ISA Announces Installation, Operations and Maintenance Track at ISA Automation Week 2011

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.