The Chairman's Message

Value, we're looking for value!

OK, so it's the last day of May when I'm writing this.  Technically, I'm not late.

Welcome back to the FRSUG website. It's always a pleasure to have you stop in.  

As you surf the site, you’ll see that details for the September annual meeting are in place, and that’s what I want to talk to you about this month. We’ve come up with what should be an exciting set of events that will contribute significantly to your power as a user of Fisher-Rosemount systems.

We’ve got industry seminars, a PlantWeb overview, all kinds of workshops and a bunch of third-party exhibitors (in addition to a large group of Fisher-Rosemount exhibits). We’ve also got short courses at the end, a concept that’s been very popular and successful.

Also, on the afternoon of the last day, we’re combining our meeting with the AMS Users Group for a session on real-world savings with AMS.

All of the above is much of what you’d expect to see at the annual meeting of a systems users group. Everyone looks for valuable technical content, whether it’s this meeting, a tradeshow, or wherever. But I would like to remind you of something else that will be at the meeting that doesn’t show up in the program listings.

That something is experience. It’s the real-life, sometimes painful, always educational things that people have done that may apply to your own world. I’ll use myself and my company as an example.

We have 9 years experience as a PROVOX user. We began with Provue consoles and IFC SR-20’s at one of our plants. We now have multiple plant installations, and have worked our way through OWP and POC interfaces, and IFC SR-90’s and SRx’s. We are using AMS, and a bunch of smart field devices. We were an early user of Fieldvue I/P positioners and Rosemount 3095M multivariable transmitters. We are using the heck out of the OSI PI data system, and have just completed Beta testing of ENVOX on NT.

We have used this stuff in grass-roots projects, and in retrofits of some really old units. We’ve had our notable successes and some exciting failures. Could you benefit from any of our experience?

If your answer is yes, then do I have a deal for you. If you come to the Users Group annual meeting, I’ll be there to share some of my experience with you. And by the way, there’ll be several hundred others just like myself for you to talk to also.

This is the greatest value of the annual meeting – the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and successes of others. And hey, some of the mistakes are pretty funny.

So, join us in Austin this September. And when you get there, network, network, network. Meet as many people as you can, and be sure and get their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Because, while you may be convinced that your problem is unique, don’t be surprised if there’s someone else out there that has confronted nearly the same thing.

And remember, this is your users group. Your input and your participation are a major factor in the group’s success.

I look forward to seeing you in September. We’ll have plenty to talk about – let’s see, there was the time I shut down a reactor by pulling the wrong wires, the day I found a really effective way to slow AMS down so much it was unusable, the time I set off alarms on every reactor in the plant (so I missed a digit on the keyboard entry), the day an operator threatened to rip my arms off if I didn’t open the water valve right then, and so much more. There was even the project where we reduced checkout and commissioning costs by 40%.

Continue to check here on the website for the latest meeting info (agenda, registration, etc.). As always, you can contact me at ksimpson@continentalcarbon.com.

Keith Simpson
Chairman

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