Pride of place at this year’s Honeywell User Group EMEA conference went to Honeywell Process Solutions’ ‘control room of the future’ the platform based on the latest game changing technology releases for its Experion PKS Orion platform.
Control room of the future is a vision that chief technology officer Jason Urso and his team have been working on over the course of the last 12 months. Based on discussions with customers and visits to over 50 control rooms, they found that operator fatigue is a real challenge and it needs to be addressed. Urso likened the situation to sitting in economy class on a packed flight and then after 12 hours suddenly being faced with a situation that requires critical decision making.
Control room ergonomics that make life easier is the name of the game and the centrepiece is the new Experion Orion Operator Consol. What the consol delivers is better situational awareness, reduced operator fatigue and increased operator mobility. During his keynote, Urso discussed the new technologies that Honeywell has brought to this first release. For me, the three that most significantly support it include:
Experion Collaboration Station: This enables faster responses to situations by displaying standardised views of distributed assets to show how they are performing in real-time – the key here is contextualised information. Honeywell has put a lot of effort into maximising screen real estate and integrating alarm lighting so that it is obviously visible, but not stressfully intrusive. The red light and the klaxon have been banished to obscurity. The consol also allows unprecedented levels of collaborative communication via audio and video feeds that connect field operations and specialists who could be located anywhere in the world. It is especially well-suited for production sites with distributed assets such as offshore oil and gas operations, pipelines and large refineries with centralised control rooms.
Cyber Security Dashboard: In industrial environments that are increasingly comprised of open systems, Urso stressed that cyber security is an area that everybody should be taking seriously – much the same as process safety. Cyber security is built directly into the new platform through the Cyber Security Dashboard that helps simplify the task of keeping automation systems up-to-date with cyber security requirements. The latest addition is a feature called ‘Whitelisting’, a technology that allows Honeywell to define an approved set of programs that run on a customer’s PCs and server nodes. The benefit here is that should a piece of malware find its way onto the network, through a USB stick say, it gets stopped dead in its tracks because it is not on the approved list of applications.
OneWireless Network R220: OneWireless is a universal wireless network that can accommodate thousands of field devices to form everything from a simple field instrument mesh to a completely integrated, plant-wide application network. The new OneWireless Network Software R220 introduces an interface for the Honeywell Enraf SmartRadar Flexline that enables the device to communicate with the Honeywell Enraf Entis Pro tank gauging system, as well as the Experion Process Knowledge System platform. This allows storage terminal operators to improve their operations via the reliable inventory data that is now available in the control room. Other enhancements include a redundancy feature that allows wireless to be used in applications that require measures to prevent a single point from causing a system-wide failure.
“In many ways, the control room of the future won’t be limited to the control room at all, a concept that is perfectly illustrated through technologies like OneWireless that extend the control room into the field,” Urso said. “At the same time, because we expect increasing connectivity, we’ll see a greater need for cyber security management systems like the Cyber Security Dashboard and collaboration solutions like Experion Collaboration Station. These solutions complement each other to improve overall plant safety, reliability, efficiency and sustainability.”
The common link between all of these is the ability to make control room personnel more quickly aware of what’s happening in their facilities. Honeywell’s vision gives operators new ways to collaborate and move around, all the while with a better understanding of their process data. It’s no wonder Urso called it: 'Upgrading to Orion class'.
Season’s greetings
In closure this year, the SAI&C team extends thanks to all readers for your loyalty and support this last 12 months. Also, we would like to thank the advertisers and contributors for all the interesting and cutting-edge material that was submitted for publication, this is what makes our magazine the market leader that it is. And last but not least, thanks to the production team and technical support for their dedication and hard work – it’s you guys who make this endeavour look so good in print and on the Web.
Happy holidays and travel safely everyone. To all our Christian readers we wish you a Merry Christmas.
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
| Tel: | +27 11 543 5800 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.technews.co.za |
| Articles: | More information and articles about Technews Publishing |
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version