THE EVOLUTION OF THE DCS
HOW DISTRIBUTED CONTROL SYSTEMS ARE EVOLVING TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE DIGITAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Mark Bitto, Head of Global Marketing – Distributed Control Systems, ABB
As digital technologies increasingly find their way into industrial applications, a new generation of distributed control system is needed.
T
he growth of automation is making a world of difference in industrial applications, enabling an expanding range of production tasks to be handled and executed more efficiently, productively and safely. Much of the hard work entailed in making the decisions that make automation possible is carried out by distributed control systems. Combining a series of control loops regulated by distributed process controllers linked into a single operator platform, distributed control systems have proven highly effective in managing core operational, maintenance and safety functions in a wide range of process and plant applications.
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By enabling large and complicated control functions to be managed in a single environment, distributed control systems offer several advantages: • Safety and system availability: With their inherent built-in redundancy, distributed control systems enable safe and disruption-free operation in the event of a problem. • Reduced downtime: By monitoring all aspects of plant performance, distributed control systems can highlight when and where problems are likely to occur, allowing timely action to be taken. Automated decision-making also reduces the potential for operator error, such as missing, misinterpreting or ignoring an alarm condition. • Visualisation: When linked into an operator platform, data from distributed control systems covering a few hundred to potentially thousands of tags or assets can be presented via a HMI to provide a detailed overview of plant conditions. Functions such as data logging and alarm management help to provide additional information that the operator can use to make informed decisions.
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