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Executive interviews at the virtual ARC Industry Forum generated insightful perspectives on how companies accelerated their digital transformation journeys in the COVID months. ARC’s Harry Forbes, Research Director, Automation, interviewed Shigeyoshi Uehara, Vice President of IA Systems and Service Business at Yokogawa. They discussed Yokogawa and Digital Transformation Initiatives as well as Yokogawa’s accomplishments in the challenging year of 2020, value proposition for its customers, vision of autonomy, and strengthening partnerships. The full interview can be viewed on YouTube and/or below.
Value Proposition for Customers
Mr. Uehara said that even during difficult times, the company invests in delivering new value to its customers. Yokogawa’s customers are interested in digital transformation and smart factory initiatives that will enable industrial autonomy. Yokogawa refers to this transition with the acronym “IA2IA”- Industrial Automation to Industrial Autonomy. In this context, he highlighted the salient features of the Collaborative Information Server that was released in January. This facilitates immediate improvement to production efficiency and reduction of operational maintenance while building a digital transformation framework. It helps to achieve system integration and consolidate operational monitoring of the many systems that make up the plant.
Disruptive Technologies
“What in your opinion are the disruptive technologies that will have the greatest effect on your customers, and what are you doing about this?” asked Forbes. “Among the many emerging technologies in the process industry today, we feel that the digital twin is one of the most powerful technologies,” said Mr. Uehara. The concept is rapidly evolving. Many people think of a digital twin as a representative of hardware, such as a 3D CAD model, because it is easy to visualize, but actually that is just one digital twin application. New approaches and technologies have opened up a plethora of possibilities, and the definition of a digital twin is now much broader, encompassing more than sensors and machines, but also systems, people, and processes.
Yokogawa has been offering a broad digital twin portfolio for a long time through its subsidiaries (Omega Simulation and KBC) and these applications range from simulation of manufacturing assets to the complete value chain and enterprise. The digital twin operates at multiple levels and helps with asset management, predictive maintenance, production optimization, value chain optimization, and enterprise insights. It delivers benefits, such as higher profitability, improved reliability and safety, higher return on investment, and enhanced productivity.
Supporting the Industrial IoT Trend
When asked about how Yokogawa was responding to end user interest in Industrial IoT trends, Mr. Uehara said that last year the company expanded their line-up of the wireless Industrial IoT solutions called Sushi sensor with a new release of wireless pressure and temperature sensors. The new sensors supplement the integrated wireless vibration sensor that was launched in 2018 and enable the online collection of data from equipment, such as tanks and furnaces. The expanded sensor line-up allows for equipment conditioning monitoring based on a wider variety of plant data, enabling customers to reduce manual equipment inspection and detect signs of problems at an early stage. These new sensors work with the Yokogawa AI and analytics platforms.
Customer-centric Approach
In a year of unpredictability and disruption, “Yokogawa takes care of everything if it's not the customer’s core competence,” said Mr. Uehara. Last year the company launched OpreX Managed Service, which is a part of its OpreX Lifecycle Service portfolio. This is delivered on a digitally integrated service platform that enables real-time data collection from any source and supports both condition-based predictive maintenance and incident management by integrating asset performance, compliance, and security insights into a single dashboard. Using this platform, Yokogawa provides proactive maintenance services to monitor customer assets and deliver optimized maintenance services over the entire plant lifecycle. OpreX Managed Service addresses industry needs by bringing people, processes, and technology together, enabling the digital transformation of operations and maintenance.
Importance of Partnerships
Mr. Uehara said that the company constantly evaluates potential partners for co-innovation, and many recent partnerships work towards sustainability. Citing the example of a new partnership with US-based Power Factors designed for solar, wind and energy storage assets, he said that Power Factors’ cloud-based platform delivers the tools and insights needed to optimize the cost of energy and simplifies the integration of large diverse fleets of renewable energy assets. The combination of Power Factors’ flagship asset performance management platform and Yokogawa's industrial automation system and global service network gives owners and operators the ability to use a standardized hardware infrastructure and software interface across their different plants for more efficient management and analysis. He also specifically mentioned partnership agreements with two other companies – Japan Environment Planning, with a unique recycling technology, and Inspiro AG for high-content analytics in future drug discovery and drug safety.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Regarding AI, Mr. Uehara noted that while artificial intelligence is not a new technology, its deployment directly in plant floor applications is increasing now. The company has been involved in more than 50 AI-related customer cases worldwide. They have learned to address these cases by applying a combination of process knowledge and AI technology. In another 2020 example, Yokogawa launched an AI-enabled paperless recorder. This enables the drawing of the predicted future data or waveforms – which they call Future Pen. Yokogawa also released a new Industrial AI platform (called e-RT3 Plus) for AI applications with Python AI libraries. The platform is certified by the edge platform of major cloud services, Microsoft Azure Edge and Amazon AWS IoT Greengrass. Yokogawa is also researching the use of AI in regulatory control as a replacement or supplement to traditional PID algorithms.