Skip to main content

OPEN SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE - Multivendor Automation Architecture

By Bill Lydon, Editor - Automation.com
Over the years, automation users have complained about being locked into an industrial automation vendor’s system architecture. ExxonMobil has had enough of proprietary, closed systems and they are leading the charge to build the next generation, multi-vendor automation system. ExxonMobil’s announcement was major news at last week’s 2016 ARC Forum in Orlando, Florida. The Forum’s theme was “Industry in Transition: Navigating the New Age of Innovation.” ExxonMobil has engaged Lockheed Martin to build a multi-vendor interoperable prototype that is a standards-based, open, secure, and interoperable architecture, with commercially available software and hardware components. Lockheed Martin has deep experience with these types of systems from its other business and engineering activities.
ExxonMobil is not alone in this quest. Industry 4.0 and Industry 4.0 for Process initiatives in Europe have already adopted some world standards including ISA95, OPC UA and PLCopen with the objective of achieving multi-vendor, open interoperability. These groups would do well to collaborate.
Business Driver
ExxonMobil believes they are competing on a global stage, and to remain competitive over the next several decades, oil and gas, refining and chemical companies must lower capital cost and improve profitability. The idea of simply using state-of-the-art DCS will not provide the automation platform to be competitive in world markets. ExxonMobil representatives express frustration when observing step change improvements in adjacent industries enabled by open technologies. Those adjacent industries have deployed significantly higher function software that have lowered lifecycle cost and delivered higher return on investment. For example, the defense avionics industries have transition from a proprietary stovepipe model to fully open systems architecture.
The explosive growth of technologies driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) including cloud computing, mobile computing, embedded computing, and consumer electronics makes it obvious that the mainstream industrial automation industry can deliver more value with the adoption of an open, multi-vendor platform approach.
Vision
ExxonMobil has expressed their vision for an open, standards-based, secure and interoperable control system with the following characteristics:
  • Promotes innovation and value creation
  • Effortlessly integrates best in class components
  • Affords access to leading-edge capability and performance
  • Preserves the asset owners application software
  • Significantly lowers the cost of future replacement
  • Employs an adaptive intrinsic security model
The goal is to develop a commercially available system that will be used by other industrial users, not ExxonMobil only.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ISO 50001 - Energy management

ISO 50001 - Energy management Using energy efficiently helps organizations save money as well as helping to conserve resources and tackle climate change. ISO 50001 supports organizations in all sectors to use energy more efficiently, through the development of an energy management system (EnMS). ISO 50001:2011 – Energy Management System ISO 50001 is based on the management system model of continual improvement also used for other well-known standards such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001. This makes it easier for organizations to integrate energy management into their overall efforts to improve quality and environmental management. ISO 50001:2011 provides a framework of requirements for organizations to: Develop a policy for more efficient use of energy Fix targets and objectives to meet the policy Use data to better understand and make decisions about energy use Measure the results Review how well the policy works, and Continually improve energy management.  Cer...
3 comments
Read more

Life of Bearing

Life of Bearing depends on Loading. Static loads have constant magnitude and direction where as dynamic loads, vary in both magnitude and direction. Misalignment is an important source of excessive static load. Belt drive is another source of static load. Rotor malfunctions, Unbalance, rub, or aerodynamic or fluid-induced instability can produce excessive dynamic loads. Coupling malfunctions may introduce excessive static and dynamic loads. Portable Vibration Analyzers or Online Vibration monitoring systems can help in identifying faults that can be caused due to overloads well in advance facilitating predictive maintenance.
Post a Comment
Read more

Measuring Altitude..

Flying High ?...........At what Altitude ? You can find the Altitude by measuring pressure. Interesting ...? Read to know more.. Atmospheric pressure is caused by the gravitational attraction of the planet on the atmospheric gases above the surface. The standard atmospheric pressure or Barometric pressure at sea level on the Earth is 1013.25 mBar or 760mmHg. Pressure on Earth varies with the altitude of the surface. Atmospheric pressure decreases smoothly as the altitude increases. Altimeters measures absolute pressure to indicate the Altitude. At this point it's important to understand the difference between Absolute pressure and Gauge pressure. Absolute pressure uses absolute zero as its zero point, while gauge pressure uses atmospheric pressure as its zero point. Clear ? Due to varying atmospheric pressure, gauge pressure measurement is not precise, while absolute pressure is always definite. Hence for applications like Aerospace, Flight Instrumentation or Vacuu...
Post a Comment
Read more