Let's continue our 5 Questions for an Emerson Expert podcast series with our guest, Riyaz Ali. You may recall Riyaz from numerous posts about digital valve controllers and final control elements in safety instrumented system applications. He has almost 40 years' experience in process control instrumentation and holds numerous patents related to use of digital valve controllers for process industries.

Please leave me a comment or send me a LinkedIn message if there is an Emerson expert you'd like me to interview—and questions you'd like me to ask them—for a future podcast.

Transcript

Jim: Hi, everybody. This is Jim Cahill and welcome to "Five Questions with an Emerson Expert" podcast series. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by Riyaz Ali. And Riyaz is a chemical engineer as a background, and he has extensive experience with digital valve controllers as part of our Fisher brand. He's been with Emerson since 1993. He is my go-to person when I have questions about final control elements and process safety. Riyaz, welcome.

Riyaz: Thank you, Jim. Appreciate for your time.

Jim: So, let's start out. As you were growing up, what led you into the field of STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math, specifically chemical engineering?

Riyaz: Oh, when I was growing, I was very keen, specifically, on the mathematics. That was one of my very interesting subject...it's not that because I was doing excellent, but I had some kind of leaning towards mathematics which made me so comfortable when I started thinking about the science and engineering and correlating, specifically, with physics and chemistry.

Jim: Oh, okay. So, I guess after you graduated with a degree, what got you into the field of process instrumentation and automation?

Riyaz: That's an interesting question. Because when I graduated, I was thinking that I would be working in a chemical plant having distillation, absorption, adsorption, and these were one of my very keen topics. But the moment I started working on chemical engineering distillation columns and all, I found that those things require much precise control. In each stage of the distillation, I need to be having a better control on the pressure, temperature. All those kind of things led me to believe that why don't I go into more in-depth of the instrumentation field? And that's how I had attachment towards not only control instrumentation, but towards the final control element because that was the main heart of the process control whenever you do a precise advanced control.

Jim: I guess, as you speak with some of our customers, are there any interesting challenges you've heard recently from them that you've discussed?

Riyaz: Generally, nowadays the main challenges from the customers are in the digital world, the technology obsolescence is very, very rapid. And right now, what we are seeing that lot of the field assets are migrating towards digital kind of protocol communication because the diagnostic is a key, and advance predicting the life of the asset. It is a very major component for the maintenance and operation team. And that, it looks like that the digitalization to keep apace is becoming a big challenge in the industry. And that's what I find from the customer mind whenever I talk to him, and they think like iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6, this if you're sick of it. How do we keep our process control plant life running which is more than 25 years? So, in those challenges, I find very interesting discussion that how do we keep the development in the software in the pace with the hardware? 

So now, what I find from this kind of discussion, a learning curve from us, that whatever the hardware we develop, it should be in the keeping in mind for 25 years' life, keeping the software to be upgradable or the line in the line when the process is running, and at the same time keep the pace with the microprocessor based technolo...