Market Insights

Seamless Solution for Process and Hybrid Applications

Posted on 02 February, 2010 | Tags:

Chemical Industry is very raw material centric industry. The final product is a composition of various raw materials. For any manufacturer the challenge is to have the right product at the right time with minimal wastage of raw material and energy  consumption. In any chemical process, you would have batch production comprising of mixture of two or more raw materials. The emphasis is on how quickly the production units are able to switch between products with minimum wastage of raw materials during production switch.
Conventional DCS were designed to handle process, which was analog intensive, but there has been not much of development with respect to the automation platform. The automation platforms of the conventional DCS compared to the modern automation systems are less open, slow and have limited capacity for historical data.
The basic endeavor for any automation system is to drive operational excellence. As a solution provider GE Fanuc is focused to increase the yield with improved quality, decrease the scrap and improve production efficiency. Another key focus area is to bring down the total cost of ownership by optimizing the assets. GE Fanuc for long time has had wide range of products catering to the requirement of hybrid and process requirements. The company analyzed the current market need for a complete integrated platform for process and hybrid applications and has seamlessly integrated the various technology platforms to evolve Proficy Process Systems. Proficy Process system offers a robust platform for both hybrid and process applications.
Proficy Process Systems was developed leveraging technology that has been in use for more than 20 years by various sections of GE. PPS as it's known provides the flexibility to use controllers from 3 product lines (RX3i, RX7i, & PAC8000). The redundant controllers with high-speed reflective memory technology enables transparent switch over between controllers. Ruggedised I/O modules capable of with standing extreme process conditions (-40 Degree Celsius to 70 Degree Celsius) provides the user with flexibility to cut down on wiring costs by mounting the I/O in the field.
Two well established products, Cimplicity & iFIX provide flexibility to select the visualization tool for PPS. Integrated into PPS architecture is Historian and Batch to help the user with process optimization and batch control. Huge library of process blocks and faceplates makes PPS the right blend product comprising of traditional DCS features bundled up with modern technological advancement in terms of speed, connectivity & reliability.
PPS provides the perfect platform for higher-level plant intelligent applications thanks to the integrated proficy Historian, which forms the basic foundation for any manufacturing execution system (MES). Ge Fanuc also has a complete end to end solution for MES under the Proficy suite, which can be seamlessly integrated with PPS through Proficy Historian without any downtime. PPS controllers also provide wide range of open connectivity for the level 1 automation. All standard protocols like Ethernet, Profibus Modbus, Foundation Field bus and Profibus PA are supported.
Various features of this technology include, huge data archiving capacity (greater than 5 years), rugged high speed/ high capacity controllers, redundancy at all levels (HMI, Communication, Controller, I/O), reflective memory technology for data synch between controllers that enables transparent switch over between controllers in case of failure. It is possible to have server/client and workstation architecture in the same configuration and high-speed I/O communication LAN. Process system forms a perfect collaboration and integration among the domains of automation and operational management. Thus setting a perfect framework for achieving operational excellence in the process industries. The company has already installed three successful installations for Captive Power Plants. PPS forms the heart of generation units. High Speed PPS controllers are delivering great results in executing complex boiler control loops.

-Sayantan Roy & Ramji Vasudevan