The Durban branch’s April Technology Evening was kindly sponsored by Yokogawa and the presenter was Kallie Bodenstein, the systems facilitator at Yokogawa South Africa. Kallie studied Electrical Engineering and has had a varied and interesting career, starting at Iscor as an instrumentation technician and later as training officer before moving to Kentz Training Solutions as a training specialist. His love of training and his expertise in this field made him well qualified to present to us on the topic ‘DCS versus PLCs’.
Left to right: Nico Marneweck (Yokogawa) Howard Lister and Kallie Bodenstein.
Kallie’s presentation was lively, interesting and entertaining as he took us from the origins of the PLC through the evolution of the many programming languages that may be used depending on the type of device and user preference. He showed examples of some of the different programs and how PLCs can be networked to a remote scada and HMI, and then he moved on to show the structure and characteristics of a DCS.
When he had covered the basic structure of a DCS system he gave his attentive audience a concise summary of the differences between the DCS and PLC systems, showing the redundancy that is inherent in a DCS but which has to be specifically designed into a PLC network. He concluded by providing a summary comparing the strengths and possible limitations of each type of control system.
His presentation prompted a number of good questions, all of which added to the knowledge gained and proved that the audience had responded positively to the enthusiasm and energy of the presenter.
After the lively question and answer session branch chairman Howard Lister thanked Kallie and Yokagawa for the excellent presentation and reminded audience members to complete their score sheets so the talk could be rated. Then everyone adjourned to enjoy some food and drink that was to the usual high standard of the Durban Country Club.
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