Emerson Global Users Exchange 2010 September 27 - October 1, 2010
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas

 
 
 
 

Emerson Global Users Exchange Board

The 2010 Board of Directors:

The Advisory Board

Full Member Biographies

Aaron Wood
Chairman, Emerson Global Users Exchange
Evonik Degussa

Aaron is an Engineering Consultant within the Process Automation group at Evonik Degussa’s Tippecanoe Laboratories plant site in Lafayette, Indiana.  He is primarily responsible for process control and automation improvements and expansions of existing DeltaV and PROVOX control systems.  These control systems provide batch control for bulk pharmaceutical processes in flexible manufacturing facilities.  Aaron has approximately 18 years of control system engineering experience having also worked at Eli Lilly and Company in Lafayette, Indiana; 3M Company in Decatur, Alabama; and Exxon Pipeline Company in Houston, Texas.   He received a BS in electrical engineering from Mississippi State University in 1991 and a masters of electrical engineering from the University of Houston in 1996.   Also, he is a registered professional engineer in the states of Texas and Indiana and a certified automation professional (CAP).  Aaron, his wife, Lynn, and their 3 children reside in West Lafayette, IN.

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Danny Streets
NewPage Corporation

Danny has worked at NewPage (formerly MeadWestvaco, Westvaco) Corporations Luke, MD paper mill since 1988. He has held the following positions with increasing responsibilities throughout his career: Tech Service Project Engineer I, Maintenance E/I Project Engineer II, Electronics Engineer, E/I Maintenance Coordinator for Pulp, Power, & Recovery Areas, Senior Process Control Engineer, and most recently Process Control Group Manager. He has been heavily involved with automation projects throughout his entire career involving PROVOX, DeltaV, and Modicon. Lead design engineer on several of those projects. Danny recently pioneered the first design and installation of digital communication networks in his mill consisting of Asi, Fieldbus, and DeviceNet. He received a Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from West Virginia University in 1987. His plans are to optimize his mill using new technology to reduce costs. He has attended several Emerson Exchanges and belongs to the Instrument Society of America (ISA). He has worked with virtually all PROVOX hardware since the late 80's and most DeltaV products since version 7.3 as well as many Rosemount products. NewPage Corporation produces fine coated printing paper used in magazines, corporate reports, labels, etc.

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Mitzi Amon
Emerson Process Management, Asset Reliability Services

Mitzi Amon joined Emerson in 2000 and has 14 years experience in the electrical services industry. She is currently Director of Marketing for Emerson’s Asset Optimization Division, Asset Reliability Services group, which provides services and solutions that improve the performance and reliability of a facility’s instruments, valves and electrical distribution system.

Prior to joining Emerson, Mitzi held a variety of positions in marketing, strategic planning, and operations management. Her last position was with ABB serving as Director of Strategic Planning and Marketing for their electrical services business.

Mitzi is a Business and Computer Science graduate with a Masters in Business Administration, Marketing Concentration. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Down Syndrome Association and is a member of the International Electrical Testing Association (NETA) marketing committee.

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Dave Anderson
Emerson Process Management

Dave Anderson has over 17 years in the Instrumentation/Process Control field, having several Field Application, Sales and Product Management positions. Dave has worked for such companies as Air Products, Air Liquide and Teledyne. In 2000, Dave joined Emerson’s Rosemount Analytical Process Analytic Division as Product Manager for the Next Generation Analyzer Line. In 2003 Dave transferred to Rosemount Analytical Liquid Division where he is currently the Industry Marketing Manager. Dave lives in Costa Mesa, California with his wife Megan and two boys Kyle and Matthew. He likes throwing batting practice to his two boys and spending quality family time at the beach.

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Calvin Burnett
VRC Company

Calvin Burnett has been with the VRC Company, Emerson's Local Business Partner in Memphis, Tennessee for 28 years. In his career with the VRC Company, Calvin has served in several account management and sales leadership roles for Emerson’s Valve, Regulator, Systems & Solutions, and Asset Optimization divisions. He currently serves as the company’s DeltaV and Asset Optimization Champion.

Calvin’s first advisory role for Emerson was on the Fisher Controls “1995” Committee, started in 1985. The charter of this committee was to forecast and brainstorm the technologies that Emerson would be developing and producing for the process automation industry ten years into the future. One of the most significant technologies hatched by the committee was the “smart valve” concept, the first of Emerson’s ‘smart’ digital instruments. Calvin also served on Fisher’s Valve Advisory Board for the Chemical Industry. He was instrumental in the launch of the FIELDVUE digital valve controller in his previous role of FIELDVUE Champion.

Calvin holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Engineering Technology from the University of Memphis, and now serves as an advisor to the university’s Mechanical Engineering Department Biodiesel program.

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Jay Colclazier
CHS Refinery

Jay Colclazier is currently a Sr. Automation Engineer at the CHS Refinery in Laurel, Montana. In this role he is responsible for DeltaV migration projects and refinery process improvements through automation. Prior to joining CHS, Jay spent several years as the Automation Group Lead at Biosource America, a Montana based company focused on the design, construction and operation of biodiesel refineries. In this role Jay lead the automation design, construction, and startup efforts for 4 grass roots biodiesel refineries utilizing Emerson’s PlantWeb technologies. In addition to this recent experience, Jay has over 15 years of industrial automation experience with both Monsanto and Celanese utilizing PROVOX and RS3 control systems.

Jay has also spent over 15 years within Emerson Process Management and the Local Business Partner organization. At Emerson Process Management, Jay worked as a systems engineer, an Advanced Control Consultant and served as the DeltaV Advanced Control Marketing Manager.

He spent 6 years with Applied Control Equipment as a Control Systems Specialist and worked with a variety of companies on the design and implementation of PlantWeb automation solutions.

Jay graduated from Oklahoma State University with a M.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. He is the author of several technical articles. Jay has been an active participant in the Emerson Global Users Exchange for many years and has presented numerous papers and workshops.

Jay lives with his wife Debbie in Billings, MT.

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Dino DeSalvo
LyondellBasell

Dino DeSalvo graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University. He worked for an Engineering firm for five (5) years before joining LyondellBasell in 1991. He worked in Project Engineering and Maintenance departments before joining the Corporate Control System & Electrical Engineering (CSEE) Department in 1997. He is currently in the CSEE Instrument & Control Systems Group. His project responsibility is technical lead on major Control Systems and Safety Instrumented Systems. He is team leader for LyondellBasell DCS PROVOX migration and member of LyondellBasell Fieldbus and SIS committees.

He is currently LyondellBasell technical liaison for all Emerson Products (DCS, Instruments and Valves). He belongs to the Micro Motion Customer Advisory Board, Fisher Advisory Council and the Emerson Exchange Advisory Board. He has served on the ISA, Will-DuPage Section board for the past 15 years with eight (8) years as President and now is the Treasurer. He served on the board of the ISA host committees in 2002 and 2005. He received the ISA Distinguished Society Service Award in 2008 for outstanding service and contributions to the society and its members.

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Jim Hendrix
Control Southern

Jim Hendrix has been with Control Southern (Emerson's Local Business Partner in Atlanta) for 22 years. During his career with Control Southern Jim has served in several account management and sales leadership roles for Valves, Regulators, Systems & Solutions and Asset Optimization. He is currently Vice President of Asset Optimization & Process Systems Solutions.

Jim serves on the board of directors of the Georgia Tech Pulp & Paper Foundation and is an officer of the Paper Industry Management Association (PIMA). He began his career as a process control engineer for Simons-Eastern Engineering in Atlanta and holds a bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from The Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Dave Imming
Executive Sponsor, Emerson Global Users Exchange
Emerson Process Management, Process Systems & Solutions

Dave Imming is the Executive Sponsor for Emerson Global Users Exchange. The Executive Sponsor’s role is to provide guidance and support to the User-led Emerson Exchange organization, and to manage Emerson’s resources in producing the annual Emerson Exchange conference. Dave has extensive experience in Services Management, Customer Relations, Product Management and Project Management. Dave has over 20 years of experience with Emerson Process Management and has held a variety of positions at Emerson including operations, sales, service, marketing and management. His responsibilities have included domestic as well as international and global assignments. Dave has worked with users in a wide variety of industries and in all world areas. In addition to his Emerson work experience, he worked at Proctor and Gamble doing new product formulation, at Applied Automation doing software development and advanced process control, and at Zebra Imaging managing their service and operations functions. His educational background includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Oklahoma State University and a Masters in Business Administration from St. Edward’s University in Austin.

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Mark Isom
National Cooperative Refinery Association (N.C.R.A.)

Mark J. Isom P.E., is a controls/instrument engineer with twenty-five years of experience. Mr. Isom's career began in 1983 with Litwin Engineers and he has held various positions in the control industry during this time. Currently he is in his 12th year as a Senior Process Engineer with the National Cooperative Refinery Association (N.C.R.A.) in McPherson, KS. N.C.R.A. is regional refinery serving many customers including rural customers through distributions to farm cooperatives. Mr. Isom's responsibilities include the specification of a variety of field instrumentation including Fisher control valves and regulators, Rosemount field devices, Micro-Motion Mass flow solutions and other Emerson product lines. He has helped implement and manage control projects ranging from small process improvement upgrades to new grassroots units. He has a wife, Sandra Isom, and two sons, Nathan and Daniel. Mark enjoys officiating and is a National Level official with USA Track and Field. Mr. Isom holds a MS in Chemical Engineering from Kansas State University, is a registered PE and a member of ISA.

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Bruce Johnson
Secretary/Treasurer, Emerson Global Users Exchange
Emerson Process Management, Process Systems & Solutions

Bruce joined Emerson Process Management in 1988 as a marketing analyst and has held a variety of positions within Emerson including product manager, program manager, industry sales engineer, and sales development and support manager, working primarily with Emerson's PROVOX and DeltaV product lines. Bruce has published several papers for the process control industry and was recognized with awards for Best Technical Paper-ISA/95 and Best Overall Paper-ISA/96. Bruce is a 1979 graduate of The University of Texas Business School and previously worked with Carnation/Nestle and IBM.

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Bruce Johnson
The Lubrizol Corporation

Bruce is the engineering manager at The Lubrizol Corporation’s Texas plants, where he manages multidiscipline project engineering personnel responsible for design engineering and implementation of capital projects for the Deer Park, Texas, Bayport, Texas and LaPorte TPU facilities. In addition, Bruce also provides support for global lubricant additive project initiatives.

One of the world’s premiere specialty chemical companies, Lubrizol provides innovative technology to global transportation, industrial and consumer markets. A pioneer in the science of lubricant additives, Lubrizol has expanded beyond its origins to serve the much larger specialty chemicals market. Today, our customer base is as likely to include world leaders in personal care and performance coatings as it is to include global oil marketers.

The Texas facilities are Lubrizol’s largest lubricant additive manufacturing facilities in the world. In addition, Bruce helps influence the corporation’s vision in the area of automation, asset optimization and process control optimization for the Texas plants.

Bruce is a member of Lubrizol’s Corporate OMS (Operations Management System) Steering Committee in which Lubrizol has a collaborative alliance with Emerson Process Management. As the chairperson of the OMS Standards team, he is responsible for leading the initiative for the development and distribution of automation standards globally to Lubrizol’s lubricant additive facilities.

Bruce served on the formerly known Fisher-Rosemount User’s Group Board (1999-2000) and has published numerous technical articles in trade magazines such as ISA Intech, Control Engineering, Control Magazine and others. He has over 17 years of manufacturing experience in the textile and chemical manufacturing industry and has served in management roles in operations, technology, maintenance and engineering.

Bruce has been an active participant in the Emerson Global Users Exchange since 1996 and has presented several technical papers. He is a 1989 graduate of Tuskegee University with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering.

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Kevin LaPierre
Seadrift Coke L.P.

Kevin LaPierre is the Maintenance Manager at the Seadrift Coke, LP needle coke facility. Kevin previously worked as the Plant Engineer and then the Technical and Project Group Manager for Seadrift Coke LP. Prior to working at Seadrift, he worked for ChevronTexaco where he held positions as a Facilities Engineer in Midland, Texas, then at the Richmond Refinery in Pt. Richmond, California where he provided turnaround engineering support, project engineering support and daily plant engineering support. Kevin has 10 years of Maintenance, Project Development and Refinery Engineering experience.

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Sunny Mohar
Suncor Energy, Inc.

Sunny Mohar is the Director of Automation with Suncor Energy Inc. He has more than 10 years experience in Oil & Gas, Chemical and Power industries with the last five years in In-Situ Operations. He oversees Process Control and Process Information Systems for In-Situ and is responsible for supporting Operations, Process Engineering and Maintenance. Firebag In-Situ Plant uses DeltaV, AMS and SIS from Emerson.

His previous work at Matrikon, Inc. involved data management, industrial historians, interfaces, relational databases and real time visualization.

Sunny has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a diploma in Computer Engineering. He lives with his family in Calgary, Canada.

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Neal Rinehart
Emerson Process Management, Valve Division

Neal Rinehart is currently Director of Control Valve Performance Technologies at Emerson Process Management - Fisher Valve Division. As part of his responsibility, Neal is directly involved with process improvement initiatives in the refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries. Much of his work is focused on the impact of the final control element on the efficiency of process unit performance. The development and application of predictive maintenance for control valves is also a key interest area. At the present time, Neal is also involved with the design and construction of the new Technology Development Center for the Fisher Valve Division.

Prior to his current position, Neal was the Manager of Research and Analysis and directed research efforts for the Final Control Systems group at Fisher. Included in this function were the areas of materials, flow sciences, control theory, instrumentation, and advanced analysis.

Neal joined Fisher in 1973 after graduating from Iowa State University with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Iowa. You may contact him at:

Emerson Process Management – Fisher Controls
205 South Center Street
Marshalltown, Iowa 50158
Telephone: (641) 754-2612
Fax: (641) 754-2277
Neal.Rinehart@emerson.com

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Mahendra Shah
Mustang Engineering

Mahendra Shah P.E. is a Control System/Instrument Engineer with thirty five years of experience in engineering and management. He started his career at Engineers Inc, in Newark NJ in 1974 as a Process and Instrument Engineer. He moved to Litwin Engineering in Wichita Kansas as an Instrument Engineer for the refineries and chemical plants. He moved to Koch Refining Corpus Christi refinery as a lead Instrument Engineer, where he was responsible for the day to day support of the refinery. He also managed refinery’s DCS upgrade projects that converted existing pneumatic controls to PROVOX DCS system, and to build a central control room. He transferred to the Koch Corporate office as a Manager of the Technology Group and was responsible for setting the long term technical direction of the Refinery process control strategy. He was also involved with the Fisher/Emerson customer advisory group. Mahendra was a Board Member of the PROVOX user group for 1995-96. Since 2000, he has worked with Mustang Engineering as a Project Manager in the Automation Group and most recently, as an Upstream Sector Lead and Department Technical Authority for the Instrumentation and Control Systems. Mahendra holds BS in Chemistry from India and BS and MS in Chemical Engineering degrees from Texas A&I University and is a registered P.E. in Texas.

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David Stauffer
Bristol-Myers Squibb

David has been with Bristol Myers Squibb for over 6 years and currently manages the Software Automation group at the Large Scale Cell Culture (LSCC) facility in Devens, Massachusetts. His responsibilities include supporting the commissioning and validation of the DeltaV and Syncade systems for a green field large scale biologic drug substance manufacturing facility. His prior experience with BMS includes several years at their organic synthesis pilot facilities in New Brunswick New Jersey, where he supported several DeltaV Batch systems for pilot scale production.

Prior to BMS, David spent several years working for Applied Control Engineering and the Life Sciences group of Emerson Process Management, as well as working for a small API manufacturer in southern New Jersey.

David holds a BS from Widener University, and a MS from the University of Connecticut, both in Chemical Engineering. His work experience includes implementation and troubleshooting of a wide range of PLC and DCS control systems, as well as experience with many instrumentation bus technologies. David currently resides outside Worcester Massachusetts with his wife and son.

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Tracy Waller
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions

Tracy is Manager of the Tritium Projects and New Missions group at the Savannah River Site's Tritium Facilities in Aiken, SC. He is responsible for the upgrade of the facility control systems to DeltaV, utilization of the facilities already existing smart instrumentation (the old control system doesn’t do this), and managing the upgrade of the facility MES system, ARMS (Automated Reservoir Management System). Tracy has approximately 17 years of control system engineering experience having also worked at the H Canyon and the H Tank Farm Facility at the Savannah River Site. He received a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of South Carolina in 1992.

Tracy lives in Olar, SC, with his wife Dawn and children Brittany, Nicholas, Andrew, and Mattie.

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Carla Koritnik
Monsanto

Carla Koritnik is a process control engineer at the Monsanto elemental phosphorus plant in Soda Springs, Idaho. Carla has held a variety of positions in project, process, environmental and control engineering. In addition, she has worked at the JR Simplot Co. fertilizer facility in Pocatello, Idaho.

Carla graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1980 with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering and is a Registered Professional Engineer in Idaho.

 

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Christoph Lebl
Genentech, Inc.

Christoph Lebl’s career in the Instrumentation/Process Control field started 1980 when he signed up for the 3½ apprenticeship program with Bayer AG to become a certified Instrumentation and Control Technician. He graduated from college in 1990 with Bachelors degrees in Electrical Engineering.

Christoph worked at Bayer AG in Wuppertal / Germany from 1980 until 2003. In 1999 he moved with his family to Clayton NC as engineering lead for instrumentation and control of a grass-root manufacturing facility for the biotech business. Two years after returning from Clayton NC, he moved back to the United States to work for IDEC Pharmaceuticals as engineering lead for instrumentation and control of a grass-root project on one of the largest biotech manufacturing facilities in the US. In 2003 Biogen and IDEC merged to become BiogenIDEC and in 2005 this facility was sold to Genentech Inc. Christoph lives in Oceanside CA, with his wife Barbara and his children Maximilian and Charlotte. He likes to play golf and has a passion for working with wood. 

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Ed Lynch
Pfizer

Ed Lynch has been with Pfizer for 30 years in various automation engineering, management, and project capacities at several plant sites and global organization within Pfizer. He is presently working in a global automation and information technology management group in Groton Connecticut.

Ed has installed several large batch automation distributed process control systems including several DeltaV configurations, several Electronic Work Instruction systems, vision systems, continuous utility control systems and several MES projects.

He is currently involved in a large SAP integration to the plant floor project within the Pfizer’s manufacturing group. He is a member of AIChE, ISA and is on the S88, part 1, part 5 and S95 committees. He holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, a Masters of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado and holds Professional Engineering licenses in the state of Massachusetts and Indiana.
 
 
 

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