Regardless of your plant’s age, your control system is now one of its most critical components.
You cannot operate effectively in the 21st century without a modern control system designed for the way your plant works now—and for the way it will work in the future. Upgrading your control system is much more than a “rip and replace” exercise.
Take a look at the people in your control room: you probably see a lot of gray hair. How many of those individuals are still going to be there in another three or five years? To answer this question, we need to look at the retirement rate of the baby boomers that are now between the ages of 55 to 65. On January 1, 2011, the first baby boomers turned 65. According to a report from the Congressional Research Service, dated January 30, 2008, the retirement of baby boomers will affect the overall economy and our industries until the year 2020. The industries affected most will be those that have been part of the structure of the U.S. industry buildup: steel and primary m...
After being involved in a number of migration projects, I’m surprised at how few of these considered taking advantage of the extra capabilities of fieldbus-based instruments, drives and positioners. This is not a new phenomenon, but it was more understandable in the early years of the technologies. To some degree the fault lies with the manufacturers. Fieldbus communication was marketed as being a way to reduce the number of wires required and the size of the cabinets required. To a great degree the real benefits of its ability to support smart instruments was a marketing afterthought, “Look at all the room you can save and, oh by the way, you get this extra information.” As a result, the typical migration project team says, “We already have all these HART instruments that give us the extra data and we’re not pulling any new wire, so why should we change?”
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With budget constraints, fear, uncertainty and doubt, DCS migration most likely feels like a nightmare. But we can make it easier. MAVERICK’s Upgrading DCS with No BS can help you sort through the mess and come out on top. Here are four good reasons to attend.
Is fear of failure haunting your upcoming migration project? Engineers are pretty good with band-aids and bailing wire, so absolute failure is rare. But in process control, pitfalls like exceeding budget, operations rejection, and maintenance headaches could constitute failure. In migration projects, most of these pitfalls originate not from incompetence but from missed opportunities. Let’s take budgeting as an example. You didn’t want an unfundable, fat “budgetary” estimate, so you warned the vendor, “I need a realistic, FUNDABLE budget!” Unfortunately, your vendor’s interpretation was, “Give me the bare minimum.” After the project, you’ll have a functioning solution, but your operations team will be missing features they use every day in your current system. Was it avoidable? Could you realistically have noticed something was missing from the proposal as you went...
