Krohne and Samson Introduce “FOCUS-ON”

Krohne and Samson unveiled their joint venture "FOCUS-ON". "FOCUS-ON" is a new company established for the development, manufacturing and marketing of specialized actuators in compliance with process industry 4.0. With the announcement of the partnership, the new company is presenting a major innovation that combines valve and measurement technologies with unique diagnostic and control functions in a single unit. Officials from both companies stated that this important innovation is "the world's first intelligent process node, a combination of process instrumentation and control equipment specially developed for the process industry". Krohne and Samson, which hold equal stakes in "FOCUS-ON" established in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, stated that the foundations of the "FOCUS-ON" investment were laid as a result of their collaboration spanning more than 25 years on projects worldwide.

The presentation of this strategic partnership in instrumentation and the newly established joint venture was conducted by Samson CEO Dr. Andreas Widl and Krohne CEO Stephan Neuburger.

In the presentation, Widl, stating that "leading innovations in the digital age can only be achieved through collaboration", noted that "here we see a collaboration taking place with full confidence in plain sight". Neuburger later said, "As our first product, we combined our innovative approaches to decentralized control and predictive maintenance, bringing our ideas together and thus 'FOCUS-ON' emerged." The technological motivation behind the module's development was explained by Samson CTO Dr. Thomas Steckenreiter as follows: "With FOCUS-ON, we are taking a decisive step towards autonomous factories capable of autonomous production by optimizing themselves autonomously." Krohne CTO Dr. Atilla Bilgiç expressed his thoughts by saying, "Developing the adaptive control function was only the first step. More important is the integration of artificial intelligence with diagnostic functions. Our autonomous actuator knows its current status, can anticipate future conditions and, with its learning capability, can adapt to applications." The intelligent process node combines three functions: sensor, actuator and control. The module measures flow in a pipeline and independently regulates the valve function to reach specified setpoints. Neuburger continued his summary of the subject as follows: "We are confident that this product will significantly reduce the complexity of a facility. Another advantage of the product is that it has the ability to optimize a process through comprehensive diagnostics in a way that enables better and more efficient control of resources. In this way, facility efficiency can be significantly increased." he said. Thanks to integrated measurement sensors for flow, temperature and pressure, problems such as cavitation can be identified or anticipated. Wear of valves and pipes can be prevented or significantly reduced. This will enable facilities to operate continuously without interruption for longer periods. Sales of the intelligent process node are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2020.