Augment the Safety Aspect: How Process Control Becomes a Plant Safety Cornerstone

Related Vendors

TURCK GmbH

EDL Anlagenbau Gesellschaft mbH

ProMinent GmbH

Siemens AG Industry Sector

Operator at Center-Stage

Dedicated screens for start-up and shutdown, normal operation, load change and diagnostics deliver customized situation-based information. Further, as messages and alarms are hidden when they are secondary, operators do not suffer information overload. It is also possible to perform operations in a group view thus facilitating quick intervention.

A well-functioning alarm system helps to run the process closer to the ideal operating point, leading to higher output, reduced costs, increased throughput and higher quality. Furthermore, optimum transparency about the status of measuring points enables to quickly identify control loops that are in manual operating mode, as they are not fulfilling their tasks properly.

Knowledge and Transparency

Knowledge and transparency about control loop performance is required to implement targeted optimization procedures. But plant operators or technicians often do not have a chance to permanently supervise the huge number of control loops.

An automated function helps a lot to continuously monitor the control performance. Based on knowledge that is derived from captured data it is possible to schedule specific maintenance activities or selective controller re-tuning in a timely manner.

Virtual Plant

Best Practices for Virtualization in Process Automation

Control Loops Inspected

“The Control Performance Monitoring (CPM) function of the Simatic PCS 7 distributed control system enables performance to be automatically and continuously monitored,” explains Dr. Bernd-Markus Pfeiffer, Key Expert at Siemens Advanced Technology group within the Process Industries and Drives division. “The CPM function block applied to a control loop calculates stochastic characteristics of the control performance in steady-state operating modes as well as deterministic characteristics of step responses.”

(ID:44425239)