The Manufacturing Excellence conference was larger than ever this year: the growing reputation of this process industry automation and asset management event meant that 370 delegates attended, 20% up on last year. Held at the end of April at the Tall Trees Hotel on Teesside (NE England), this larger venue attracted many new companies from the Teesside area, while retaining previous excellent attendance from companies in the North West of England.

Some Highlights Conference Dinner Thursday morning, when everyone was bright and raring to go after the conference dinner, delegates enjoyed a Keynote speech from Guy Browning, the Guardian Columnist (a major English daily) and man behind John Weak's Diary in Management Today. Guy is Founder of Smokehouse, an innovation consultancy that helps organisations brainstorm new products and services. One of his better accepted business books is "Double your Salary, Bonk your Boss and Go Home Early - an alternative view of office politics". He concluded with the thought that the key interface you have with your boss is the appraisal. His strategy is to learn "to unleash the power of gratuitous flattery, and congratulate your boss on any tasks that he achieved that could be done by a small monkey" Ole Abildgaard of NNE discussed discussed their Modular plant concept, recently used to construct a greenfield plant for Novo Nordisk to produce NovoSeven, a new drug used in the treatment of haemophilia. This plant was completed within 18 months in Denmark, totally instrumented and controlled using Foundation fieldbus, with 1000 instruments. Andy Smith of Huntsman Petrochemicals presented a paper on their use of Advanced Control to achieve better plant output and performance on their paraxylene plant. This plant is also featured as a video case history, which can be accessed directly at www.easydeltav.com/video/casestudies/huntsman.asp. Andy stressed the usefulness of the DeltaV Historian in recording plant performance, including what the operators have been doing: they actually use it like "Big Brother", to see the results of their actions later. The lessons learned there are a great help to the operators, as they need to gain the feel of the plant reaction time, and many times need to let the plant catch up with their actions, rather than act too quickly and over-correct.

Sponsored for 2003 by Emerson Process Management in co-operation with Huntsman International, Aker Kvaerner, Action Energy and the ISA England Section, the event drew strength from the diversity of interests and viewpoints represented. Over 370 delegates registered, from 120+ organisations, with visitors from Finland, Kuwait, Denmark, Holland and Germany, as well as Britain, Ireland and the USA.

Seven separate lecture streams were available, for delegates to create their own programme and choose between speakers describing successful ideas to achieve Manufacturing Excellence, whether in the field of energy efficiency, safety instrumentation and legislation, or one of many different aspects of process control and process plant management. Attention was by no means focussed just on new plant, new technology or investment in upgrades: considerable time was spent discussing how to produce more product more efficiently from existing plant assets, by removing bottlenecks or by taking a new approach to the existing plant. Interchange of user experience between industries showed remarkable similarities in the challenges and business requirements faced by process plant managers today.

Some delegates took the opportunity of an afternoon tour around a Huntsman petrochemicals plant on Teesside, to see some of the results of the tools, techniques and ideas described later in lectures. Lunchtimes and coffee breaks gave an opportunity to visit the manufacturers exhibiting their products and techniques in the "Technology Showcase" associated with the event. This exhibition provided an introduction to nearly 30 separate manufacturers showing new techniques relevant to the industry.

Fred Dibnah

The conference dinner provided a memorable evening for all delegates. Opening on a serious note, Dr Ashok Kumar, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, discussed the recently announced job losses planned in the steel industry. Then the expert in creating space on building sites containing redundant chimneys and buildings, Fred Dibnah, disussed some of the larger challenges he had overcome, in his humourous way. And finally Barry Cryer gave a light hearted review of the names, techniques and technologies he had heard mentioned during the evening. It seemed that everyone had contributed to the raffle, which raised £1400 for the Red Cross, with prizes that included another stay at the Tall Trees Hotel, and a Mountain Bike to help burn off the calories!

The next Manufacturing Excellence Event is planned with a specific Pharmaceutical emphasis, and is currently planned to be held in Cork in the Autumn: more will be published in Readout soon. In the UK, the next event will be Spring 2004.