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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.

BAYER ROLLS OUT A ‘ONE-STOP
SHOP’ TO MANAGE ASSET HEALTH
By Jim MontagueIt’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 ValveLinksoftware, 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 canonly 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.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

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 whyalerts 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 tobe 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 10minutes 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 ofhaving 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.”

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023