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Sreekanth K Upadhyaya Business Development Manager Life Cycle Services Honeywell Process Solutions Sreekanth.Upadhyaya@honeywell.com
n process industries, plant automation was earlier executed by centralised, proprietary control system which was limited to supervising and controlling the process loops. A single automation supplier, employing a large team of systems experts, was responsible
for maintaining the process control environment, updating equipment as needed and restoring operation in the event of a failure or shutdown. These industrial systems were not linked to each other and were not connected to public network like internet.
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Today, the situation is somewhat different, and the companies want accurate and latest information about the plant to be available not only on the shop floor, but also at the management level. This led to a growing demand to integrate process control and information systems with both plant and corporate business system. It results in greater interconnectivity between different automation systems and between automation and office systems. This led to the transition from proprietary to open system technology wherein the end-users have the freedom to go for a system with interoperable architectures providing high performance and highly available controls. Instead of an integrated information system, users are recognising the value of a unified information and application software and reduce the problem of data exchange and synchronisation, and maintain information in a central repository shared by all business applications.
The onus of handling the complexity of a worldwide enterprise is placed with the automation supplier
focused on implementing and maintaining control equipment, whereas the value to the user is on improving process performance. A Process Control Network (PCN) system administration service helps maintain the manufacturers system. The PCN system administration service provides remote server administration from engineers who are not only experts, but also understand the functions and the criticality of the servers within the process control environment. Primary responsibilities of experts in remote service centre (RSC) include server management, configurations, back-ups, batch/job scheduling, active directory support, etc.
Patch management
Operating system (OS) patches repair vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to exploit the control system architecture. The importance to system security of keeping OS patches up-to-date cannot be over-emphasised. Deploying patches to the process control nodes is one element of a comprehensive defence-in-depth strategy. IT specialists must verify that the OS patch does not affect the functionality of process control applications.
Virus protection
It is extremely important for plant IT organisation to keep their antivirus >
Perimeter management
Perimeter management is part of a comprehensive defence-in-depth program incorporating multiple layers to protect the process control system and its associated process control network (PCN). Perimeter Management is an ongoing management service explicitly targeted at managing the perimeter between the corporate network and the PCN.
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Remote connectivity
Many of the open system services depend on the remote access infrastructure, including: PCN system administration, patch management, virus protection, perimeter management, system performance monitoring and remote application hosting. The remote connectivity model used to provide these remote (manage) services makes use of the Purdue model level designations. Remote connectivity allows for remote analysis and actions including rapid deployment of specialists, collaboratively working a technical issue. This offers significant advantages - such as shorter time to action and therefore faster resolution time, availability of specialised skills and minimised travel cost. Remote connectivity not only offers secure access to the process control system, it additionally offers advanced and secure solutions for collaboration within the teams independent of the location of the various team members. These remote services provide value to customers by offering solutions that improve Safety Remotely operated facility Reduce the number of people working in site Reliability Process monitoring System performance monitoring System trouble shooting Efficiency Remote engineering Integration of centralised control Readily available expertise OS and application updates Anti-virus definition file update Remote hosting
In summary
The move away from proprietary control platforms to open systems has provided process plants with significance performance improvements and cost saving along with the challenges. The open technology requires more adherences to system management, and at the same time, the technology facilitates greater access to system management options. Faced with shortage of skilled labour, plant will need solutions optimising their process control infrastructure and at the same time, taking pressure off of onsite resources. Remote services provide a cost effective and secure means to meet these system management needs. It also keeps tabs on bandwidth reduction, data throughput issues, error rates and other problems threatening to impact production. A broad suite of remote services is available through a simple yet secure remote connection to hundreds of process control systems and users around the world. The value from these remote services is evident, making the move to open technology a lot easier for the users.
All the Bells and Whistles are Standard: 32 digital and 16 analog I/O PID Process loops, timers, counters and more Web-interface & email capability Encoder feedback option Thermocoupler and RTD options Ethernet 10/100Base-T & RS232 ports Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) or 18-36 VDC Measures just 9.9 x 10.9 x 3.3 cm D-type or screw terminals