Yokogawa has released Centum VP R6.02, a new version of the company’s integrated production control system with enhanced functionality. Ever since launching the Centum series 40 years ago, Yokogawa has continued to improve its flagship product. In keeping with the company’s VigilantPlant vision for the control business, the company has developed a number of new operations and monitoring functions, which will make it easier for operators to keep track of the status of a plant.
Oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and other downstream facilities have numerous suppliers to choose from and must deal with considerable variability in the composition of the raw materials that they receive, necessitating a number of changes to their processes. Further changes are necessitated by ageing facilities and the need to vary production volumes to meet fluctuating demand. To respond to these challenges and ensure the safe and efficient operation of plant facilities, operators must be able to quickly and thoroughly check many different kinds of data.
Enhancements
Centum VP R6.02 comes with a more powerful real-time trend function for the visualisation of plant operating status. The alarm function has also been improved to make sure that alarm information is handed over to the operators on the next shift. This release also features tight integration with ProSafe-RS R4.01.
1. Real-time trend function for a clearer understanding of plant conditions
The number of pens that can be checked in a single trend graph has been doubled to 16. The maximum number of data points that can be displayed for trend graphs has also been doubled, to approximately 13 000. This ensures that operators have all the information needed to stay on top of what is happening in their plants. In addition to conventional keyboard input, drag-and-drop functionality for the assignment of data to individual pens is supported from operation graphics, alarm lists, and the like. With these new functions, operators can enjoy quicker and more convenient access to data.
A new function has also been added that displays real-time trend data and past long-term trends in one continuous line, in the same window, enabling operators easily to track changes that take place over a longer period of time.
2. Preventing alarms from being misplaced or overlooked during handovers
Centum VP has a function that temporarily sets aside (shelves) less urgent alarm notifications to ensure that operators can respond appropriately to high-priority alarms. While it is possible to check shelved alarms, the procedure involves several steps and there is a risk that it will not be performed. With Centum VP R6.02, there is a new list viewer that displays all shelved alarms. When operators use this together with a suppressed alarm list viewer that was previously released with version R6.01, there is less risk of such alarms being misplaced or overlooked following a handover.
3. Tight integration with ProSafe-RS R4.01
R6.02 offers improved integration with the ProSafe-RS R4.01 safety instrumented system, allowing monitoring of the N-IO (Network I/O), a new I/O device that is now available for use with ProSafe-RS R4.01, using the human machine interface (HMI) provided for both systems. Also, the Automation Design Suite (AD Suite) engineering tool now can save engineering data, manage the engineering history, and support I/O design for both the process control instrumentation and the safety instrumentation. This improved integration results in enhanced engineering efficiency throughout the entire plant lifecycle.
Ongoing development
Yokogawa continually strives to improve its core Centum platform, while maintaining backwards compatibility with previous system versions. In the development of Centum VP, the following four innovations have been emphasised:
1. Advanced operation – empowers operators to make smarter decisions.
2. Smart engineering – an engineering ecosystem that delivers certainty and confidence.
3. System agility – flexibility, adaptability and extensibility for plant upgrade and expansion, changes in plant operations, and business exigencies.
4. Sustainable plant – optimum system performance throughout the entire lifecycle of the plant.
In keeping with its VigilantPlant initiative, Yokogawa will continue to develop and bring to market new products and other types of solutions that will help its customers realise the ideal plant.
For more information contact Christie Cronje, Yokogawa South Africa, +27 (0)11 831 6300, [email protected], www.yokogawa.com/za
| Tel: | +27 11 831 6300 |
| Fax: | +27 11 86 411 8144 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.yokogawa.com/za |
| Articles: | More information and articles about Yokogawa South Africa |
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