Overcoming today's process industry challenges
There have been many challenges to achieving a truly open and collaborative framework for process automation and energy management, then linking that framework to the enterprise. This is primarily due to process automation, energy management and production management systems originating from different islands for functionality across the process enterprise. Combining real-time control applications and energy management with production management capabilities can result in a plant environment that is cost effective and energy efficient as Schneider Electric explains.
The process industry is faced with issues such as sustainability, preserving capital assets and extending their life, increasing asset utilisation, maximising operational effectiveness, reducing fixed and minimising variable costs and empowering workers to make this happen. These exist in an environment where the systems, software and devices that control the real-time production processes, and the energy it takes to run these processes, have long been regarded as separate domains from the non-real-time world of operations management functions that dictate planning activities, production schedules and other areas of operations management. Even plant design and engineering, which can provide valuable data to production systems, has been regarded as a separate domain. One of the main challenges, therefore, is to overcome the barriers to information that still exist between these multiple systems. The need is for a single environment where the energy management and automation systems seamlessly interact with operations management applications.
A first and significant step towards bringing down these barriers has been the adoption of Ethernet-based control networks and commercial off-the-shelf hardware, components and operating systems. The adoption of standards has also played a role in the openness of systems, from OPC UA, ISA95, ISA88 to IEC 61131.3 and others which have greatly improved the way systems communicate and provided users with flexibility, choice and predictability.
In fact, the breakdown of barriers between energy management, process automation and operations management has been evolving for some time but suppliers must move to a single environment where production management applications can plug seamlessly into the same communications infrastructure as the basic energy management and control system. Central to this is the need for a collaborative approach between corporate IT, automation groups and other disciplines such as engineering and operations. The key is to tie energy management and control systems intelligently into business information systems using the Collaborative Process System (CPS) model which illustrates the inter-relationships between the various domains in a non-hierarchical manner.
Creating a fully integrated organisational management system can be regarded as a complex task, but it should actually be achievable at a relatively basic level by having systems that operate through a standard communications hierarchy. By combining data from each of the operating systems within a common infrastructure, the business will have better control and visibility, a clearer understanding of energy usage and productivity as well as easier and improved maintenance.
As a supplier that can deliver all of the requirements for CPS from a single source, Schneider Electric has introduced the PlantStruxure process automation system which includes a suite of production management software solutions. The solution includes networks and communications which are built on Ethernet to facilitate transparent communication between the field, process, plant and enterprise. With PlantStruxure, users benefit from high availability of systems across all process levels, helping to meet the demands of keeping unexpected downtime to a minimum, lowering production costs, ensuring targets are met and reducing potential harm to both people and equipment. With the focus on providing continuous operations, increasing plant maintainability and efficiency, the result is reduced energy wastage and lost revenue.
In addition, this type of solution enables products and systems to collaborate, utilising open standards and third-party technology. It allows people to collaborate by providing access to whatever information is required to optimise decision making. Benefits resulting from this collaboration include increasing engineering productivity and reducing engineering times to accelerate project schedules. Another benefit is transparency, with a single structured system backbone enabling authorised users access to information from any location. Transparency reduces the capital costs of design and installation while optimising the operation costs.
It also addresses the process industry's increasing requirements for energy management in a procedure that includes auditing and measuring the process to establish a baseline and identify areas for improvement around energy consumption. This is a process which begins with fixing the basics by installing the devices necessary to record and measure energy usage, optimise power factor and increase power reliability. Next is optimising through automation by sustaining the energy efficiency gains through devices such as AC drives, intelligent power and motor control centres (iPMCCs), controllers and automated processes. Finally, monitoring, maintaining and improving are achieved by continuously viewing the processes.
Power and control have traditionally been separate worlds. Today, however, the process end user can only optimise efficiency and reduce operating costs by implementing strategies that combine process and energy information into one system, providing a single interface for all process and energy control and management.
