There have been many challenges for process suppliers to develop a truly open and collaborative framework for process automation and energy management, then linking that framework to the enterprise. This is primarily because process automation, energy management, and production management systems have originated from different islands of functionality across the process enterprise.
The need for open and secure access to data across the entire process enterprise drives creation of a single environment where these applications can coexist and share information. However, few agree as to how this common environment should function or what technology it should be based on. In ARC’s view, this environment must embrace standard technologies, work processes, and best practices wherever possible to ensure the widest range of choice for the process industry and to ensure a path toward open development, away from the proprietary standards and technologies that are the legacy of yesterday’s energy management, production management, and process automation systems, and a primary source of additional lifecycle costs for the process industry.
Today’s process industry challenges
Barriers to information still exist between energy management and process automation systems interacting with operations management and enterprise systems. The process industry should consider the impact that these barriers to information have on productivity, business opportunities, lifecycle costs, and realising a strategy for operational excellence in today’s process plants. Process suppliers need to move to a single environment in which the energy management and automation systems seamlessly interact with operations management applications.
If one counted the number of hours spent, the amount of custom code generated, and the amount of money spent by the process industry trying to tie these worlds together, the figure would be staggering. The process industry can no longer afford to deal with this, as the economic concerns of the enterprise have foreshadowed the concerns of technology. The process industry faces issues such as sustainability, preserving capital assets and extending their life, increasing asset utilisation, maximising operational effectiveness, reducing fixed costs, minimising variable costs, and empowering their workers to make it all happen.
In the past decade, however, we have witnessed a wholesale collapse of these barriers to seamless information exchange. The first major step toward this in the world of energy management and automation systems was probably the adoption of Ethernet-based control networks and commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware, components, and operating systems. The adoption of standards also played a role in the openness of systems, from OPC UA, ISA95, ISA88, to IEC 61131-3 and others, standards have greatly improved the way systems communicate and provide users with flexibility, choice, and predictability. ARC has developed many models to illustrate the collapse of barriers to information and the openness of systems and applications. ARC’s collaborative manufacturing management (CMM) model, for example, provides a roadmap to operational excellence on a high level throughout the process enterprise without specifically focusing on process automation or operations management. Other ARC models, such as the collaborative process automation systems (CPAS), programmable automation controllers (PAC), and others focus on some specific aspects of these requirements, but do not articulate the collapsing barriers that we have witnessed between operations management and process automation along with the broadening scope of plant wide automation and how this has affected the traditional, hierarchical model of automation with which many of us are familiar.
Barriers between process automation and energy management breaking down
While CMM is a good way to articulate the various relationships between primary domains of functionality in the process enterprise, it does not delve deeply enough into the relationships between energy management, process automation, operations management, and engineering and design in the process industries. A different kind of view and a more explicit model was required to show the growing integration of the real-time world of control applications with the transactional world of operations management, engineering, and design. For this purpose, ARC has developed a model for collaborative production systems (CPS). This model clearly illustrates the increasingly collaborative relationships between these domains and how they interact with the rest of the process enterprise in a non-hierarchal manner. It is not intended to suggest that the process industry needs a single monolithic system for its production ecosystem. More importantly, CPS starts as a high-level abstraction to illustrate common concepts among different process industries, and then becomes more granular and refined to suit the needs of specific industries, from oil and gas to food and beverage. In the process industries, the relationship between operations management and automation remains at the forefront.
Although many automation suppliers can deliver portions of solutions that fulfil the process industries requirements for CPS, only a small number can deliver these solutions globally and from a single source. Schneider Electric is fulfilling the ARC requirements of CPS with the introduction of its PlantStruxure process automation system, and by doing this successfully addresses the needs of both traditional DCS and PLC/scada applications that in the past were seen as two very separate worlds. The system provides many important benefits, including:
* Reduced engineering time.
* High system availability.
* Integrated safety system capabilities.
* Improved collaboration.
* Active energy management.
Reduced engineering time
This is achieved through SoCollaborative Engineering, which is an all-in-one software package specifically for engineering and maintaining process automation systems. A combination of single data entry, feature-rich object libraries, collaboration with process design software, and the ability to standardise and re-use engineering best practices, helps users turn P&ID, functional specifications, and wiring diagrams into a fully functional process control system.
High system availability
High availability redundancy solutions include operating and monitoring of networks, I/O devices, servers, LANs, and controllers. PlantStruxure redundant system servers ensure automatic failover from the primary to the standby in the case of a component failure, and the system continues to operate as normal without any interruption to operations. When the primary server is brought back online, the trend, alarm, and event data is backfilled from the standby server to ensure no loss of data. Control networks support the highest level dual-ring Ethernet network topologies for maximum availability and redundancy. These high availability network architectures increase the robustness and fault tolerance of the system. When configured to use hot-standby controllers, the system contains redundant CPUs, power supplies, and network modules. If there is a failure of a component in the primary controller, then the system will automatically switch over to the standby controller.
Integrated safety systems
The integration of safety applications into the overall automation system is simplified as PlantStruxure enables the process control system and safety instrumented systems (SIS) to exist within the one architecture. These integrated and collaborative scalable safety solutions are based on standard networks and open software systems. The commonality of the hardware architecture, communication networks and software environment allows the process end-user to reduce maintenance and training costs. By providing full redundancy, safety systems offer the process end-user the ability to repair any fault without interrupting the process, thereby increasing productivity and profitability. Full redundancy allows the process end-user to meet two objectives, bringing their processes to a safe state when an unsafe situation is detected, and never interrupting their process at any other time. Overall, safety systems help to preserve the environment, production tools, assets and people.
Improved collaboration
Tools that enable persons to collaborate with each other are primary drivers for increased efficiency. Persons within an organisation need to be provided access to whatever information is required to optimise decision making based on their job roles or functions. Plant managers need to see only the required information from their perspective and the same for the operators or the engineering team. PlantStruxure provides these collaboration tools that enable efficiency through the SoCollaborative software suite.
Active energy management
Power and control have traditionally been separate worlds. Today however, the process end user can only optimise their efficiency and reduce operating costs by implementing strategies that combine both. New solutions are designed to combine process and energy information into one system, providing a single interface for all process and energy control and management. These solutions combine process control and energy management, including smart power and energy meters that enable data to be collected from multiple energy sources such as water, air, gas, electricity and steam, and make this data available in the system. Combining this data with other process-related information provides the user with a clear picture on per unit energy consumption and helps to pinpoint areas for improvement within their process. The technology can also be deployed to reduce peak demand surcharges, implement dynamic load-shedding strategies within the control system, reduce power factor penalties, leverage existing infrastructure capacity and avoid unnecessary capital outlay, and support proactive maintenance to prolong asset life.
[Note]: Due to space constraints this article was edited for print. Readers wishing to view the original can visit http://instrumentation.co.za/+C14302
For more information on PlantStruxure contact Schneider Electric SA, +27 (0)11 254 6400, [email protected], www.schneider-electric.co.za. For more information on ARC contact Larry O’Brien, ARC Advisory Group, +1 781 471 1126, [email protected], www.arcweb.com
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