Asset excellence
New initiative helps maximize asset availability and utilization

Predictive maintenance allows to schedule plant maintenance before a failure occurs only when it is necessary, greatly reducing unnecessary inspection and improving productivity. Yokogawa’s Asset Excellence initiative helps its customers make their plant asset condition predictable and performance sustainable.

In February 2006, Yokogawa Electric Corporation announced the launch of a VigilantPlant Asset Excellence initiative that aims to apply the Yokogawa VigilantPlant vision to plant asset management in order to achieve operational excellence and create an environment where plant personnel can “See Clearly, Know in Advance, and Act with Agility.”
The first key factor, Asset Reliability, is an often overlooked yet fundamental prerequisite for non-stop production. Customers that put Asset Reliability firmly in place can sustain the daily use of their plant assets for safe and agile production.
The Yokogawa Centum CS 3000 R3 control system secures Asset Reliability for mission critical applications by using reliable technology such as Pair & Spare CPUs and the Vnet/IP open and secure control network to maintain an unmatched 99.99999% (seven 9’s) availability track record. All Yokogawa field devices such as the DPharp EJA and EJX digital pressure transmitters provide the system with stable and accurate process measurement under the severest of conditions.

Enhancing maintainability
The second key factor, Asset Availability, is achieved by securing maintainability in addition to the inherent reliability of Yokogawa products and systems. Customers can enhance Asset Availability through quick engineering and efficient maintenance of their field assets.
The Versatile Device Management Wizard system FieldMate is a new Field Device Tool (FDT) compliant PC-based integrated software tool that handles parameter setting for intelligent field devices, regardless of their make or field communication protocol. FieldMate speeds up device configuration and problem solving, and automatically stores a work log for a traceable field maintenance database that consolidates the maintenance work flow and facilitates the sharing of maintenance know-how.
The third factor, Asset Predictability, relies on recent advances in online monitoring and predictive diagnosis technologies. Yokogawa customers that are early adopters of emerging Asset Predictability solutions report both quick returns and ongoing advantages in optimizing maintenance and maximizing plant uptime.
The PRM Plant Resource Manager is an integrated asset management solution that enables centralized online monitoring of automation assets. An upcoming new version, PRM R3, will take a step forward with its capability to create and integrate innovative diagnostics applications. Its new PRM Advanced Diagnostics Application (PAA) environment will facilitate diagnostics application development at the control loop and process unit levels, going beyond device health and device/process interface diagnostics. Furthermore, PRM R3 will support the FDT open standard, integrating diagnostics applications designed by the best-in-class fellow field device suppliers in the FDT Group. The fourth and final factor, asset performance, is an ongoing achievement. It is more of a journey than a destination, demanding continuous performance improvement over the life cycle of a plant. Yokogawa’s InsightSuite AE Asset Excellence Services is a suite of consultancy, diagnosis, and optimization services delivered over the plant life cycle to maximize asset performance. In process industries, customers need a compelling business value proposition to justify investment in any kind of automation. Vigilance and VigilantPlant were created with this in mind. VigilantPlant is rooted in the philosophy of Peter Drucker, who espoused that a well-managed plant is “silent and boring”, where the role of the operator is transformed into that of a knowledge worker that spends more time optimizing production rather than reacting to emergent problems in the plant.