Q&A: Honeywell managers talk wireless

 At the annual Honeywell Users Group (HUG) meeting for customers in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) – staged this year in Baveno, Italy – Patrick Raleigh interviewed Honeywell Process Solutions’ Diederik Mols, EMEA business manager, industrial wireless solutions, and Ignace Verhamme, solution consultants manager, EMEA, about the latest developments in the world of wireless and the continuing saga concerning the ISA100.11a and WirelessHart standards:

PR: Two years ago at HUG 2009, the term “ISA100.11a” was mentioned, it seemed, every five or 10 minutes, whereas it only merited a single mention throughout the entire opening session of HUG 2011. Why the change in emphasis?

DM: Though standards are still important for some end users, [the issue] is less relevant now. Cars drive on the left hand side in some countries and on the right hand side in others, but we still drive cars. It can be of concern for some industries, because ideally, of course, you would have infrastructure for everything to connect together, But, in practice, that will not be the case.

It is a business choice that you make at some point. If you look at someone … promoting WirelessHart, they have passed the point of no return. They just cannot afford to bale out and make a change. It is too much of an investment already done.

Honeywell has adopted the [ISA100] standard because we believe the end user will eventually have a better platform for the future.

Other vendors have also adopted ISA100 and the number is growing by the year. Eight to 10 vendors have compliant devices for ISA100 and there is a perfect workaround for and HART device. We can make any HART device talk in the ISA protocol with the OneWireless adaptor that we are bringing to the market. So there is no limit on choice of sensors for any end users if they choose ISA100.

PR What can you say about the new deal with Cisco on wireless. Is this an exclusive arrangement?

DM This is a strategic move to partner with Cisco; a co-operation for wireless infrastructure in the process environment.

It is a big investment for both companies, that’s not going to be copied by other companies. It is a platform for a wireless infrastructure for the process area with [advanced] capability between access points. [It] also has connectivity with the latest Cisco technology, built into its Clean Air technology, [that offers] the biggest throughput, the biggest availability on the market and also in the same unit is this ISA100 radio to connect to the wireless infrastructure. That’s going to be a platform for decades to come.

PR Did Cisco not do a similar deal with Emerson on WirelessHart, three or four years ago?

DM Emerson had to use a third party [for Wi-Fi} … and they just reverted to Cisco. But that’s a different animal to what we currently are launching. This is a combined module and combined solution between Cisco and Honeywell. We will sell it, Cisco also, and we will align the development activity. It is not going to be the case that next year there is going to be another [such] platform with Emerson or anybody else. This is a platform for the next decade.

PR What is the latest on IEC approval for ISA100.11a?

IV This is scheduled to happen by the middle of next year. So we have ISA100/2009 and now ISA100/2011, which has been submitted for approval to the IEC. There are some modifications and improvements implemented. ISA100 2009 was already performing. There have been some comments raised mainly on security. These have been taken on board and implemented in ISA100/2011.

All that ISA100/2009 equipment, and even before that, will stay on site. There is no taking out of hardware, of the transmitters or access points. The customers do over-the-air upgrades. It is just a matter of upgrading your transmitters.

You have to think about that a bit in terms of which to do first to avoid not being able to talk to other transmitters during the migration. But you only do an upgrade for the firmware of your transmitters, which takes about 10 seconds. Then you move to the access points, and then you have an ISA100 compliant infrastructure.

PR But, after failing to gain IEC approval for ISA100.11a before, is this 100% certain, this time?

IV Is anything 100% sure? But we are confident that it will happen. There is no way of stopping this. It will happen. There is so much demand from our end user community to have ISA100 also finally accepted as an IEC standard worldwide.

PR How come we don’t seem to see as many press releases about ISA100 wireless applications, as we do about the rival standard?

DM Maybe, we are not as slick at marketing. Honeywell is more a consultative selling company, than, say, a transmitter-selling company. Of course, we also sell transmitters but selling solutions is our core competence.

PR So which companies are using Honeywell’s kit?

DM This is the difference. There is no Honeywell ‘kit’. We sell a solution … You can buy transmitters, which are perfectly fine for doing some monitoring, but it is not a solution that is going to provide you with a wired-like performance.

The solution, which we bring to market, is a step ahead of just a monitoring solution. It is going to provide a wired-like performance so that operators will not see a difference in performance or response. It is innately integrated into our Experion DCS systems.

It is one infrastructure for not only doing this transmitter [function]; it does much more. It is enabling wireless computing, wireless CCTV and is really opening up solutions that are going to truly bring value by running operations differently.

We are more a business transformation type of company rather than just provide a unit that does a certain thing.

PR So who is using Honeywell’s wireless ‘solutions’?

DM We have more than 500 sites with plant-wide deployment of multiple applications in North America, Europe, the Middle East, China, Korea, India, Australia and so on. If you count the entire installed base since 2003 you get half a billion operating hours, which, we believe, is more than twice that of any other vendor in the marketplace.

{He later pointed out that many of these applications are detailed on a HPS wireless website}

PR Any other points that you would like to highlight?

DM We believe network planning is important because everybody is going to employ wireless in the coming years. There are no exceptions. We all want to be better informed to stay on top of things, get the latest information and be more proactive rather than reactive. So mobile connectivity in your plants is going to be essential.

Network planning, if done well in advance, will mean you never face a choking effect due to congestion at some point. We all do wireless in a licensed band, which is 2.4gHz in most countries. But in this band a limited amount of traffic is possible.

Therefore, Honeywell believes that careful planning is going to be key if you are going to have a wireless platform for 10, 20, 30 years ahead – rather than invest for just a few years and then have to replace with something else.

And, if you have one infrastructure that can handle multiple tasks you can get priority set in so, for example, critical alarms will always get priority over other types of information, such as corrosion monitoring.

The real revolution that is going to take place is getting IT infrastructure expanded into the process arena. With that you can have mobile devices, computing devices connected so that ultimately staff become better informed and so get better decision-making at an earlier hour or even day.

This, therefore, reduces the likelihood of process safety incidents, as there is greater awareness of process abnormalities in the plant. Secondly, [you] reduce downtime – the number one impact on the [profitability] of any process facility, such as refineries and large chemicals plants.