Mark Garnett
Chemtura

I graduated in 1987, obtaining a Technologists Diploma in Instrumentation & Control Systems. I have almost 20 years of excellent experience in field instrumentation and control systems, working in many different capacities, companies, and even countries.

My early working years were spent in South Africa, commissioning and maintaining Rosemount RS3, Honeywell TDC3000, and Modicon Gould PLC control systems on various chemical processes. In the late 80’s I moved to the UK where I was employed as a Commissioning Engineer, once again in the chemical industry. After a brief stay in the UK, I moved to Saudi Arabia, working for Saudi FAL Co. as a Commissioning Engineer managing numerous PROVOX and Triplex PLC commissioning projects in the oil and gas industry for almost 2 years.

In the mid 90’s I moved to Canada and have since been employed at Chemtura (formally Uniroyal Chemical & Crompton) in various capacities. Chemtura produces approximately 65MM pounds of specialty chemicals a year at the Elmira site. These chemicals include additives for the food industry, crop and seed protectants, intermediates for the rubber industry, as well as various high viscous lubricants.

In my current capacity I am responsible for all aspects of automation at the Elmira site. This includes the design and procurement of all field instrumentation and control systems, programming, commissioning, ongoing maintenance, and system life cycle planning. All project and maintenance work at our site is fully accomplished using our own personnel. Our Instrumentation & Automation department does not utilise contractors to accomplish any of the above mentioned tasks. I take direct responsibility for all Instrumentation & Automation tasks on the site. The fact that our group is also responsible for the long term maintenance and support of any instrumentation installed, has ensured that we take great care and pride to install the right equipment, correctly, first time! I have also travelled widely within the company, assisting and advising other Chemtura sites in the US and Germany on various automation issues.

Under my direction and guidance, Elmira has standardized on Emerson control systems and field instrumentation. We have two PROVOX control systems on site. One system employing mainly continuous control, the other, batch. We have six installed base DeltaV systems on site, mostly employing batch control. We also utilise AMS to manage our various instrumentation assets, including calibration and equipment maintenance management. As far was field instrumentation is concerned Elmira can boast having a wide variety of Emerson products on site from various types of flow meters, temperature, pressure, level, liquid, and gas analyzer systems. Once again we were early adopters of numerous Emerson products, including the original CMF010 mass flow meter, CP9000 control valve system, NGA gas analyzers, APEX radar, and being the first in Ontario to utilise the Model 375 hand held communicators. 

We are constantly upgrading our current PLC/Intellution architecture, and replacing these with DeltaV. We always strive to utilise the latest technologies to assist in reducing installation costs and to reduce our TCO over the long term. To that end we were one of the early adopters of FF and other bus technologies and devices. We have actively embraced new technologies, and take pride in providing vendors with feedback so that products can be enhanced and improved to provide further, on-going benefits to us.

Chemtura has been involved in numerous Beta Tests of Emerson products, from the initial DeltaV itself (we have serial #9) to the 9210 Machinery Health Transmitter, which we are currently in the process of Beta Testing. My thorough knowledge of field instrumentation, control systems, and control strategies has been one of the main reasons for the continual success and growth of the Elmira site. In the last 10 years we have doubled our volume output whilst reducing staff. This has allowed us to remain extremely competitive, even against a strengthening Canadian Dollar and higher raw material and utility costs.

Recently, I was given the responsibility of managing our whole Maintenance Department – in addition to my Automation duties. This will allow me to divert some of my attention to the mechanical aspects of our facility, and attempt to convert colleagues from having an attitude of maintaining assets – to managing assets. This is similar to the current trend in automation and process control – mechanical equipment and the management thereof, particularly with on-line predictive techniques, is becoming invaluable in the success of any manufacturing process.

I was elected to the Emerson Users Group Board of Directors in 2000 to replace a board member who withdrew halfway through his mandate. I served until 2001, stepping down at the end of “my” mandate. Where possible, I have attended the Emerson Exchange, believing this to be an excellent environment to share ideas, and benefit from the ideas and experiences of others. The Short Courses, Workshops, and Industry Business Forums provide an excellent opportunity for a person to enhance your knowledge on a wide variety of topics, leaving a person enthused and eager to apply new skills acquired, at your own site. I will be attending this year’s exchange in Orlando.

I would be honored to serve on the board and would do my best to represent the values and needs of my fellow ‘end-users’. Due to my in-depth experiences and knowledge of field instrumentation, control systems, control methodologies, and plant network systems, I believe that I would be able to provide valuable input to the board on a variety of subjects and issues. My project and maintenance experiences have allowed me to nurture a balanced outlook in all process automation tasks that I undertake – provide a cost effective, quality system, while ensuring reliability and ease of asset management in the long run.