing its unique cloning procedure during the session. Before the process even begins,
the application code is developed for the initial DSM andgoes through full qualification testing.
From there, FujiFilm exports the DeltaV code and design
documents. It uses a qualified tool to convert tag numbers
complete with code and graphics from the initial DSM
to the new DSM. It uses a qualified tool to update design
documents with the new DSM tag numbers.
FujiFilm then implements any changes that exist
between the new DSM and initial DSM. From there, it
qualifies each change individually. Finally, the DeltaV codeis qualified ready for use during equipment commissioning.
The result is intended to be one of the top medicine
production facilities in the country. Hopefully, it won’t
have to ramp up production for a virus vaccine to combat
a worldwide pandemic, but if the time ever comes again,
it will be scalable and ready.

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GSK HAMILTON’S DIGITAL
TWIN JOURNEY
By Keith Larson

W

ith a name derived from the Latin word for “tohelp,” adjuvants are pharmaceutical substancesthat increase the intensity of immune responsewhen administered with a vaccine or other medication.
They can reduce the required vaccine dose, the numberof injections and even increase stability of the vaccine
itself. An unlikely source of such helpful medications is a
campus nestled in the scenic Bitterroot Valley of western
Montana, GlaxoSmithKline’s Hamilton facility—a figurative stone’s throw from the Chief Joseph Ranch featured
in the popular Yellowstone TV series.
Here, Levi Merkel, automation engineering lead, isamong the team working to ensure the safe and efficient
production and isolation of such adjuvant compounds. He
spoke this week at Emerson Exchange Immerse to share
his experiences with digital twin technology commissioned
in conjunction with the start-up of a new production unit
in January 2023.

tastes and smells the same,” Merkel said. While the production system consists of a DeltaV console, redundant
PK controllers and both smart and dumb skids, the OTS
consists of a DeltaV console, simplex PK controller, theMimic software as well as separate software to emulate
the third-party automation PLCs.
Merkel also thought it important to explain that the
Mimic system as it’s currently deployed represents not somuch a digital twin (although that’s the ultimate destination), but a digital model that supports increased process
understanding. “It’s the lowest fidelity and lowest cost
option,” Merkel explained, noting that there’s no automatic
feedback of data from the production unit to the model.

The unit hosts both DeltaV automation and safety
instrumented systems (SIS) along with a range of “smart”
and “dumb” skids—the former supplied with their own
third-party automation controllers and the latter fully
controlled by the unit’s DeltaV system. “There are 1,200
DeltaV I/O points and another 400 on the smart skids,”
Merkel explained. And because the process uses toxic acetonitrile as a solvent, the SIS provides essential protections.
What made the production unit somewhat uniqueon the Hamilton campus is the inclusion of an operator
training simulator based on Emerson Mimic software.
“Everything that the operator interacts with in the production unit is replicated in the simulator—it all looks,

Everything that the operator interacts with in the
production unit is reproduced in the simulator—it all
looks, tastes and smells the same.” GlaxoSmithKline’s
Levi Merkel discussed the many beneficial uses of an
operator training simulator—many of which have nothing
to do with operators.

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He envisions that with continued investment they canmove from a digital model into the realm of a “digital
shadow” that better supports decision-making with automated data transfer from physical object to digital one, andultimately to a digital twin, with closed-loop data transfer
between physical and digital worlds—providing the highest fidelity model but at the highest cost, Merkel said.
Since the production unit in question was the first of
its kind, a low fidelity model was deemed adequate, bothbecause the process was not well enough understood tojustify more upfront investment and because the process
centers primarily around a chromatographic separationand does not entail more sensitive reaction kinetics.

Best laid plans

The original purpose of the Mimic system was two-fold.
First, to provide an offline environment on which personnel could be trained. Second, to provide a platform on
which process control code could be tested before being
deployed on the production unit.
As things have turned out, the team has been so busy
supporting production that most of the operator training
has been done on the production unit itself. But the simulator has not been idle, instead earning its keep duringcommissioning and qualification and to test the effects
of potential automation changes on unit performance.

For example, the simulator was used to verify the cleanin-place recipe for the column-packing skid, allowing
development of the standard operating procedure (SOP)
well ahead of schedule. It has also provided a platform
to troubleshoot and test solutions to identified problems
without interrupting production.
Time savings during the unit’s site acceptance test andcommissioning activities added up to some 270 hours—
from an estimated 400 hours on the production unit to
130 hours on the simulator. Also, some 50 issues wereaddressed at least in part on the simulator, substantiallyavoiding any significant impact on the production unit.
“Time on the production unit has been at a premium
since before start-up,” Merkel said.
In addition, the knowledge gained via the simulator
has saved an estimated $144,000 in raw materials andanother $552,000 in waste handling expenses—returning
more than its entire cost, despite little time spent training
operators as initially intended. But Merkel and the teamhave big plans both short and long term, to formalize theoperator training originally envisioned, add the unit’s SIS
to the model’s scope, increase its fidelity and ultimately
close the synchronization between production unit andsimulator to achieve the ultimate destination of a fully
functional digital twin.

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BAYER ROLLS OUT A ‘ONE-STOP
SHOP’ TO MANAGE ASSET HEALTH
By Jim Montague

I

t’s crucial to “care for the caregivers,” so they can keep
helping patients and loved ones. In the same way, process automation systems and users may need somelabor-saving automation of their own, so they can stayhealthy and keep optimizing production. Today, this usually means some form of digitalization. However, suchprojects may also include the streamlining of systems andremoving unnecessary functions to gain efficiency andsave time and effort.
Bayer’s 155-acre plant in Muscatine, Iowa, was built in
1961. Located in southeast Iowa near the Mississippi River,the plant has more than 450 employees. It encompasses
eight production units with about 3,200 devices, which
are all linked to Emerson’s AMS Device Manager softwareand managed by four separate DeltaV distributed control
systems (DCSs). They’ve run DeltaV S-Series software ina cross-domain architecture since 2008.
Bayer’s hardware and networks also include about 750
control valves that talk to Fisher FIELDVUE ValveLink
software, about 1,000 motors and related assets and nineclient stations. Almost all of these components are networked via HART communications protocol, while about
125 use Foundation Fieldbus. The plant also employs about
3,000 infrared (IR) thermography devices.

Holmes and Matt Forbis, principal product engineer
at Emerson, and Derek Ybarra, maintenance and reliability system engineer at Bayer, presented “Solving thedevice alert puzzle during Bayer’s digital transformation
journey” at last week’s Emerson Exchange Immerse event
in Anaheim, Calif.

Less nuisance alerts = more savings

Holmes reported that Bayer’s digitalization initiative has
two objectives—preventive maintenance (PM) and predictive maintenance (PdM)—and it must achieve bothto be beneficial. Its core electrical reliability and process safety principles also rely on IR thermography andmotor analytics.
Consequently, Experitec and Bayer developed a “concentric” strategy that includes AMS Device Manager,
AMS Device View software and AMS Trex handheld
field devices running AMS ValveLink mobile software.
It’s also been integrating new AMS Device Manager
Data Server software with Feature Pack 2 (FP2) that

“This is a big challenge, especially because the plant
operates with only one-and-a-half to two reliability technicians, which is very lean,” said Joel Holmes, seniorconsultant for reliability at Experitec Inc. “The plant’s
maintenance staff can help with some tasks, but they’re
not certified like the electrical technicians, so they can
only do so much.”
AMS Device Manager can always be on, scanning andassessing usage, and sending active status alerts to alist. We now have a one-stop-shop to determine asset
health.” Experitec’s Joel Holmes, together with Bayer’s
Derek Ybarra, discussed strides Bayer has made to movefrom reactive to preventive and predictive maintenanceof its instrumentation assets.

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was launched two or three months ago and plans to add
FP3 when it’s released in March 2024.
“The plant’s lean workforce had a hard time sifting
through all the data from operations, which made it hard
to find and track bad actors,” explained Holmes. “Muchof this work had to be done manually, which meant morereactive, ‘firefighting’ events, which is much less safe.”
To simplify and streamline its data collection and analysis, Bayer and Experitec updated many of the plant’s device
description (DD) files for its components and the alerts
they generate. This enabled it to go from a baseline average of 150 alerts per day to about 60 alerts per day, or a
60% reduction thanks to its newly optimized alert definitions. “Over a 60-day period, we also found that 12 device
types were producing 91% of all alerts, and 10 individual
devices were producing 41% of all alerts,” said Holmes.
“This saved the plant a lot of effort.”

See more, do more

In addition, upgrading to AMS Device Manager V14.5
with add-on Device View software improved performancein several ways when they were released two years ago:
• Device scanning that was 5-15% faster;

drill down, set manufacturing information, and learn why
alerts are occurring, which improves safety, availability
and costs because there are fewer bad actors, tasks takeless time, and there’s less reactive work.”
AMS Device View also makes it easier to distributedata to users so they can make better decisions. “Thisthin client has both view-access and write-access, which
is a big help,” added Holmes. “These capabilities allow
reliability personnel to be the cheerleaders they need to
be to get users to learn, grow, and promote best practices.
We have about 10 power users at the Muscatine plant.”
Ybarra added, “Joel took the DD files and eliminated
60% of nuisance alerts This also gave our technicians
access via Device View, so we could also train them andestablish standard work processes.”
Optimizations attributed to AMS Device View include:• Reduced alert review workflows and execution by 10
minutes per day and 90 minutes per week, and enhanced
visibility beyond the plant’s electrical reliability group;• Increased cost avoidance savings by 67% by moving fromreactive to proactive maintenance and related activities;• Rebuilt hierarchy that was up to 75% faster;• Technician workflow process optimization earned morethan $225,000 per year;• Concurrent performance/handshakes improved for AMS
Device Manager’s plant-level applications;• Availability increased 24% because it’s no longer tied toa thick client; and,• Field device integration support with user interface plugins (UIP) that talk to new devices; and• Accessibility to smart field device data increased by 80%• Improved editing with templates that optimize workflows for bulk transfers, such as multivariable devices
with many parameters.
“AMS Device View is a thin-client that’s easier to use
because it has an audit trail for the last 20 events and provides a ‘parking lot’ for workflow projects and an overview
on a web-based interface,” said Holmes. “This lets users

Ybarra reported his team is excited to use the upcoming AMS Data Server. “Instead of looking for so muchdata on our own, we can depend on this system to makemore of these checks,” said Ybarra. “This will let us catch
more items and spend less time doing it. Plus, instead of
having to search for details after an outage, AMS Device
Manager can always be on, scanning and assessing usage,
and sending active status alerts to a list. We now have a
one-stop-shop to determine asset health.”

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NOVO NORDISK DEBOTTLENECKS
WITH EMERSON’S RTMs SOFTWARE
By Jim Montague

B

ecause quicker data and answers allow faster decisions and optimization, close to real-time results
enable the fastest solutions.

That’s what Novo Nordisk discovered when it deployed
Emerson’s Real-Time Modeling System (RTMS) in theexpression, engineering and formulation processes for its
therapeutic proteins and peptides products. Implementing
RTMS software allowed the pharmaceutical company to:• Resolve bottlenecks and determine capacity analyses byusing plant data to run what-if scenarios. This identifies
other, previously unseen bottlenecks, which can also be
resolved to improve throughput even more.

times,” said Keith Hope, RTMS engineering manager at
Emerson. “Each activity is also mapped to markets in theautomation system, which shows the impact on scheduledactivity, and indicates if maintenance is needed and how
to get back on track.”
Hope and Mikael Johansen, project director at Novo
Nordisk, presented “Hidden treasures: How to unlock
additional value in your plant by adding RTMS software”
this week at the Emerson Exchange Immerse event inAnaheim, Calif.
So far, Novo Nordisk has implemented RTMS at twoof its existing proteins and peptides facilities, and is• Implement unified, site-wide real-time scheduling(RTS) using a Level 2/Level 3 automation-based finite
scheduling module, which produces schedules that arecontinually updated and always feasible using the RTMS
model. This includes integrating RTS with corporate
manufacturing execution system (MES), enterprise
resource planning (ERP), quality management system(QMS), distributed control systems (DCS) and maintenance systems to generate further updates.
• Employ Crosswalk software for statistical analyses, data
fitting and process evolution tracking. This lets users
create datasets from batch historians that RTMS canuse. It also allows analysis independent of RTMS for
use in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), process
evolution or golden batch projects.
“RTMS lets users add new data to their simulations,recalculate, update schedule times, and adjust future
RTMS lets us know when a high-utilization day is likely
coming, so we can prepare our equipment and systems
to handle them.” Novo Nordisk’s Mikael Johansen
discussed how real-time management system software
helped to dramatically improve unit productivity andprocess operations.

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preparing to install it at a third facility that’s presently
under construction.

Streamlined by scheduling

In 2020, Novo Nordisk deployed RTMS for day-to-day
scheduling on three screens in the control room usedby one plant’s operating teams, which previously trieddifferent planning systems. This plant lacked a unified
production schedule, and had low confidence that it could
ramp up production“We wanted to capture all the knowledge we could forbetter planning, and perhaps add a couple of batches,
which we couldn’t do before due to a lack of training,”
said Johansen. “RTMS let us go from running four or fivebatches per week to five or six batches per week, which
was about a 20% increase in output.”
RTMS also pointed out some gaps in operator competencies among the plant’s teams, which required some tasks
to be done at certain times of day. Making the production schedule more visible during higher run rates showed
where added training was needed. RTMS also codified
and modeled the tacit knowledge that plant staff needed
when scheduling manually, and that model was used totrain new schedulers, process controllers and engineers.

Simulations untangle snags

In 2022, Novo Nordisk adopted RTMS for debottlenecking
analysis at a second plant to reach designed production
rates more quickly and easily, and reports it went on toachieve the fastest ramp-up to full production in the company’s history. This new facility performs upstream anddownstream production with buffer-stock solutions in acomplex tank network and strives to process one batch
every 24 hours.
“We built simulation models for all of the plant’s process steps, which let us add more data to our simulations,”

explained Johansen. “This plant also simulated about 20
years of production, and identified long-term bottlenecks,
such as buffering system delays. We often found that removing one bottleneck led us to find more behind the firstone, which gave us an opportunity to resolve those, too.”
Johansen reported that Novo Nordisk also used RTMS
to monitor the utilization loads on its clean-in-place (CIP)
stations. Most averaged 29-37% utilization, but some days
they ran at 60-70%, which could cause delays and risk theloss of a batch due to their often short, critical holding
times. “RTMS lets us know when a high-utilization day
is likely coming, so we can prepare our equipment andsystems to handle them.”

New protein-peptide plant—with robots

While it’s still being built, Novo Nordisk’s third RTMS
deployment is going into its $2.3 billion plant. It will havefour independent mammalian-cell production trains witha shared weigh-and-dispense (W&D) area, and an RTMS
application for each train. At this facility, RTMS will:• Forecast demands for the shared W&D area and perform
real-time tracking of resource constraints for managing
shutdowns and maintenance.
• Help the plant’s automated guided vehicle (AGV) robots
make deliveries by using the RTMS schedule to predict
demand for materials, and work with the AGVs’ fleet manager software to monitor and coordinate their locations.
• Similar to the second plant, RTMS will also be usedduring ramp-up at the third facility to identify process
bottlenecks preventing full-capacity operations.

Real-time lessons learned

Johansen reported that using RTMS taught Novo Nordisk several valuable lessons, such as supporting sites andstaffers to adopt new ways of working.

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“In the past, each team did things in different ways.
RTMS shows where we can optimize and improve operations,” said Johansen. “If a schedule says a process must
be done at 2 p.m., it can’t be done at 3 p.m. because othertasks or processes may need that equipment.”
The system also helped prepare for go-live operations
and transition off old systems, and measure success for
future gains. “We think old planning systems should
die quickly, instead of running legacy and new systems in parallel for so long before shutting down theold one,” he said. “Even veterans, who know the mostabout these systems, still don’t know everything. This
is where putting all our process knowledge into RTMS
models can be a big help.”

RTMS models also capture key process and scheduling know-how, which mitigates the impact of turnover on
the scheduling team, helps onboard new employees andassists in communication with management. Centralizing
expertise in RTMS drives consistency, improves responsiveness to process needs, and maintains expertise with aconsistent work stream.
Johansen revealed that RTMS even enhanced Novo
Nordisk’s culture. “We had heavy involvement from operations in building our RTMS models. However, when we
first did them, they looked like our operations interfaces
used to. This meant they might not get used if there wasn’t
enough of a difference,” he said. “So, we let the new RTMS
models look like the old displays for a while, and adjusted
them later, which helped us get more buy-in.”Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

CPS ENERGY MODERNIZESSCADA TO TRANSFORMGAS DISTRIBUTION
By Len VermillionAs the nation’s largest municipal utilities provider
based in San Antonio, Texas, CPS Energy can’t
afford downtime. A lapse in operations can meanno power or gas for residents around the region, and inSouth Texas, no one wants to endure the heat without
power. Keeping old systems updated is of vital importance.
So, when it came time to modernize its 10-year-old
SCADA system, the company had a lot of considerations
to address. Alex Solis, senior manager of SCADA technicalsupport at CPS Energy, presented at last week’s Emerson
Exchange Immerse 2023 in Anaheim, Calif., where heoutlined the company’s SCADA modernization project,which took multiple years to complete.

The old SCADA had a hard time keeping up. Its hardware was no longer supported and ready to be replaced.
CPS Energy had more than a few goals in mind when
it began planning its RFP for the project. It wanted NISTbased cyber security protocols, a control room management(CRM) platform that could be integrated, consolidated
applications for improved situation awareness, a common
platform with appropriate network segregation, and an
operator training simulator.

CPS Energy started the project in 2019, right before
the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the world. With someperseverance and the help of experts at Emerson and
AspenTech, the new SCADA system went live in 2022.
CPS Energy utilizes multiple SCADA systems for its
electric and gas distribution operations. The modernization project focused on its gas SCADA system, which
manages gas pipelines to ensure proper flow and pressure.
The system monitors 49 remote automation devices, which
are a combination of RTUs and Emerson’s Remote Operations Controllers (ROC 800s) and FloBoss 107s, according
to Solis. A mix of communication devices and infrastructure (point-to-point radios, mashed wireless networks,
fiber-optic multiplexers, microwave transport and cellulardevices) connect remote stations to two control centers.

Alex Solis of CPS Energy discussed how the nation’slargest municipal utility boosted the performance andreliability of its gas distribution system.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

Solis said growing cybersecurity risk necessitated the callfor best-in-class industry standards to meet compliance.

Pandemic and regulatory obstacles

CPS Energy faced quite a few challenges to get the projectcompleted, not the least of which was the sudden onset ofthe pandemic and new regulations that were dropped intheir laps in the middle of the project.
The company was also limited by an aging workforce,so it hired consultants to assist with the RFP and implementation. The extensive RFP was won by Emerson and
AspenTech and the project took off from there, according to Solis.
He said the executive leadership was active in the entire
process, resulting in cross-functional governance andsupport for IT, OT, SCADA support, controllers, compliance and security, to name a few.
In the end, improvements incorporated into the new gas
SCADA system include modern visualization tools andalarm management, situational awareness displays, pipeline topology, dynamic coloring, inventory and linepack
calculations, cybersecurity controls, synchronized disasterrecovery, and an operator training simulator.
Solis said the biggest improvements include advanced
display capabilities and an open architecture that allows
for PI and GIS integration.
These days, CPS Energy is well equipped to handle
any situation that may occur in its gas distribution system,
and residents of the region can count on their utilities
being available.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

PANELISTS SHARE HOW OTCAN LEVERAGE THE CLOUD
By Len VermillionO

ne of the biggest topics of conversation at Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023 held this week in
Anaheim, Calif., has been the challenge presented by cloud implementation, particularly for OT andon the industrial edge. It’s no secret that IT departments
in many companies and industries have embraced cloud
solutions successfully. After all, it’s quick, cost-efficientand flexible. And while OT cloud implementation lagsthat of IT, the tide seems to be changing, said Emerson
CTO Peter Zornio to a panel of industry experts convenedon the topic. The panelists agreed.
Jose Valls, CTO of manufacturing at Microsoft, said justabout every company is using the cloud in some way thesedays, mostly to optimize processes. “We’ve been working
with almost any company you can name,” he said.
Erik Lindhjem, vice president and general manager
of reliability solutions for Emerson, pointed out that thechanging nature of business post-COVID has made it easierand more necessary for OT decision-makers to embrace
cloud applications. He said Emerson sees more customers
with remote users accessing their OT instrumentation, so
those applications have been moved into the cloud. “Wehave customers using AMS Optics across 20 facilities,” hesaid, adding that the cloud has made data democratization
among those users much easier to achieve.

operations have raised the profile of cloud adoption acrossthe process industries.
“There could be cost advantages,” Williams said ofusing cloud on the edge. “You just have to make sure
those distributed systems are sufficiently managed. I’mvery optimistic about the way DeltaV Edge is going.” The
DeltaV Edge Environment is a secure-by-design solutionthat enables users to easily access DeltaV data and makeit available for use on premise or in the cloud.
Williams said that AspenTech sees a lot of processing facilities turning to cloud solutions for supply chain
management, especially if they are sharing significant
information with their customers. However, many arestill at the point where they prefer to stick with their own
private servers, he added.
Zornio and LaMothe agreed that collaboration is a big
driver of adoption in OT cloud applications. LaMothealso sees two main areas where cloud-based OT applications have needs that IT applications might not. “It
comes back to mean time to repair,” he said. There must
be a way to identify an issue and be able to process it in atimelier fashion than what is available now, he said. The
second area of focus is the need for automated quality

Drivers of adoption

Zornio, Valls, Lindjhem, and fellow panelists Steve
Williams, vice president of portfolio product strategy at
AspenTech, and Brian LaMothe, vice president of cloud
application development at Emerson, said distributed edge

Expert panelists from Intel, Microsoft, Emerson, andAspenTech offered an assemblage of operational
technology professionals’ advice on how to best takeadvantage of the capabilities offered by the cloud at thisweek’s Emerson Exchange Immerse.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

systems that use AI or machine learning to test for anddetect any operational unknowns in the data.
Other drivers of growth in cloud solutions for OT
include the needs for process reliability and sustainability. Williams said the cloud can be very helpful forcompanies seeking to solidify their sustainable operations and reporting.

Selecting SaaS?

While companies may want to integrate cloud solutions
into their processes, they still must figure out how they
will consume and integrate the distributed technologies.
IT adoption mainly happens via software-as-a-service(SaaS) solutions. All the panelists felt the SaaS model iswell established by IT and OT will most likely follow theproven ground.
But Valls cautioned that it’s not as simple as it seems.
“They don’t just have one SaaS model, but a variety ofmodels from multiple companies,” he said. “How will theend-user bring all those siloed SaaS solutions together tointerconnect? That is the role a company like ours, Microsoft, wants to play.”

LaMothe offered a solution. “You provide an API, andyou can filter what data you want. Providing that mechanism through a standard API is our approach,” he said.
Regardless of the method, operators must know theirdata is safe and for many, it’s still hard to believe in safety
when moving to the cloud, according to Williams. “It’sa process,” he said of efforts to appease customers. “Westill have customers who want to do things in their private clouds. I will say there is a wave moving in the SaaS
direction and a growing belief that security is advancing.”
Panelists offered advice to those in the audience who
may be teetering on the brink of moving into the cloud.
LaMothe advised them to be open-minded and to startwith lower risk action items, in terms of data security.
Williams encouraged them to have faith in the advancements being made but maintain a purpose for adoption.
He added that you need a business strategy for implementation to be successful.
Meanwhile, Lindjhem said there’s no reason to try to
avoid cloud adoption. “It’s here and it’s not going away,”
he said. “Now, with the edge piece, it’s just a matter offinding balance. Security will make it possible. There’s
no reason not to pursue it.”Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

AI LIKELY TO AUGMENT
HUMANS, NOT REPLACE THEM
By Len VermillionA

utomation intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) certainly aren’t new concepts to processcontrol engineers. These technologies have beenin play in industrial processes for 30 years or more, butthey’ve largely been the realm of the technologist or data
scientist. Today, AI has blown the minds of many people,
and large language models (LLMs) have exposed generative AI to just about anyone with a Wi-Fi connection andan internet browser. Let’s just say it has more than a few
people thinking about the possibilities and the challenges,
as well as the dangers of AI.

Hollywood movies that tend to turn toward the dark sidefor dramatic effect.)
No need to worry about that just yet, the panelists pointed
out. We’re a long way away from a total surrender to autonomous manufacturing and processing plants. Rather, thefocus these days remains on the opportunity to use AI toaugment human productivity and efficiency. It can also
help increase cybersecurity and super-charge real-time
diagnostics and predictive maintenance in the plant.

“We have been working on this for many years andbelieve it will be a big transformation for all of us,” said
Jose Valls, CTO of manufacturing for Microsoft, during
a thought-provoking panel discussion called, “Forging
Tomorrow: Unleashing AI Benefits” during Emerson
Exchange Immerse this week in Anaheim, Calif. “It’s here
and it’s not going to stop,” Valls said.

“I’m really interested in the runtime and diagnostics,”
Kephart continued, pointing out two areas he’s seen significant benefits already: machinery health and monitoring
and reacting to off-normal conditions, much like a digital twin. “I think we are a long way away from taking thehuman out of [the plant],” he added. “We’ll be needed
even if to moderate between competing control functions.
I’m a little skeptical about the autonomous plant.”

Valls is far from the only one working on generative AI
to take notice. “In my tenure, I don’t think I’ve ever seensomething that has so much potential,” added fellow panelist Rick Kephart, vice president of technology at Emerson’s
Power and Water Solutions business, who has worked inindustrial control for more than 30 years. “I’ve become abeliever, and I wouldn’t have said that last year.”Augmentation or autonomy?

Rita Wouhaybi, senior AI principal engineer, Intel,
also isn’t concerned about losing the human touch at thispoint. “I love the fact that we’re talking about AI assisting

AI is winning over many people in the industrial sector,
just as it is in a plethora of other industries. At the sametime, it stokes fears ranging from the practical—job losses,
mistakes in production—to the fantastical—a dystopian
society run by computers. (Perhaps thanks to decades ofI love the fact that we’re talking about AI assisting
humans. Playing the role of assistant is the right attitude.”Intel’s Rita Wouhaybi together with co-panelists fromMicrosoft, AspenTech and Emerson, discussed the rapidly
evolving capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and therole it will play in plant automation.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

humans,” she said. “Playing the role of assistant is theright attitude.”
For AI to become humans’ helper, it must speak the language of humans, she added. That’s where LLMs entered
the party and turned it into a big bash. “It has to be present where anyone can consume it,” Wouhaybi continued.
“At the end of the day, is it deployed in my pocket on myphone? Where is the value being delivered?”
Like Kephart, she sees value in diagnostics right now.
She added that predictive opportunities are exciting forthe near future, saying LLMs are good at predicting thenext move. “They are basically saying what the humanwould do next,” she said.
Nithiya Parmeswaran, vice president of product management at AspenTech, also said the value of AI must be
established for industrial processes before companies jumpin the water with both feet. “In the industrial space, we needto talk more about the value and less about the technology,” he said. “We need to explain to the end user so they
can understand the cost and why they should be using it.”

While the promise is off the charts, the hindrances
are still many, with data at the top of the list. The dirty
truth about AI is that it can only be as good as the data
it is trained on.
The panelist said LLMs must be trained on specificplants, much like digital twins, to be successful. The idea isfor the AI to know the plant just as a human worker would,
so that it can function as a “shirt tug” to prod humans toreact. There’s no doubt the holy grail would be for AI tohandle issues itself, but we’re not there yet, they agreed.
Another hindrance, they said, is that AI will have toauto-learn to hit such heights. At the moment, it is reliant upon data scientists to have clean data, but as anyone
working with data knows, perfect data is non-existent, so
until AI can learn to sort good data from the bad, humans
will remain in charge of the plant.
At the end of the day, AI is ready to be a super-worker,
but don’t expect it to be the boss anytime soon.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023