Application of Agile Project Management Methodology in DCS upgrade presented by Paul Sikhakhane and Luckmore Penduka: Tongaat Hulett.
Paul Sikhakhane (left), Howard Lister (centre) and Luckmore Penduka.
The August Technology Evening was twice as good as normal with two well qualified process specialists from Tongaat Hulett both presenting. Paul Sikhakhane took us through the principles of Agile Methodologies for project management and how they were followed to implement a DCS upgrade project for the Tongaat Hulett sugar refinery. Luckmore Penduka then took us through the practical aspects of the project, starting with the reasons why an upgrade was in fact necessary. The Tongaat refinery’s DCS system was operating on software that was XP compliant and as a result, when there were PC failures, it affected the speed of recovery. In addition to this no new PC could be obtained to replace any operator stations that became defective. The vendor also started sending messages of lack of support being available in future, following announcements by Microsoft that the support for XP would be ending. A secondary problem for the factory was that the underlying infrastructure was also obsolete and there could be no addition of I/O, so a migration from the old DCS installation to a new network infrastructure utilising fibre optic cables from field locations would also need to take place.
Therefore the project had two major objectives which were successfully achieved over a three month planning period and implemented within five days over the Christmas shutdown – obviously with an assurance that the factory would experience a seamless transition from the old setup to the new setup.
1. Upgrade the HMI to be compliant with the new version of the operating system and introduce ‘shades of grey’ into the HMI design.
2. Upgrade the networking infrastructure to allow for migration of old field control stations and allow future I/O extension.
The subject proved topical and drew record attendance to the Durban Country Club with many interesting questions from the audience.
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