Social Media and Communities in Asia

Posted 3 days ago, under Communities
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I’ll be doing fewer blog posts this week as I travel around many of the Emerson Asia offices sharing ideas on social media and communities.

While in Qingdao, China last week, I had the opportunity to meet Emerson’s Major Chu, who has a highly successful Emerson Flow blog written in the Mandarin language. As social media does so well, it felt like I already knew Major well, before we met face-to-face for the first time.

The team in China has recently opened a Chinese-language community inside the Emerson Exchange 365 community. We hope to see additional languages come online over the next year.

This week, I’m visiting several of the Emerson offices in India.

I hope everyone has a great week and I’ll return to a normal posting schedule next week.

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Another Bust in Solar Power

Posted 6 days ago, under Alternative Energy
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Emerson’s Alan Novak, who leads the alternative energy industry team, describes the continued downward economic pressure on solar power panel manufacturers.

Emerson's Alan NovakIn several previous posts, we’ve discussed the challenges facing solar panel manufacturers due to both declining panel prices and the uncertainties of government subsidies (usually in the form of feed in tariffs, or above market rates paid for excess solar power supplied to the electrical grid). They are not unrelated issues: as cheaper solar panels become available, more people install them, which leads to greater than expected demand for the subsidies. Given the current state of economies around the world, these subsidies are coming under increasing pressure.

The latest example of this interaction comes from the UK which has offered generous feed in tariffs for installers of small (<4kW) solar panel systems.

As the price for panels has dropped…

From: www.comparemysolar.co.uk/price-of-solar/

…installed capacity of Solar PV has accelerated resulting in demand for subsidies above original projections…

From: www.fitariffs.co.uk/statistics/monthly/spend/

Requiring a reduction in subsidies and sending the industry into another “bust”:

From: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/01/solar-panel-demand-subsidy-cut

As highlighted recently in The Guardian article on this subject, solar PV installations have dropped nearly 90% since the government halved the subsidy offered for solar power on April 1st.

This lack of consistent policy is one of the major factors affecting development throughout the alternative energy industry. Policies (mandates, subsidies, etc) which are adjusted as administrations change, or even year to year as economic conditions dictate, make it very difficult to attract investment capital or create long term business plans.

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Simplifying Human Interfaces via Dashboards

Posted 2 weeks ago, under Asset Optimization, Usability
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I had a sneak peak at an upcoming article on human interface design by Emerson’s Tom Wallace. You may recall Tom from some of our earlier smart device and digital communications protocol posts.

In the article, Tom notes the unrelenting drive to simplify, given the ever-increasing body of knowledge that plant engineers must master. Automation suppliers can help by embracing human centered design principles to remove steps, required training, and complexity in their products. As technology advances, the ability of the products to do more increases. This means that there is more to learn and understand to take advantage of the increased amount of information/capabilities in all parts of the process automation system.

Dashboard Overview of Rosemount 3144 Temperature Transmitter

A dashboard is a user interface strategy that allows users to interact with field devices in a simple and consistent way. It is a window into a body of data. Given the sheer number of devices in plants, the dashboard should provide a consistent view and navigation method across different types of devices and present any issues in an intuitive way to help operators and instrument technicians diagnose the problem and take proper remedial action. This dashboard should help operators and technicians determine a device’s operating status and how to properly set it up, calibrate it, troubleshoot it, and maintain and repair it.

In a well-functioning design, the work to be performed is guided with feedback so that the person always knows what to do next, and if the prior step was successful. Also, data provided in a graphical view is easier to understand that data presented in tabular fashion. Tom highlights some statistics that by optimizing the user interface through these design principles, users can increase productivity up to eight times, and reduce human error up to 40 times.

One of the guiding principles around human-centered design is to reduce unnecessary information and steps around the task at hand. This makes the technology subservient to its intended user, rather than the user being subservient to the technology.

I’ve only scratched the surface of the great points Tom makes in the article. I’ll post a link to it once it is published and available online which is expected to be in the July timeframe.

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