Interview with Brian Joe, Asia Pacific Vice President for Marketing, Commercial Excellence, and IT for Emerson

What are the key differentiators for Emerson in this region?

As a global leader in technology and software, Emerson boasts a comprehensive portfolio of automation technology and solutions tailored for many of the world’s most critical industries, including the energy sector. This portfolio encompasses intelligent devices and sensors, control elements such as valves, actuators, and regulators, as well as automation systems and optimization and simulation software. With these extensive solutions, Emerson is uniquely equipped to support manufacturers through every operational phase—from plant design to operations to maintenance and optimization.

Emerson also has a long-standing presence in the Asia Pacific region, including over half a century of experience in Singapore. This deep-rooted history enables Emerson to understand the unique challenges faced by our Asia Pacific customers and to meet their local needs through leading technology, solutions, services, and expertise.

How is Emerson adapting its business model to better meet the evolving needs of customers in the Asia Pacific region?

To help companies address the dual challenge, Emerson is accelerating strategic investments in software and digital technologies. These are critical enablers for better decision-making and more sustainable operations and, consequently, we see our users making incremental investments in these solutions. Emerson’s investments include a robust innovation pipeline developed for, and with, our customers. New intelligent device technology and software-defined automation systems are central to this innovation focus. Additionally, we are placing significant emphasis on expanding our software portfolio to meet our users’ needs. A key aspect of this expansion is our close commercial relationship with AspenTech, which offers a comprehensive suite of software to help manufacturers design, control, and optimize operations. This new software and subscription business model provides customers with greater flexibility and broader access to the combined solutions of Emerson and AspenTech.

What are the key barriers to digital adoption in the Asia Pacific downstream sector? How is Emerson addressing these challenges?

One of the critical challenges limiting the impact of digital transformation for manufacturers is the prevalence of data silos. Legacy, rigid, hierarchical architectures create these silos, housing production, reliability, safety, and sustainability data in separate repositories that lack cross-functional integration. Despite collecting massive volumes of data, companies can only derive value from a small portion of their data due to this issue.

At Emerson, we envision a future of automation that breaks down these silos and enables manufacturers to seamlessly connect, manage, and integrate data. We call this vision “Boundless Automation,” which aims to integrate the intelligent field, edge, and cloud to unlock the power of digital technologies. This will enable companies to leverage innovations like AI, machine learning, and digital twins. At the center of this vision are a unifying data fabric and software-defined automation, allowing contextualized data to be leveraged securely and flexibly. This vision will also facilitate the creation of an enterprise operations platform, enabling the management of multiple facilities and domains.

How is Emerson positioning itself to support the energy transition in the Asia Pacific region? What role do you see for automation and digital technologies in this context?

Emerson actively supports companies in their transition to more sustainable energy sources and their efforts to decarbonize existing operations.

Firstly, Emerson’s automation technology and solutions are utilized in emerging energy transition markets such as hydrogen, clean fuels, carbon capture, and renewable energy. Our comprehensive portfolio, which includes intelligent devices, control valves, automation systems, and software, assists both traditional energy companies and new market entrants in seeking complete automation solutions. The development of these new markets and greenfield plants presents an opportunity for manufacturers to be “born digital,” utilizing the latest automation technologies—such as wireless systems, asset performance management hardware and software, and advanced simulation and optimization software—from the onset, rather than integrating these technologies later in the facility’s lifecycle. Furthermore, Emerson leverages this extensive portfolio to support the ongoing expansion of the global LNG value chain, encompassing liquefaction projects in North America and the Middle East & Africa, LNG carrier construction, and regasification terminals.

In addition, Emerson aids companies in their efforts to decarbonize existing facilities. To achieve Net Zero targets, manufacturers must explore ways to reduce energy consumption and emissions across their operations. Automation plays a crucial role by providing measurement, control, analytics, and optimization tools that inform users about energy usage and identify efficiency opportunities. Specifically, Emerson collaborates with operators to enhance the performance of boilers and furnaces, identify steam leaks, improve heat exchange performance, and reduce energy consumption from compressed air usage. Each of these solutions utilizes Emerson’s portfolio of intelligent sensors for measurement and software for identifying efficiency opportunities.