The International Society of Automation (ISA) announced the sessions of its Installation, Operations, and Maintenance Track at ISA Automation Week 2011: Technology and Solutions Event. The conference will take place in Mobile, Alabama, USA, 17-20 October 2011, at the Arthur R. Outlaw Convention Center. The Installation, Operations and Maintenance Track offers the latest techniques and technologies surrounding installation, operations, and maintenance functions for facilities or processes in several industries.
- Plant and Process Startups: Pain Free if Done Right!
Presents how problems during startup can be avoided by taking the time to rationalize, standardize and anticipate them. Shows ways that better planning during the design and commissioning of a project can reduce start-up time substantially. Teaches how to partially or completely automate a start-up, thereby placing an operator in a supervisory mode by having the operator approve the continuation of the process at specific intervals.
- Successful Project Management Tips and Examples
Whether a project manager is dealing with a retrofit project with tight budgets and small construction windows, or managing an end-user automation group struggling with the selection of a system integrator for a large project, this session provides solutions for meeting those project management challenges. The discussion exposes some of the “soft spots” in automation project management and provides accounts of the presenters’ own experiences in dealing with the challenges they faced and how they overcame them.
- Trends and Advances in the Pulp and Paper Industry Instrumentation
One of the oldest manufacturing processes in the world of pulp and paper has evolved to use some of the most advanced control systems. Five experts discuss process control and instrumentation trends in the pulp and paper sector.
- Calibration: Learn from the Experience of Others
Highlights the many advances made in calibration. Measurement of uncertainty, as applied to process industries, has a major impact on profitability, quality and maintenance. Accurate control can only be achieved with accurate instrumentation. Instrumentation measurement uncertainty is the combined uncertainty of all parts of the measurement loop.
- Codes, Regulations and Standards
Ideal session for those who design, build or modify motor circuits and/or industrial control panels. Covers codes, regulations, standards, the latest National Electrical Code (NEC) and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) updates and good-practice procedures that affect designing, building and operating facilities.
- Modern Approaches to Maintenance Management
Presents some of the latest techniques and technologies that can help automation professionals avoid catastrophic failures before they occur. Teaches how to improve machine, process or plant reliability. Discusses how improved maintenance management technologies may realize reductions in inspection time, improved equipment operating performance, improvements in safety, cost reductions and an overall improvement in plant or process performance.
- How to Challenge the Control Loop and Improve PID
Control engineers and technicians can spend many hours or even days trying to improve the performance of proportional–integral–derivative (PID) loops. This session teaches how to select an appropriate method for the PID tuning in a particular operation.
- Plant Optimization—It’s a Continuous Process
This session covers some of the common pitfalls, existing in mature process systems, that prevent optimizing the performance of a process by loop tuning alone. The session details constraints of control system tuning versus loop tuning, and offers some areas to consider before beginning a loop tuning exercise. It addresses system designs that help ongoing maintenance, and discusses considerations when applying technology to resolve a problem.
“This track offers attendees the chance to learn the latest techniques and technologies, and gain skills they can put to use immediately when they are installing, troubleshooting, commissioning, operating or maintaining facilities or processes in their individual industries,” said Track Chair, Greg Lehmann.
Complete details of each Installation, Operations and Maintenance Track session are available online or at www.isaautomationweek.org.