Award Recipient - HIMA (Shanghai) Safety System Co., Ltd.

Shanghai, China /PRNewswire/ - The 2009 Frost & Sullivan China Award for Product Innovation is presented to HIMA (Shanghai) Safety System Co., Ltd. (HIMA), for its outstanding achievements in technology innovation, and in recognition of excellence and vision of the safety system -- HIMax.

Safety Instrumented System (SIS), a control system for safety, defined by the International Electro technical Commission (IEC) standard IEC 61508 and IEC 61511, is a safety interlock protection system applied for large equipment independent of production process control system. The safety system conducts real-time on-line monitoring, and promptly sends protection interlock signal to manufacturing process to implement interlock or emergency stop on hazardous cases. In industries of petrochemical, chemical, metallurgy, and pharmaceutical, SIS functions as Emergency Shutdown System (ESD); in areas of industrial process, mining, and public buildings, it acts as Fire and Gas Protection System (F&G); in oil extraction and offshore platforms, as High Integrity Pressure Protection System (HIPPS); in steel, power, and waste incineration, as Burner Protection System (BMS); in oil refining, air separation, and power plants, as compressor protection system; in playgrounds, cranes, and punching machine, as mechanical safety protection system; in the automotive manufacturing and foundry, as production line safety protection system; in stadiums, airports, and railways, as security protection system.

The safety instrumented system standards are recognized by more and more people and the global manufacturing industry is expanding to China and India. Thus, the demand of safety instrumented system is increasing dramatically in China. It is anticipated that the global safety instrumented systems market will grow from USD1.50 billion in 2008 to more than USD2.50 billion in 2012, with the compound annual growth rate over 13.0%. In 2008, China's market size of safety instrumented systems was nearly RMB10.0 billion. In China, major suppliers of SIS are : ABB, GE Fanuc, HIMA, Honeywell, ICS Triplex, Invensys-Triconex, Rockwell Automation, Siemens, Yokogawa. As one of the major suppliers, HIMA occupies a large market share.

HIMA (Shanghai) Safety System Co., Ltd was founded in 2002 as a subsidiary of HIMA Paul Hildebrandt GmbH + Co KG. Up to now, HIMA Shanghai has more than 130 employees, 70 of them are experienced engineers, and 12 are certificated by TuV. Besides the headquarters in Shanghai, HIMA also sets up 4 branch offices in Beijing, Shenyang, Shenzhen and Chengdu, structuring a powerful sales and technical service network. Furthermore, HIMA will set up more offices in various important cities in the near future. The average annual sales growth rate of HIMA is around 20.0%. And the growth rate in 2009 is expected to be 15.0~20.0%. What's more gratifying was that in June 2009, HIMA Global headquarters appointed HIMA (Shanghai) to be the engineering base of HIMA Global Safety Automation System. That means HIMA (Shanghai) will participate in many larger-scale international projects, and their serving scope will expand to Africa, Middle East and other Asia Pacific regions.

In the past seven years, HIMA Shanghai has become one of the leading safety systems providers in China, and built up good co-operation relationships with PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC, BASF, Bayer and other international giants. About more than 1,000 units of safety automation system were sold in China. Ms. Zhang, Senior Engineer, from Technical Support Department of Shanghai SECCO, said: "HIMA is a company with 100 years of history, and a very experienced manufacturer of safety automation systems. It enjoys a high reputation globally, and obtains many international certifications for safety systems. HIMA's products have superior features, for example, the Industrial Ethernet is fast and stable, utilizing four-fold redundancy structures. By utilizing them, we have no failure operation up to now. The operating cost is significantly reduced." In the interview with Mr. Gao, Director of Fushun Petrochemical Corporation, he said: "We started to adopt HIMA products since the 1990s, in recent years, HIMA products are utilized in our renovation projects. The products of HIMA not only have good performance but also have outstanding compatibility. In addition, the engineers of HIMA are very professional and experienced. Our machines have never stalled. Productivity is obviously improved after implementing the safety system of HIMA." Thanks to the company's culture and spirit: "Safety Nonstop", "Innovation Nonstop", HIMA keeps leading position in Chinese market and achieves notable successes. Up to now, HIMA is the only independent SIS supplier in the world; all of its business is focused on SIS areas, which allows HIMA to put all efforts to SIS development and innovation. Moreover, HIMA invests 15.0% of sales revenue in R&D each year, which provides a powerful impetus for the innovation. This is also the reason why HIMA has obtained so many world's No. 1:

• 1970 The world's first TuV certified safety system: Planar
• 1986 The world's first TuV certified programmable safety system: H50
• 1991 The world's first TuV certified reverse complier
• 1997 The world's first TuV certified redundant 2004D/QMR system: H41q/H51q
• 1997 The world's first TuV certified safety-related communication (SIL3) over Ethernet: safe Ethernet
• 2002 The world's fastest TuV/BG certified safety systems for factory automation: HIMatrix
• 2002 As the 1. Manufacturer of safety-related system in the world HIMA was awarded IEC 61508 safety certification "Functional Safety Management" by TuV
• 2003 The world's first TuV confirmed SIL calculation & verification software: SILence
• 2007 The world's first certified safety system in accordance with EN ISO 13849-1 and EN IEC 62061
• 2008 Launch of HIMax, the world's 1. TuV-certified nonstop safety system 100-year anniversary of HIMA

In October 2009, HIMA grandly launched the new SIS product "HIMax" in "The twentieth Multinational Instrument Exhibition", which is one of the most powerful safety platform. It is featured as: unlimited complex calculations, multi-redundant structures and fault-tolerant systems; fastest SOE event logging capabilities, 5000 events store ability, 1ms resolution; optimized self-diagnosis, covering rate of 99.99%; seamlessly integrated with any DCS; with the most advanced of the Secure Application Manager SILworX. It is worth mentioning that the new product has been adopted in the Bayer Shanghai Caojing toluene diisocyoanate (TDI) project.

"We are deeply honored to receive the Product Innovations Award from Frost & Sullivan, a famous growth partnership company in the world." Qu Zhenyuan, CEO of HIMA (Shanghai) said: "As a century-old company, HIMA is focusing on the product manufacturing, development, and is recognized by customers for excellent quality and service. The new product, HIMax series, which have strong functions, will continue to serve our customers in the development of China's manufacturing industry."

HIMax delivers life long availability by enabling uninterrupted system operation throughout plant's entire lifecycle. This maximizes plant availability and improves productivity. HIMax's XMR architecture eliminates any single point of failure. Redundancy can be customized to ensure optimal protection. Spurious trips are virtually impossible. All changes and maintenance procedures are undergoing without stopping the HIMax system. Even the proof tests mandated by current industry standards can be conducted online, without any interruption of the safety system. HIMax eliminates common-cause effects via physical separation of redundant components.

HIMax is equipped with truly advanced computational capability, providing powerful floating-point calculations in the CPUs. Predictive controls can therefore be used to build dynamic models that safely reduce the level of the band between alert set-point and equipment stopping point. In an ethylene cracker, for example, such modeling could contribute significantly to the output of high quality product, with no reduction in overall process safety. HIMax is not only powerful but can also be applied to all safety-related process industry applications, such as: ESD, BMS, F&G, TMC, HIPPPS, etc.

HIMax has a flexible and reliable performance, numerous advantages. It also presents the exceptional experience of HIMA experts in the field of safety automation systems. Product innovation and localization plans make HIMA Shanghai the winner of the 2009 Frost & Sullivan Product Innovation Award.

The Frost & Sullivan Product Innovation Award is presented each year to the company that has demonstrated excellence in new products R&D and technology improving. By recognizing the recipient, Frost & Sullivan believes it will bring a significant impact to the industry and set up a good precedent for other companies to follow up, and, finally to promote the entire development of that industry. Frost & Sullivan Best Practice Award is issued in a variety of regional and global markets in recognition of outstanding achievement and superior performance in leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development and other areas. Through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive research, industry analysts compare the companies within the industry and measure their performance, and ultimately determine the ownership of the industry's Best Practice Award.

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan