For years, I've been trying to get Bob Wojewodka from Lubrizol to write the same kind of article for Control that Dow Chemical wrote us last year. The Lubrizol/Emerson partnership is one of the two or three that I follow, and can be benchmarked as one of the best collaborations, if not THE best one, in the automation industry.
I finally got Bob to talk. Tonight's edition of the ControlGlobal E-News Special Edition Conference Daily will feature a video interview I did with Bob, Philippe Moro of Lubrizol France, and Terry Blevins of Emerson.
This part of the partnership is doing some really way out on the bleeding edge work in batch technology. They've come up with algorithms and a high-fidelity simulation that enables them to embed real-time batch analytics into the control system.
What does this mean, in plain English? It means that they may be able to identify when and where a batch is going sour, and either repair it, or minimize the effects, or at the very least have the clear analytics to be able to fix the very next batch. This kind of window into the process was what the late, great Tom Fisher, founder of the Batch Standard, and a Lubrizol engineer, envisioned when he created the ISA-88 standard. Now his company and Emerson are making his vision come to pass.
This is bleeding edge, and very cool. Check out the video when it comes out tonight.
