Industrial Transformation Blog

Every year LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of asset performance management (APM), our 2019 forecast focused on the impact of Digital Twins on a company’s strategy, go-to-market, business models, and on the direction of process automation.

This year’s AVEVA World 2019 North America users conference was held in Orlando with over 1100 customer and partner attendees from a diverse set of industries plus 300 from AVEVA. The conference was kicked off by Steen Lomholt-Thomsen, Chief Revenue Officer, who introduced Christine Harding, the new Head of the Americas. Lomholt-Thomsen’s opening keynote highlighted AVEVA’s renewed focus on their core industries – oil and gas, chemicals, F&B, Smart Cities – and customers are successfully expanding across the applications portfolio – starting with MES and moving to APM as highlighted on stage as well as with examples from AVEVA clients. Guest keynotes from Lisa Bodell, CEO of FutureThink who spoke about the workplace complexity that is killing organizations' ability to be agile, fast and innovative, and Keller Rinaudo, whose company Zipline uses autonomous drones to deliver medical supplies in war-torn 3rd world countries, also set an encouraging tone for the conference.

This year’s Bentley Systems “Year in Infrastructure“ users conference was held in Singapore with over 1,400 attendees from 45 countries, including Bentley staff and about 130 media and analysts from 25 countries. This year’s theme was Advancing BIM through Digital Twins. No matter where you went, the message was digital twins, twins, and more twins across the entire asset lifecycle and every industry segment from roads, bridges, and buildings to transportation, utilities, and the process industry. BIM stands for Building Information Modeling, but isn’t just for buildings, but for all physical structures and assets as they are planned, designed, constructed, operated and maintained. Digital twins are digital representations of physical assets and their engineering information that allow users to understand and model their performance in the real world over their lifecycle. In effect, Bentley says “evergreen” digital twins advance BIM and GIS through 4D.

Siemens announced on September 16, 2019 that they have agreed to acquire Process Systems Enterprise (PSE) according to Eckard Eberle, CEO of Business Unit Process Automation. Siemens plans to purchase 100 percent of the share capital of PSE and to integrate its business into the Business Unit Process Automation, which is part of Siemens Digital Industries. Siemens has now followed through on their June 2018 long-term collaboration agreement to bring the power of PSE’s gPROMS APM technology to Siemens automation and digitalization offerings for the process industries. Under the original agreement, the companies promised to bring to market a new set of solutions for long-term equipment and health monitoring, soft-sensing, prediction of future process performance, real-time optimization, and operator training incorporating high-fidelity models. The agreement aimed to extend Siemens’ capabilities in the process industries and would result in the close linkage of Comos, Simatic PCS 7 and Simit with PSE’s gPROMS.

On September 9th and 10th of 2019, Operational Sustainability, LLC® held its second Operational Excellence (OE) Conference at the Norris Conference Center at City Centre here in Houston, Texas. Approximately 100 people attended, including partners and industry SMEs. Founder and CEO David Drerup opened the conference keynote with a renewed commitment to serving customers with their OESuite™ of intelligent, real-time decision support and risk management applications that integrate heretofore silos of multiple products. The company is celebrating its 10th year in business. OESuite focuses on the oil & gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, utilities, mining, water / wastewater, and food & beverage markets. They have more than 30 clients, some with 50+ sites.

In mid-September 2019, GE Digital (GED) held its reconstituted User Conference in Austin, Texas. Unlike past Minds & Machines mega-events, this event was smaller and more focused, with approximately 300+ attendees, of which 100 were GED, and the balance being 150+ customers and 45 channel partners from a variety of industries and global locations. GE Digital’s new CEO, Patrick Byrne, keynoted with a renewed commitment to serving customers with deep domain knowledge, long-time asset and process operating experience, digital solutions and services, and the ability to support customers globally. This message seemed well-received as many customers had previously voiced concerns about GE’s viability and continuity in the market.

In June, LNS Research attended Siemens' annual Americas user conference ― Automation Summit ― in Aurora, Colorado. This year the automation and digitalization vendor drew more than 700 attendees, including 400 customers and 100+ channel partners. Customers that attended represent diverse industry sectors such as hybrid manufacturing, specialty chemicals, packaging, glass, metals, and many others. The event boasted about 70 sessions, ranging from breakouts to keynotes, Tech Café demos, and an enormous amount of hardware on display ― we focused our time on:

We recently attended the annual Honeywell Users Group – Americas (HUG Americas or HUG) conference in Dallas, Texas. This year’s event drew more than 1,400 attendees, including 675 customers and 200+ channel partners. With some 150+ sessions, ranging from end-user break out presentations, technology solution presentations, workshop and/or training sessions, and roundtable discussions across multiple tracks, the four-day conference was chock-full of content. We had only one day to attend, so we focused on:

• Honeywell Connected Enterprise (HCE) versus Honeywell Connected Plant (HCP)
• Honeywell Forge
• Experion PKS Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE)

In May 2019 LNS Research attended AspenTech’s annual user conference, OPTIMIZE 2019 in Houston, Texas. This year's event drew a broad range of attendees ― in all 1,000 from 300 operating companies and ten leading universities, across 50 countries. The software vendor was also joined front and center by a major partner, Emerson, which showcased the integration of its Mimic™ Operator Training System (OTS) with AspenTech's HYSYS simulation software, and its expanding set of asset optimization services for typical customers. With some 150 breakout sessions, it was impossible to cover all tracks, so I spent the majority of the time focused on asset performance management.

In April 2019 LNS attended the first annual IBM IoT Exchange event held in Orlando, FL. The company focused its three-day conference on how to achieve operational efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce costs through the application of IoT data and artificial intelligence (AI).  The conference marked the first time that users of IBM’s engineering lifecycle management (DOORS family), enterprise asset management (Maximo portfolio), facilities lifecycle management (TRIRIGA), and the Watson IoT Platform solutions all met together under the Watson IoT umbrella.