Efficient Plant March 2018 - 33

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NE GUY IN an audience of
reliability and maintenance
professionals raised a hand
with a question during one of my talks
on networks, protocols, and the like.
"The engineers tell us that these things
don't work, so we should just forget
about all that stuff."
That happened to me only a few years
ago. Since then, we in the industry have
written thousands of words about the
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), data,
information, and analytics. Still, I get the
question, "Does it really work? Is anyone
using IIoT and receiving benefits?"
The following case study recently
reached me. It demonstrates that, yes,
there is something in all of this technology that will provide great benefits to
manufacturers and producers.
Covestro LLC, Pittsburgh (covestro.
us/en), one of the world's largest polymer
companies, selected Emerson Automation, St. Louis (emerson.com), to provide
IIoT technologies to help it achieve its
goals of minimizing risk and improving
uptime at nine high-utilization plants.
As part of the $14-million, 5-yr. contract,
Emerson will provide remote monitoring and predictive maintenance to help
Covestro improve production, safety,
and reliability.
Emerson will remotely monitor and
maintain 40 of its DeltaV distributedcontrol systems at Covestro plants in
China, the U.S., and Germany. Remote
teams at Emerson's Innovation Center
in Austin, TX, will monitor and provide
best-practices maintenance strategies
for local Emerson teams to implement at
each Covestro plant.
"By collaborating with Emerson to
stay proactive about plant availability, we
can drive toward always-on production

MARCH 2018

and continue to satisfy customers in our
high-demand market," said Klaus Schaefer, chief technical officer, Covestro.
The Emerson-Covestro agreement
reflects an emerging business model in
industry, where manufacturers rely on a
strategic supplier's software solutions and
deep automation expertise to monitor
and execute maintenance, equipment
health, and/or energy-management programs, allowing customers to focus their
attention on critical operating functions
that drive plant performance.

Covestro
Uses
Remote
Services
Gary Mintchell
Contributing Editor

BOOK TIP
In my career in manufacturing and
management, I've found working with
the people side of automation projects to be more important than the
technology side. A few of my projects
"went south" because the workers were
so suspicious of their supervisors that
they wouldn't use my automation.
In Edgar H. Schein's book, Humble
Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead
of Telling (2013, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Oakland, CA, bkconnection.com),
Schein states that many people would
rather fail than admit their dependency
on another person by asking a subordinate or someone to provide needed information. The art of humble inquiry slows
us down so that we can ask and listen. He
says, "I find the biggest mistakes I make
and the biggest risks I run all result from
mindless hurrying." This is a skill that
will pay big dividends. EP

Contributing editor Gary Mintchell
is an industrial-technology subjectmatter expert. He can be reached at
gmintchell@efficientplantmag.com.

Pittsburgh-based polymer manufacturer
Covestro LLC is using Emerson technologies
to help it achieve its goals of minimizing risk
and improving uptime at nine high-utilization
plants. Emerson will provide remote monitoring
and predictive maintenance.

EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM |

http://www.emerson.com http://www.bkconnection.com http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

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