Smith Flow Control Appoints New India Sales Manager

British safety engineering company Smith Flow Control (SFC) has announced the appointment of Lakshmanan Venkateswaran as its new Sales Manager in India.

Commenting on his appointment, Mr Lakshmanan was confident he could use his wealth of experience to enhance Smith Flow Control's presence in India: "I am enthusiastic about my new role at SFC and I am sure I can use my knowledge to develop a sound distributor network for SFC's products in India and achieve the growth targets envisioned by the company."

Smith Flow Control is a leading supplier of valve interlocking systems for the oil and gas and chemical processing industries worldwide. The company was established in 1985 in the United Kingdom, where its head office is based. Its interlocks can be used with virtually any kind of valve (including motorised and instrument valves), switches, vessel closures, access guards, pressure and temperature sensing systems and rail/road/sea tanker loading systems. These interlocks reduce the scope for operator error and ensure safe continuous plant operation. Smith Flow Control is a subsidiary company of Halma p.l.c.

(Mr Lakshmanan Venkateswaran, Smith Flow Control Sales Manager for India, Halma Trading and Services India Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai. Tel: 022 42000700. Fax: 91-22-67080415. Email: V.Lakshmanan@smithflowcontrol.com)

The Switch Enters India's Booming Wind & Solar Market

The Switch, a Finland-based new energy technology company, has announced the expansion of its international presence by establishing a wholly-owned The Switch India Office in Chennai. The new home base serves as the company's beachhead to strengthen its business network and to lead business development efforts in the fast-growing wind and solar power market in India.

Pertti Kurttila, VP, Supply at The Switch: "India's growing wind and solar power market is highly attractive for us. The government's wind and solar power program has been the fastest growing sector of the country's energy planning process. India's wind power potential exceeds 45,000MW and the country also possesses a large and high-potential solar energy resource. By 2022, India's target is to have 38,500MW of installed wind power capacity and 20,000MW of solar power respectively, part of which is based on grid connected solar photovoltaic (PV) systems."

The Switch has more than 5,000MW of installed wind power capacity in the global market and in solar solutions the company's focus is on high-power level applications starting at 500kW. "Our strategy is to provide efficient and reliable technology to help India achieve the government's energy goals and to meet the country's growing energy needs also in the future," Mr Kurttila explains. The company is a leading supplier of megawatt-class permanent magnet generator and full-power converter packages that effectively capture power from highly variable new energy sources like wind and solar. The technology ensures reliable, future-proof grid compliance and maximized energy yields. Permanent magnet technology is now gaining momentum in the Indian wind power market.

(Ms Eveliina Linderborg, Communications Manager, The Switch. Mobile: +358 40 808 0579. Email: eveliina.linderborg @theswitch.com)

CANopen Profile for Sub-sea Instruments

CAN in Automation (CiA) has released the second version of the CiA 443 CANopen profile for sub-sea instruments. Sub-sea is a term frequently used to refer to equipment, technology, and methods employed to explore, drill, and develop oil and gas fields that exist below the seabed. Sub-sea instruments are connected to a host controller, which is linked to the offshore platform. For the communication between host-controller and instruments, the SIIS (sub-sea instrument interface system) group has develop in co-operation with CiA the CiA 443 profile, which describes the CANopen communication. The standardied interface covers pressure, temperature, and positioning sensors as well as more complex instruments such as multi-phase flow, wet-gas, sand, and water-cut meters. The profile also includes descriptions for vibration and oil/gas monitors as well as corrosion/erosion and acoustic sensors. In addition, the CANopen interface for chemical injection valves (CIV) is standardized.

Last year, the suppliers have tested their host controllers and instruments in the first SIIS plug-fest for CiA 443 compliant devices. The experiences and results were introduced into the version 2.0, which is partly incompatible to version 1.0. The first Christmas trees (nickname for the sub-sea instrument clusters) compliant to CiA 443 version 2.0 will be installed very soon. They are available in either vertical or horizontal configurations. Those trees may range in size and weight from a few tons to approximately 70 tons. The communication between the offshore platform and the Christmas trees is often based on ModbusTCP or other Ethernet-based networks implementing the CiA 309 protocol to configure and diagnosis the sub-sea tree devices.

(CAN in Automation (CiA) GmbH, Germany. Tel: +49-911-928819-0. Fax: +49-911-928819-79. Email: headquarters@ can-cia.org)

Rockwell Automation Online Tool Helps Manufacturers Reduce Energy Use

Rockwell Automation has developed a free, first-of-its-kind online tool that gives a manufacturer a complete analysis of its current water, air, gas, electric and steam (WAGES) management performance, as well as a clear understanding of how its operating strategies compare with peers in both the same industry and across other sectors. The tool uses a 20-minute online assessment to generate a real-time report outlining a facility's competitive WAGES management baseline. The results allow employees at all levels of the business to identify and implement strategic changes, and to set improvement goals both for single facilities and across their entire organisation.

"Many manufacturers are not aware of how much energy their machines and facilities are consuming at a given time, and how that behaviour compares to peers in their industry," said Randy Selesky, vice president of Power and Energy, Rockwell Automation. "The Energy Evaluator tool offers insight into current WAGES management strategies and allows users to identify meaningful changes to help lower their overall energy costs and make them more competitive in the marketplace."

The Rockwell Automation Energy Evaluator tool is available at ww.rockwellenergyevaluator.com. The report generated by the tool can be exported into Excel, PDF or printable HTML formats to allow for easy internal sharing and manipulation of data to visualise the impact of operational and behavioral improvements.

Users also can continuously access their report and update information to track their progress. Rockwell Automation Industrial GreenPrint consultants are available to help analyse results and identify customised, holistic strategies for implementing improvements.

(Debashish Ghosh, Rockwell Automation, India. Tel: 0120-2895245. Email: dghosh@ra.rockwell.com)

Ricoh India Unveils New Products, Forecasts Ambitious Growth

Ricoh India Ltd, a subsidiary of Ricoh Company Ltd, Japan, a US$ 21.7 billion global giant and the leader in the field of Imaging Solutions shared their plans to target the fast-emerging Graphic Arts Segment in India. To this end, the company unveiled at a press conference in Mumbai on February 10, 2011, its new offering - Ricoh C901/C901S Graphic Arts Edition, an advanced digital colour printing press designed specifically for professional production printing segment.

Speaking on the occasion, N Maitra, Managing Director, Ricoh India Ltd, remarked, "Globally, Ricoh strives to offer products, solutions and services that are innovative, have strong customer focus and are true value for money. Our product range in Digital Production Printing Solutions has delighted consumers immensely because of quality, efficiency, short turnaround time and prompt after-sales service. Since Sept'10, when Ricoh entered the Mid Volume Production Printing market, we have garnered over 33% market share in this segment in India."

Detailing on the various initiatives in India, Sujit Sanyal, Senior Vice President (Business Operations) said "Ricoh's first-of-its-kind Pro-Partnership Programme" offers value proposition for customers have been yielding very good results. Our "Live Experience Centre (LEX)" will be starting in Delhi and Bangaluru in February and March 2011. This will help potential customers to try out the various products - both hardware and software offerings. Additionally, a Media Testing Lab has been added to provide value-added service for customers. We have made an investment of over Rs 20 crore on these initiatives to grow the Production Printing business."

Eaton Introduces DuraForce Series of Pumps & Motors

Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corporation has introduced the DuraForce