How has Emerson’s portfolio of solutions evolved?

Emerson has truly transformed over the last couple of years under the guidance of a new CEO. With the commercial and residential solutions business divested, we are now deeply focused on industrial solutions. Our portfolio has also turned more towards software, with the acquisition of 55% of AspenTech solidifying our position as a leading industrial engineering and technology company, where the automation component cuts through all process and manufacturing industries. Our combined software and hardware portfolio can be best understood across this axis: see, decide, act, optimize. The “seeing” part includes a broad portfolio of measurement solutions like analyzers and sensors, whereas to “decide” you need control systems of both DCS and PLC types to cover processes, and discrete & hybrid industries. “Act” is about the solutions you need for physical movement, such as isolation and control valves. Finally, the “optimize” covers the end-to-end optimization in production, sustainability, and maintenance. While the “decide” and “optimize” parts of our portfolio are mostly software-based, the “see” and “act” include primarily hardware solutions. 

What are some of the challenges your customers face in achieving digital transformation at their operations?

Without getting your basics right, you cannot optimize. Our customers’ plants may have been operated for decades and, even though they were probably built with the best technologies available at that time, a lot has changed in the last 10-20 years. One would be surprised to see how much remains mechanical, pneumatic, and analog, so these fundamentals need to be sorted out first. Digital transformation is mostly focused on automating manual tasks, but there is also this other thread whereby you already have an existing  plant, with automated core process control, but it is dated. The challenge is that the plants were told they already have all the data but it is disparate, so it just needs to be brought together; actually, what they have is a lot of process data, but not enough equipment data. To obtain that equipment data, you need additional sensors, but different from the existing ones that only measure things like pressure, temperature, level, and flow. A new generation of sensors measure a broader spectrum of variables like corrosion, vibration, and acoustic noise, and they are wireless and non-intrusive, which means they can be installed without shutting down the plant. These advanced drop-in sensors are used to cover the missing measurements.

Could you elaborate on the way in which the focus of digital transformation is changing?

10 years ago, when digitalization started, the focus was preponderantly on smart technologies like smart glasses, watches, everything AR and VR, and developing custom-coded apps, and to analyze Big Data and uncover something – not always knowing what. Today, digitalization starts with the problem you are trying to solve. Solutions then go back to known cause-and-effect principles, which may seem dull compared to machine learning, but it is very robust. The name of this new direction of automation is “mechanistic AI,” which uses human knowledge like cause-and-effect principles to monitor and predict problems within existing equipment.  Mechanistic AI works straight out of the box, relying on real-time data, algorithms, and understanding of the equipment. It comes in the form of ready-made apps, but these are not always available for every piece of equipment, which is why machine learning is also available. 

Could you share a few of the solutions that Emerson has recently introduced for both traditional energy and low-carbon energy markets?

We launched a whole suite of new products in 2023, probably too numerous to mention, but to share some examples, we introduced new ‘Radar on a Chip’ technology with our latest non-contacting radar measurement to measure the level of fluids in a tank on a single integrated circuit. This is not only much more accurate compared to older techniques, but it is also more affordable than traditional radar level sensors. 

In the hydrogen space, Emerson has spent a great deal of time and effort dealing with this challenging element. As the smallest atom, hydrogen can penetrate metal such as steel, causing embrittlement, and it needs to be liquified to very low temperatures (ultra-cryogenic minus 253 Celsius) or ultra-high pressure (around 700 bar) to be transported. Hydrogen is also highly flammable, not to mention it burns with an invisible flame. Of course, hydrogen has been produced for the longest time, but never at the scale anticipated today, so Emerson has looked at the entire value chain, from the wind turbines and electrolyzers to reformers, compression, and liquefaction, to transportation, storage, and the point it is dispensed into the vehicle as a fuel, to bring specialized automation solutions at every step.