New MD to focus on business growth for UK and Ireland

Industrial automation and control systems specialist Yokogawa UK Ltd has appointed Simon Rogers as the company's new Managing Director. 

In his new role, Rogers will extend the company's focus on process control and safety systems success in the oil and gas sector through an enhanced Aberdeen presence.

Furthermore, Rogers will further develop business in the chemicals industry and continue the recent order growth in Yokogawa’s world class field instrumentation, whilst also providing the engineering and life cycle support services essential to our customers.

Rogers, who joined the team in October, graduated from The Imperial College of Science and Technology with a first class degree in Chemical Engineering.

Rogers started his career as a Chemical Engineer in 1986, with KBC Process Technology helping its customers optimise oil refineries using the business’s pioneering refinery simulation software.  He then worked for ABB and later Honeywell, managing the implementation of state of the art advanced process control and on-line optimisation solutions in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries globally.

“I am proud to have joined Yokogawa, a company with a global reputation for leading edge industrial automation technology and warm-hearted staff," Rogers said.

"I am excited by the challenge of building on Yokogawa’s success in a wide variety of industries including oil, gas, chemical, pharmaceutical and power and help maintain Yokogawa’s close relationships with engineering companies and original equipment manufacturers. I am also looking forward to helping maximise the contribution to the UK and Ireland of Yokogawa’s broad-ranging activities in the areas of measurement, control, and information," he concluded.

Rogers brings in depth experience from his previous roles as Director of Honeywell Hi-Spec Solutions and Chief Information Officer for KBC. He also has a wealth of knowledge in supply chain planning and optimisation solutions for the process industries.

Control and safety agenda for Offshore Europe

 ~ Yokogawa UK benchmark’s excellence in upstream functional safety ~

Control and safety will be on the agenda when Yokogawa UK exhibits at Offshore Europe 2013 on September 3-6, in Aberdeen’s Exhibition & Conference Centre. The focus of the company’s exhibit will be the evolving needs of platform safety systems and the advanced diagnostics, communication, and instrumentation configurations that go hand in hand with these changes.   

A key part of the stand will be Yokogawa’s ICSS (Integrated Control and Safety Systems) exhibit, which will feature an upstream demonstration, explaining best practice testing functions.

The stand will also include a field control station (FCS) and safety control station (SCS). This will allow the Yokogawa team to explain how the end user could manage the generation of, and recovery from, process alarms, monitor system shutdowns and manage the status of the platform, as well as taking advantage of a host of other functions. A ProSafe SLS 19” rack will demonstrate integration display through the HMI (Human Machine Interface) control layer.

There will also be a demonstration of Rigrider, a new product developed by Dalma Energy, Yokogawa, and Well Engineering Partners to promote safe rigging practices.

Rigrider encourages the user to be aware of all essential information and procedures at the time they are at work, using a watertight system to train, inform and guide rig personnel using smart phones, iPADs and other touch screen technology.

A demonstration of excellence in information management will be provided by Yokogawa’s Exaquantum product, which is an advanced Plant Information Management Systems (PIMS) suite, able to acquire data from all facets of an upstream process. It can then transform that data into easily usable and interpretable, high-value, widely distributed information.

The final area of the exhibition will focus on benchmarking excellence in process measurement.

“The upstream oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) sector is hugely important to Yokogawa,” explained Marcel Kelder ‎Global Account Manager at Yokogawa Europe B.V. “The E&P communities operate in very complex markets where each and every technical advantage that can be obtained is crucial. Our industrial automation and North Sea knowledge means we are in an excellent position to help provide that advantage, with regard to process measurement, safety and control.

“In particular, history shows that bookshelves full of information don’t consistently lead to safe and efficient drilling operations with minimal human error. It’s the intelligent use of data that can help bring best practice off the shelf and into the hands of E&P professionals,” he concluded.

The Yokogawa team will be on hand to answer any questions from visitors and a range of interactive presentations and movies will be available to select on an interactive monitor.