by Gary Mintchell | Feb 20, 2014 | Automation, Technology
One of the announcements made at last week’s ARC Forum in Orlando was this one from Yokogawa. Executives presented this new simulation solution to press on Feb. 10.
Yokogawa Electric Corporation executives said that in April it will begin offering new solutions for optimizing plant operations in the oil & gas, petrochemical, and other industries. These solutions will be provided as part of Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant Services suite to support safe, stable, and highly efficient plant operations. The technology underlying these solutions is Yokogawa’s newly developed MIRROR PLANT online simulator.
The MIRROR PLANT simulator can visualize the internal state of a plant process and make near-term predictions on plant behavior. According to the company, this is an industry first, this simulator operates in synchronization with the plant control system and features the good performance required in commercial plants.
Development Background
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on improving plant safety and strengthening competitiveness by making plants more efficient. For example, in the chemical industry, plant operators need in real time to manage or adjust the state of catalysts and the composition of the reagents and product materials in a chemical reactor, to optimize both plant productivity and product quality. However, many of the process variables are difficult to measure or cannot be measured directly. Based on actual process information such as flow rate, temperature, and pressure, simulation technology can make predictions on items that cannot be measured in real time, for example the amount of each component in a product, and thus simulate the state of a plant. By means of high-speed calculations, the simulator can make near-term predictions on the state of a plant. Operators can then anticipate events and take action earlier to ensure safe operation.
Yokogawa and its subsidiary, Omega Simulation Co., Ltd., jointly developed the MIRROR PLANT online plant simulator. It operates in synchronization with the plant control system and constantly updates a process model. Based on this simulator, Yokogawa will offer support solutions that help its customers optimize their plant operations.
Special notes:
1. Near-term prediction of plant states
The MIRROR PLANT simulator operates in synchronization with the plant control system. Based on real-time manufacturing process information and using a proprietary function for adjusting model parameters, MIRROR PLANT precisely simulates the state of a plant. By using plant models, MIRROR PLANT visualizes the current state of the plant, the state of the plant up to several hours in the future, and the state at plant locations where it is not possible to measure temperature or pressure. It then displays these results on screen at a CENTUM VP integrated production control system operator terminal or at a standard PC. MIRROR PLANT also has an alarm function that can alert operators to potential problems. As such, the MIRROR PLANT solution can help our customers operate their plants safely and efficiently while maintaining product quality.
2. Consulting and engineering services
Yokogawa offers consulting and engineering services for building the simulation models that are key to MIRROR PLANT’s effectiveness. Yokogawa’s experienced process control engineers provide our customers these services. The simulation models used in MIRROR PLANT are built based not on statistical data from plant operations, but on physical laws. Thus, processes can be theoretically verified, and the simulator can be used for a broad range of applications such as identifying problems in a process. The optimum operating conditions can then be identified before making changes to items such as the production volume or the feed material composition. Based on MIRROR PLANT, Yokogawa offers these services to help its customers optimize their plant operations.
3. Proven effectiveness
A field test of MIRROR PLANT was conducted from 2011 to 2013 at a plant of Mitsui Chemicals, Inc., and the results showed that it efficiently stabilized and optimized the operation of a distillation tower. As a result, MIRROR PLANT won the Technology Award from the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE), which commended this innovative technology for boosting plant productivity and safety.
MIRROR PLANT was developed based on the OmegaLand integrated dynamic simulation environment and its core technology, the Visual Modeler plant simulator. OmegaLand and Visual Modeler are software packages that were developed by Yokogawa’s subsidiary, Omega Simulation Co., Ltd. OmegaLand builds virtual plants and simulates their operation under conditions that are close to the actual state. These are used for plant operator training and process design in the oil & gas and petrochemical industries.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 10, 2014 | Automation, News, Technology
Process plants and pipelines generate thousands of alarms from their automation systems every day — many of which are not serious. Control room operators must then quickly distinguish between routine process alarms and critical alarms that warn of operating problems or safety issues.
Honeywell unveiled its new DynAMo Alarm Suite, an advanced alarm management software that reduces the overall number of alarms while helping operators focus and respond to those most critical.
At issue is the sheer number of alarms, which range from day-to-day activities (known as nuisance alarms) such as the opening of an electrical switch room door, to notification of a critical equipment failure. According to the Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium, ineffective management of nuisance alarms can lead to incidents that cost the process industry billions of dollars, and pose an increased risk of fatigue and stress for operators who must constantly make instant decisions on how to respond when an alarm sounds.
DynAMo Alarm Suite leverages more than 20 years of alarm management experience in the process industries, and can help users reduce overall alarm count by as much as 80 percent, identify maintenance issues, and increase visibility of critical alarms that require urgent attention. Its customizable, role-based dashboard enables operators, engineers and managers to view the health of their alarm system at a glance. A key feature of the new software is that it is compatible with many mobile devices, enabling personnel to view alarm metrics at any time, from almost any location. This ease of access enables more frequent monitoring and faster corrective action, which helps alleviate a major fatigue factor of operators.
“When operators are forced to deal with hundreds of alarms at any given point in time, there is increased risk to safety not to mention process efficiency,” said Vimal Kapur, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Process Solutions Advanced Solutions business. “The DynAMo Alarm Suite is an effective tool for optimizing alarm management programs to prevent alarm floods and ‘chatter,’ and reduce operator stress. The software offers a layer of protection to minimize unplanned outages, safety incidents and environmental releases.”
DynAMo Alarm Suite can be integrated with Honeywell’s Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS), as well as any other control system. Honeywell also offers alarm management consulting, services and support, with worldwide coverage.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 12, 2013 | Automation, Events, News, Process Control, Technology
Invensys President and CEO Mike Caliel
A good turnout of customers greeted Invensys (Foxboro and Triconex) executives this week as the company celebrated the 30th anniversary of Triconex and the launch of Foxboro Evo—the new generation of process automation & control operationalizing the InFusion vision.
I might as well begin with what is on most people’s minds—the pending acquisition by Schneider Electric. President and CEO Mike Caliel addressed the situation right away. “At this point there is a formal offer on the table. The Invensys board intends to recommend acceptance to shareholders. After shareholder approval, then will come regulatory reviews. We expect approval of shareholders in October, with the deal probably complete in late 2013 or early 2014. Now we are completely separate companies. There is no impact today. I don’t foresee it changing in the future. If you heard about our plans from anyone but us, they are not our plans. Schneider values the synergies of products and people.”
Caliel will lead the Invensys side of the integration. Schneider CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire says he wants it to be a growth deal.
I have thought about this acquisition from many angles, then listened to many people discuss it this week. This is probably the best outcome for Invensys, its people and customers. Schneider will most likely let Invensys run the way it has. It has the financial strength and stability to remove all the past uncertainty surrounding the company. There is virtually no overlap, which will eliminate political infighting such as happened with the Modicon acquisition between Modicon people and Square D people. I think in the end, it’s good for Invensys and good for automation customers. When I see the innovation of the Foxboro company and Wonderware, I marvel at the opportunities lost through incredibly bad management. We can only hope that Schneider will provide stability and finance and let them continue to operate somewhat independently.
Evolutionary innovation
Invensys Vice President Peter Martin
Vice President Peter Martin set up the product launch with a history of Foxboro and Triconex innovations. He took the history up to the 2006 launch of InFusion. “InFusion’s goal was to unify the compute space. It represented a different type of innovation, occurred at infrastructure level where people can’t really see it, and built a common industrial system platform. It is a still evolving unified services architecture.”
With characteristic humor, Martin added, “Being an innovator in a very conserviative market like ours has its challenges. We want the latest as long as it has been proven for a decade.” He continued, “We believe evolutionary innovation is essential to your success. The future for industrial companies is challenging and daunting. Speed of business will increase, processes will evolve, regulatory pressures squeeze profitability, higher levels of safety, security, required; new generation of industrial workers will require the operational insight to replace and outperform their predecessors. Each person will have to work at higher levels of performance. Require information and enlightenment. We can meet just as in the past. This week, we’ll show you how.”
Caliel, after addressing the Schneider situation, addressed the future of industrial automation. “We need to turn data into contextual information. The challenge is beyond technology to how to apply to drive business value. You’re under tremendous pressure to not only meet but exceed business needs. But the data is not always helping you, sometimes it’s even hurting you. When people are flooded they may make the wrong decision or act more slowly. Why not take advantage of the advanced software available. We see the value of this enlightenment not just for operators or engineers, but for everyone. What is needed is a process system to meet these challenges, with a new perspective, operational integrity and operational insight.”
Next-Gen Foxboro Evo
Billed as a “Process Automation System,” Foxboro Evo incorporates advanced roles-based tools, extra processing power and safety-system integration improve business continuity and profitability; future-proof automation investments.
Invensys Systems President Gary Freburger
“The three most important ways a process automation vendor can help its customers secure their future is to protect the operational integrity of their plants, enhance the operational insight of its people and enable them to adapt easily and affordably to change,” said Gary Freburger, president of Invensys’ systems business. “Our new Foxboro Evo system does that with unrivaled elegance. With more powerful processing capacity and other new, advanced applications, the system allows our customers to uncover new and hidden value from within their operations. This is another automation breakthrough from a company with a 100-year history of delivering innovative technology advancements. We’re excited about what this means for the industry and for our customers, and we look forward to continuing to help them safely achieve their short- and long-term business and operations goals.”
Foxboro Press Release
The following is from the press release and hits the main themes of the development—especially the role-based thinking.
The Foxboro Evo process automation system has evolved directly from pioneering Foxboro I/A Series and Triconex technology, both entrusted to control and protect some of the world’s largest, most complex process facilities and known for their innovative, layered architecture. The system extends this approach through a component object-based platform, which can undergo major upgrades without halting operations.
“We needed to upgrade the vast majority of our DCS, but like most sites, we didn’t have the luxury of a site-wide shutdown to make a full change possible,” said Michael McKenzie, distributed control systems specialist for BP in Brisbane, Australia. “We were facing a substantial obsolescence issue, which we had ranked as a significant risk to ongoing operations, so we needed a solution that would allow us to upgrade components as we needed them, without sacrificing functionality or usability for operators. The new Invensys system allowed for a much easier upgrade of all components and will ensure that we can keep our system well away from obsolescence, so that we’re not required to perform any additional large-scale upgrades.”
Because users can upgrade at their own pace, the Foxboro Evo system delivers the lowest total cost of automation and highest return on assets. Additionally, its new applications improve the ability of plant personnel to contribute toward the success of the business by streamlining and contextualizing the information they need to make the right business decisions at the right time.
“As the pace of global business accelerates, automation technology becomes increasingly important in helping manufacturers focus on finding more value within their operations and automation assets,” said Chris Lyden, senior vice president for Invensys. “If users in the control room and in the field can better interpret the growing volume and complexity of the information they receive within the proper context of procedures and operational risk, then they will make more valuable contributions to the business. The Foxboro Evo system is loaded with new features that will help them do that, and it is structured to evolve with them as they and their companies change and grow.”
The Foxboro Evo system includes a new high-speed controller, field device management tools, a maintenance response center, an enterprise historian, 1-n redundancy and cyber security hardening. And because the company’s broad portfolio of roles-based engineering tools and productivity applications are integrated within it, the system provides superior visibility into historical, real-time and predictive operating information to help drive production efficiency.
Safety and security personnel will benefit from an innovative coupling of control and safety, which enables sharing of operational information while keeping the safety system functionally isolated, as well as state-of-the-art cyber security.
Engineers will be able to reduce their workloads, protect schedule integrity and reduce risk via more intuitive design and troubleshooting features, virtualization and other flexible technology.
Operators will gain a more complete, real-time view of plant activity via an updated high-performance, mobile accessible HMI.
Maintenance technicians will enjoy lower meantime between repairs via real-time device alerts and analytics, alarm triage, performance monitoring and other benefits.
Current Foxboro I/A Series DCS users can migrate to the Foxboro Evo system with little or no downtime, depending on which version they are running. Users of competing process automation systems, whose wiring terminations are still functional, can migrate to the Foxboro Evo system without ripping and replacing infrastructure, significantly reducing costs and downtime, just as they were able to do with the I/A Series system.
