I still have thoughts to wrap up from HUG while compiling news from Hannover plus many other news items due to Hannover or ARC or Automate shows. Not to mention many other projects ongoing. Plus I received my second Covid booster vaccine this morning. No reactions so far just like with the hundred (it seems) other inoculations I’ve taken over the past few months.
First, an introduction. During Honeywell Process Solutions CTO Jason Urso’s keynote, he described a new control platform and future that sounded very much like the Open Process Automation work of decoupling hardware and software, using modularity, the latest networking, open protocols, and the like—except he never mentioned OPAF. A couple of colleagues and myself found this intriguing.
I will pause and let your imagination go to work for a minute.
Here is the news of the C300PM controller that HPS calls a “unified process control system” that is “flexible and cost effective.”
In short:
• Solution protects existing intellectual property while modernizing current infrastructure
• Provides modern best-in-class control technology in a familiar HPM hardware form
The new controller enables seamless technology evolution for customers seeking to utilize the features of the state-of-the-art C300 process controller while retaining a familiar hardware package.
Addressing the key pain point of OPAF’s instigator, ExxonMobil, Honeywell states, “In today’s competitive environment, an effective strategy of control technology upgrades can help manufacturers reduce asset ownership costs, increase production rates, manage risks, extend the life and performance of systems and improve responses to changing customer demands.”
“The C300PM is intended for industrial operations employing the proven Enhanced High-Performance Process Manager (EPHM), which integrates the control environment of the legacy TotalPlant™ Solution (TPS) and TDC 2000/3000 systems,” said Pramesh Maheshwari, vice president & general manager, Honeywell Process Solutions, Lifecycle Support Services. “The C300PM is ideal for customers who have asked for the EHPM to have the same functionality as the best-in-class C300 when developing their control migration plans, as well as users with a mixture of EHPMs and C300s who want to unify their controller platform.”
With the C300PM, companies undertaking plant renovations or unit expansions can upgrade their controller installed base with a solution that provides a common engineering environment and eliminates the need to completely replace existing hardware.
The C300PM employs Honeywell’s deterministic Control Execution Environment (CEE) to execute control strategies on a constant and predictable schedule. The CEE is loaded into the C300PM controller, providing the execution platform for a set of automatic control, logic, data acquisition and calculation function blocks.
By modernizing to the C300PM, EHPM users no longer need to obtain an additional controller to obtain the same level of performance as the C300 controller in demanding applications such as blending and batch processing. They can take advantage of increased processing speed for their critical control loops. Peer-to-peer communications between different generations of controllers help to optimize overall system performance. In addition, the C300PM utilizes Honeywell’s Custom Algorithm Block (CAB) functionality, which leverages user-defined algorithms and data structures to greatly reduce the effort required to create complex control strategies.
The C300PM also incorporates the Experion PKS I/O Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (IO HIVE). This technology provides a fault-tolerant, high-speed field network allowing the controller to communicate with distributed Honeywell Universal I/O (UIO) and Series C I/O. The controller also supports many leading industrial communication protocols, including Peer Control Data Interface (PCDI), Profinet, EtherNet/IP, OneWireless, FOUNDATION Fieldbus, and Profibus.
Insert another pause. During the time that I haven’t been briefed much from Honeywell, it has become platform agnostic. No more battling our wireless versus theirs or our fieldbus versus theirs. All for the good!
With Honeywell’s assistance, EHPM users can take advantage of a familiar migration technique to C300PM, which allows them to preserve their valuable legacy systems without having to deal with issues such as rewiring, system reconfiguration and graphics migration. Migration can be completed without the need for a shutdown to install new controllers. Conversely, plants that have not installed the EHPM can go directly from the High-Performance Process Manager (HPM) to the powerful and robust features of the C300PM as part of a simple on-process migration.
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