In a move that strengthens its operational excellence software suite, Honeywell this week acquired the rights to a data collection application developed by Shell Global Solutions. The technology, currently used for asset management at 25 Shell sites, will now be available to all process manufacturers under the Honeywell brand.
Shell’s Operational and Technical Task for Efficient Rounds (OTTER) will be rebranded by Honeywell and sold as a standalone product and as part of its Operations Management Pro (OM Pro) offering, an MES application providing operator instructions and event and alarm analysis, among other things. By integrating OM Pro and the OTTER technology with Honeywell’s OneWireless Network and its Dolphin industrial mobile computing devices, the company aims to give maintenance personnel access to real-time information for troubleshooting problems in the field.
The application delivers best practices to field operators; provides decision-support capabilities; improves regulatory reporting; and facilitates communication between groups for quicker problem resolution, Honeywell said in a statement.
Shell, which developed OTTER internally for use with its own deployment of OM Pro, had been struggling to support a global user community for the technology, and wanted to leverage a single-source supplier of integrated hardware and software to support the solution. That prompted Shell to sell the technology to Honeywell for an undisclosed amount.