Emerson Process Management held a grand opening ceremony today at its Round Rock, Texas office to publicly introduce its Emerson Innovation Center for Process Systems and Solutions.
The 282,000-square-foot facility represents a nearly $70 million investment and will serve as the global headquarters for Emerson’s automation systems and project services business.
In conjunction with the opening of the Innovation Center, Emerson also demonstrated its Integrated Operations (iOps) Initiative, which aims to address customer needs for streamlined decision-making, easily accessible expertise, and the safe, collaborative collocation of essential personnel. iOps is designed to enable real-time access to process and asset data for streamlined decision-making workflows.
READ ALSO: Emerson, RtTech to Collaborate On Energy Management Information System
Emerson has three distinctive offerings in its iOps Initiative:
- A scalable automation architecture;
- A real-world lab to experience Integrated Operations, called the iOps Center; and
- Consulting services to help customers envision, plan, and execute their own iOps strategy.
Real-time access to essential information is fundamental to iOps. Emerson’s digital plant architecture, wireless technology portfolio, remote/low-power field communications, and diagnostics-based “Pervasive Sensing” instruments are the foundational elements of the company's Integrated Operations model. Emerson's iOps Center is a real-world, working model of a production enterprise that allows customers to experience collaboration and real-time, multi-disciplinary decision making.
According to Emerson, its Integrated Operations Initiative is already receiving enthusiastic engagement from some of the world’s leading production companies. Meetings in Emerson’s iOps Center have already surpassed initial projections and are expected to increase significantly in 2014. Emerson says it is currently evaluating plans to expand its network of customer experience centers around the globe to support growing demand.
Emerson's Round Rock, Texas Innovation Center is the third such facility globally. The Emerson Innovation Center in Marshalltown, Iowa, develops and tests flow control applications and technologies, while the company’s Innovation Center in Pune, India focuses on software application development.
The Emerson Innovation Center in Austin is comprised of several disciplines under one roof:
- A technology and product design and support center, providing engineering and development for the DeltaV digital automation system and DeltaV SIS Safety System;
- The Integrated Operations (iOps) Center where customers can explore new ways of managing remote operations and of enabling easier collaboration by experts located anywhere in the world;
- The Emerson Process Management Human Centered Design Institute, a consulting and engineering practice that is designed to drive usability-based design into all products Emerson Process Management designs and manufacturers;
- An interoperability and testing lab in which Emerson tests both its own products as well as competitors’ products to ensure safe, reliable operation;
- The Life Sciences Industry Center provides consulting, engineering, and project management expertise to support pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers;
- Educational Services where personnel gain product, technology, and operational skills on the latest Emerson technologies; and
- The company’s Project Management Office (PMO) aligns and integrates the company’s best practices, processes, systems and metrics for global project execution.
