Emerson's Aaron Crews joins our continuing podcast series on 5 Questions for an Emerson Expert. Aaron leads the Modernization Solutions and Consulting team. The team creates wiring and control solutions, develops engineering tools, and provides subject matter expertise to minimize cost and risk in control system and safety instrumented system modernization projects.

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Transcript

Jim: Hi, I'm Jim Cahill and welcome to our five questions for an Emerson Expert podcast series. Today, I'm joined by Aaron Crews. Aaron leads Emerson's control system modernization and consulting group. They work with clients to minimize risk and cost in distributed control systems and safety instrumented system modernization projects. Welcome, Aaron.

Aaron: Hey Jim, how is it going?

Jim: Hey, it's great. Let's start out, I like to ask everyone, as you were growing up what led you to the field of science, technology, engineering and math, you know, STEM-related, and I guess specifically chemical engineering, in your case?

Aaron: Well, I think, for me, I've always liked math and science, it's just something that I was good at. When I was in high school, the high school I went to, I think, for the lot of the previous like 10 years or maybe longer, they had won the state championship in UIL Math & Science. And so, there was like this rich history and stuff like that so, you know, besides the sports and stuff like all of that in high school, I also competed in math and science which is kind of interesting.

So, when I was looking at college and trying to decide on how it's gonna apply that, I was just like math, I'm not gonna be a math professor, how can I do some more applied stuff? And so, I thought engineering would be good. And then it's just a matter of what's your favorite? Science or whatever? So like chemical engineering and put them together. And then, you know, as it turned out it's that's one of the best paying fields out there and stuff like that. So, you know, when you're going to college and try to get a job, that's a good motivator.

Jim: Well, it's great to hear that we're not just known for football here in the state but we compete at math and science, as well. So, I guess from that as a chemical engineer, what led you into the field of process automation?

Aaron: Well, for me, I think I had a little bit of exposure in an internship at USDA, of all places. So, back to West Texas where I'm from, working in the fields, the cotton fields and everything there, I found a little bit of technology where we were measuring temperatures and humidity and setting all of that back, wirelessly back to our lab. I thought, "Well, this is pretty cool," you know, just collecting data and then closing the loop and actually hitting a button on a computer making something happen in real life, seem like pretty cool.

But it wasn't until I went to a career fair at [Texas] A&M and I ran into a company called Fisher-Rosemount at the A&M engineering career fair, that I realized I was even in a profession. So, I got pretty excited just hearing that people actually did the sorts of things that I had done in USDA on much broader scale. And so, that kinda set me in motion towards that field. It seemed like something that was really interesting. And it was a long kinda circuitous path but here I am, I made all of that to Fisher-Rosemount and now, of course, Emerson.

Jim: Yeah, it's interesting to hear everyone's path into it and then lot of diversity there, well that's really cool. In the world of control system and safety instrumented system modernizations, can you tell us about any recent or challenges that you may have heard from some of our customers?

Aaron: Well, definitely, you know,