The Chairman's Message

Welcome to the Fisher-Rosemount Systems Users Group web page. We're glad you're here, and hope you stop by each month. Instead of another boring picture of your Users Group Board Chairman, this month we've got a photograph of a real user, Jeff Evers. He's a Process Control Supervisor at a carbon black plant, using Provox OWP consoles to interface to his process.

As always, several things have happened since our last visit. First, it looks like everyone survived the Y2K "crisis" pretty well. In my company, it turned out to be a non-event. I hope it was the same for you. Of course, the fact that it was a non-event speaks well for the significant efforts made by that small group of individuals who understood what the problem was, and fixed it.

Secondly, we have entered the last year of the second millenium. I hope none of you highly educated technical types succumbed to the hype that the millenium ended a couple of weeks ago. Someone needs to inform ABC of their mistake.

Also, your Board held a general meeting in Austin on January 10. The agenda for the 2000 Annual Meeting was pretty much finalized, at least as far as technical content. In next month's message, we'll begin an indepth discussion of the agenda. One notable addition will be the availability of a PlantWeb course offered by the Fisher-Rosemount Education Center, to be held both before and after the Annual Meeting. There will also be a significant tuition discount for this course.

In anticipation of next month's discussion of the Annual Meeting, I would like for each User to consider being a part of the information transferred during the meeting. This year venues will exist for both formal and informal presentations. Here are some of the areas we will be covering:

RS3 MPC5 Platform interoperability for RS3 PROVOX/DeltaV interface Busses DeltaV alarm management AMS PROVOX Recipe Manager DeltaV remote capabilities

RS3 Visual Control Studio Envox w/Control Desktop Smart Motors and MCC's DeltaV advanced control Fieldbus functionality enhancements DeltaV batch enhancements POC enhancements Remote data acquisition

If you have any experiences in these areas that you would like to share with the Users Group, check next month's Message for the appropriate Board Member to contact. Also, be sure to take note next month of a new segment being added to the Annual Meeting: Quantifiable Business Results. We'll explain this, and ask you to consider sharing your company's successes in this area with all of us.

And finally, the Board agreed to a new format and content for the Users Group website. Efforts are underway as we speak to construct these features. The results should show up within the next 30 days. We think you'll like what you see. Not only will there be information about Users Group activities, but there will be a continual expansion of the site to provide links to Fisher-Rosemount sites and technical publications.

As the site grows, your input is welcomed. You are free to contact any of the Board members via E-mail (the contact information can be accessed from the Users Group home page) regarding this topic or any other.

Now, let's meet another member of the Board.

David Montgomery was elected to the Board at the 1999 Atlanta meeting, and will serve as a PROVOX representative. David submitted two photographs for consideration. This one was chosen because of the appropriate placement of one of the items in his office. Can you guess which item it was?

David has 27 years of experience in the process control field. He began his career supporting pneumatics and progressed to present day beta testing of new DeltaV releases. He has configured three different F-R control systems for the same process area (DC2 CP250, Data Concentrators, and Integrated Function Controllers). He has spent his entire career working for Monsanto/Solutia at their Decatur, Alabama location.

David is a member of the Solutia DeltaV standards committee. His current assignment is supporting the PROVOX and DeltaV systems for Solutia's Acrilan manufacturing unit. His duties include future direction for their process control systems for Acrilan and the Decatur site. He is his site's representative for technology exchanges with Fisher-Rosemount and a member of the Fisher-Rosemount Technical Documentation Advisory Council.

David's degree is a BS in Chemical Engineering from Auburn University with an additional year of process control through a company sponsored program at Washington University in St. Louis. His hobbies include NASCAR (this is the South, you know) and 1/35 scale miniatures of WW2 armored fighting vehicles. His true passion is the automobiles created by Carroll Shelby. He is currently building his rendition of a 1965 Cobra Daytona Coupe. It was less expensive than paying $1MM for one of the six originals.

David's term on the Board is for the years 2000 and 2001. You can E-mail David at jdmont@solutia.com.

Again, thanks for hitting the web site. Next month we'll get into specifics about the 2000 Annual Meeting. In the meantime, you can contact me at ksimpson@continentalcarbon.com.


Keith Simpson
Chairman

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