On Thursday 2nd November the Secunda branch held its last technology evening for 2017 at the Honeywell Hub in Secunda. Hennie Grobler from Yokogawa presented on the topic ‘PLC versus DCS’. He highlighted some interesting facts regarding the programmable logic controller (PLC). The first PLC was developed by General Motors, in order to simplify the automotive manufacturing process. A distributed control system (DCS) is a combination of a field control system and a supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) system. When it comes to choosing between installing a PLC or a DCS it is important to ask the following seven questions:
1. What are you manufacturing and how?
2. What is the value of the product and the cost of downtime?
3. What do you view as the heart of the system?
4. What does the operator need to be successful?
5. What system performance is required?
6. What degree of customisation is required?
7. What are your engineering expectations?
Answering these questions shows that the application or type of process will ultimately be the deciding factor in choosing between a PLC or DCS for process control. We would like to thank Hennie for an excellent presentation.
Annemarie van Coller, vice president.
All instrumentation and control related artisans, technicians and engineers are welcome to attend our monthly technology events in 2018. The planned dates for 2018 will be communicated in January 2018. All Secunda SAIMC presentations will earn CPD points for ECSA registered persons and any enquiries can be directed to the branch chairman Johan Maritz at johanmaritz260@gmail.com or 082 856 3865.
On a personal note, the Secunda SAIMC branch would like to congratulate committee member, Annemarie van Coller on being elected as vice president of the SAIMC council. We are extremely proud of her and know that she will make a big success of this opportunity.
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