hmi industrial pcs enclosures · 2018. 5. 21. · and level indications. even though isa101 may...
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HMI, Industrial PCs & Enclosures
eHANDBOOK
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TABLE OF CONTENTSInterfaces lighten the load 6
Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) and operator workstations are simplifying,
multitasking, and seeking “one pane of glass” as they multiply and go mobile.
Uniform interfaces unify biotech operations 16
While working to consolidate and automate its manufacturing processes for raw-
material antigens, Grifols Diagnostic Solutions in Emeryville, Calif., recently implemented
a process that allowed staff to view data from process operations side-by-side.
SCADA reflects and reinvents 21
The cloud, IIoT, virtualization and other forces are reshaping supervisory control and
data acquisition (SCADA) into new forms and functions, but can they do it securely?
Mobility rises above 28
Spurred by the freedom granted by earlier mobility tools, many process users are
further increasing their range with more diverse solutions—and even taking flight.
Operator training simulator opens minds at Enterprise 39
Energy services provider Enterprise Products describes how an OTS can be used to
improve productivity, uptime and reliability – and pay for itself in just a few days.
Open-source computers arrive for monitoring and control 42
Raspberry Pi, Arduino and other computers on open-source silicon boards
are on the way for do-it-yourself monitoring—and even control.
eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 2
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https://www.acromag.com/sp
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AD INDEXAcromag • www.acromag.com/sp 3
Advantech Automation • www.advantech.com 5
Allied Moulded Products Inc. • www.alliedmoulded.com 10
Otek Corp. • www.otekcorp.com 15
Pepperl+Fuchs, Inc. • www.pepperl-fuchs.com 17, 18
Pro-Face America • www.profaceamerica/xldisplay 20
Rittal North America LLC • www.rittalenclosures.com 27
Unitronics • www.unitronicsplc.com 38
eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 4
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https://www.acromag.com/sphttp://www.advantech.comhttps://goo.gl/ZhfhNrhttp://www.otekcorp.comhttp://www.pepperl-fuchs.com/hmihttp://www.profaceamerica/xldisplayhttp://www.RittalEnclosures.comhttp://www.unitronicsPLC.com
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http://www.advantech.com
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Traveling lighter means traveling faster, farther—and hopefully getting more done. That’s seems to be the slimmed down, New Year’s resolution for
many operator interface and human-ma-
chine interface (HMI) technologies and their
users, who appear to have moved beyond
simply displaying many data streams on all
kinds of tablet PCs and smart phones, and
are now prioritizing their devices and dis-
plays to give them the essential information
they need for better decisions.
“Everyone is thirsting for information, but
they also don’t want to be overwhelmed,
so many HMIs are getting streamlined in
what they show, following the ISA101 HMI
standard (www.isa.org/isa101), and adopt-
ing less distracting, more contemporary
grayscale displays,” says Dan Malyszko,
operations director and lead engineer
at Malisko Engineering (https://malisko.
com), a CSIA-certified (www.controlsys.
org) system integrator in St. Louis, Mo. “The
intent is to quickly draw attention where
it’s needed, so color is used sparingly, and
animations are discouraged since they can
distract from critical notifications. How-
ever, many operators are accustomed to
colorful, P&ID-style graphics with animated
representations such as active flow paths
and level indications. Even though ISA101
may suggest that energized equipment be
shown shaded white versus deenergized
shaded gray, an operator with intimate
process knowledge relies on seeing a clear
flow path on the screen. In these situations,
we have to adapt and suggest muted color
pallets to try to satisfy the HMI standard
while appeasing operations. It’s a fine line,
Interfaces lighten the loadHuman-machine interfaces (HMIs) and operator workstations are simplifying, multitasking, and seeking “one pane of glass” as they multiply and go mobile.
by Jim Montague
eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 6
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but we just try to find a middle ground to
accomplish the goals of modern, high-per-
formance HMI graphics.
“Of course, the flip side of the thirst for
information is that users also want to view
multiple data streams on fewer interfaces.
There’s a lot of talk about employing a ‘single
pane of glass,’ but the reality is users need
to see input from many disparate software
packages. This can be resolved by delivering
content relative to who the user is, where the
user is, and what they’re doing. For example,
ACP ThinManager (http://thinmanager.com)
helps us deliver, manage, and maintain the
security of content on their screens and tablet
PCs. The challenge as HMIs evolve is to keep
delivering relevant information to the right
people at the right time.”
UPGRADES ENABLE HMISNaturally, one of the optimal times to sim-
plify HMIs, prioritize data streams, and
consolidate displays is during larger process
and production upgrades. For instance,
Evonik Corp.’s (http://corporate.evonik.
com) plant in Mobile, Ala., is upgrading
automation on several units. This animal
nutrition products process includes sequen-
tial column start-up, crystallization, filtering
and daily flush-out procedures.
Evonik is also upgrading the column from
its phased-out APACS+ control system to
newer PCS 7 controls from Siemens (www.
siemens.com). This section of the Mobile
facility has about 5,000 I/O overall, while
the immediately affected process has
300-400 I/O. So far, basic engineering
sequencing is done, and detailed engineer-
ing was scheduled to begin shortly. PCS 7
hardware and sequencing was implemented
last fall, and the start-up is scheduled for
April. Despite organizing the upgrade
into two phases, there can be a three- to
five-year “gray phase” between when
the APACS+ OS HMI conversion is com-
plete and when the I/O conversion phase
is implemented.
UPGRADING HMIFigure 1: Before and after screens from scadaHUB show how the system integrator redesigns displays to limit distracting colors and graphics (above) when rendering equip-ment and systems, and replaces them with more muted designs (below) that become vivid to indicate alerts and alarms, which helps improve operator awareness and per-formance. Source: scadaHUB
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“This migration is happening in two phases
dictated by our shutdown schedule,” says
Patrick Spomer, senior project engineer
for process control at Evonik. “The first is
converting the HMI for the APACS+ oper-
ating system, implementing new Siemens
industrial PCs, migrating to the PCS 7 archi-
tecture, and adding the AS410-5H controller
and network infrastructure. The second
phase is converting the APACS+ I/O to PCS
7 I/O, and taking into account safety instru-
mented system (SIS) considerations.”
Spomer reports that some of the advan-
tages of Evonik’s upgrade plan include:
• Infrastructure is in place with industrial
Ethernet modules (IEM) for communica-
tion between the legacy APACS+ and PCS
7 AS410H controllers, using a common
PCS 7 OS HMI;
• Migration path forward is promoted
during the gray phase;
• HMI functions implemented via sequential
function chart (SFC) visualization face-
plates are now auto-generated from the
PCS 7 configuration;
• Removes up to two times the cost of
implementing ladder logic diagrams
(LLD) via detailed engineering labor
reduction; and
• SFC type can be applied to multiple unit
operations requiring same sequence.
Spomer adds that implementing SFC func-
tions on Evonik’s HMI will save an estimated
500 man-hours due to: savings on a per
sequence basis because multiple sequences
will now be identical; no sequence recre-
ation from APACS+ to PCS 7 once ACM
controllers are removed; and LLD being
phased out by SFC/CFC to allow for pro-
gramming and HMI advantages.
“The value gained during the gray phase of
migration includes linking phases together
with configuration, promoting our new phi-
losophy in the plant, and putting new I/O
in as PCS 7 I/O,” explains Spomer. “During
phase 2’s piecewise I/O hardware conver-
sion, we’ll easily stage-swap I/O, and there
will be minimal programming necessary
outside of channel driver software.”
In addition, Spomer reports that SFC HMI’s
advanced process library (APL) faceplates
provide an advantage for operators to
run successful sequences, while SFC code
enables APACS+ I/O to PCS 7 I/O transi-
tions without major, future reconfiguration.
“We’re also saving on engineering con-
figuration costs by using SFC type bulk
engineering capability,” he adds. “SFC HMI
faceplates give operators graphical and
numerical information about where they are
in a process without needing to view the
engineering logic, which can help reduce
cycle times and improve safety. Once
implemented, SFC types will be used for
HMI graphic process visualization in a future
training system with Siemens SIMIT simula-
tion software that we’ll put in next year to
train future operators.”
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eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 8
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COMBINE TO CONQUEREnd users and system integrators report that
HMI simplification typically means bring-
ing together several interface and support
technologies that used to be separate and
required individual programming, configura-
tion and maintenance. For example, Kinetrex
Energy LNG (http://kinetrexenergy.com)
in Indianapolis, Ind., upgraded its controls
in 2014, but found it was constrained by its
many existing, siloed software packages.
Two years later, Kinetrex contracted with
Miller-Eads (www.miller-eads.com), an elec-
trical and automation contractor, also in
Indianapolis, to implement Ignition software
from Inductive Automation (https://induc-
tiveautomation.com) to help integrate its
software and systems. The liquefied natural
gas process at Kinetrex includes about 2,700
tags, 600 historical tags, approximately 50
screens, about 30 alarms, 12 clients including
eight workstations, two tablets and a mobile
display, standard Ignition architecture,
single site MySQL database, and a Microsoft
SQL database.
“We worked with Miller-Eads to identify,
develop, test and deploy solutions for HMI,
CMMS, data historian, trucking, logistical
order taking and processing, as well as
personnel time tracking and administrative
reporting,” says Charlie Hendrixson, auto-
mation services director at Miller-Eads. “We
also developed solutions that allow Kin-
etrex to easily export transaction data to
QuickBooks, and export customer-specific
transactions to FuelQuest. A tab-
let-launched project was deployed to allow
Kinetrex employees to complete indus-
try-required hourly equipment and process
inspections via tablet.
“We helped Kinetrex consolidate its existing
software, both SaaS and standard on-prem-
ises, to gain efficiency and functionality. The
unique aspect of this project is that Ignition
integrates every single part of Kinetrex’s
business process from the operator to the
accounting department.”
Travis Cox, co-director of sales engineering
at Inductive, adds, “There’s not a lot of new
HMI technologies, but there are new ways
of approaching them. For instance, many
people think of HMI and SCADA as one
thing, but they can be separated. SCADA is
usually the centrally located software and
screen, while HMIs must guarantee local
visibility and take care of edge functions.
However, users still want to manage their
HMIs centrally, but also make them part
of a larger ecosystem, and make changes
at their central desk that they can push to
hundreds of HMI and other edge devices.
Our two-year-old Ignition Edge and Ignition
Edge Panel provide local HMI, and can be
installed on any hardware the users wants,
including a low-cost Raspberry Pi board.
However, they’re also managed centrally,
and can talk MQTT to send data back to
corporate locations, the cloud and other
decision-making places.”
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eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 9
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Jeff Hayes, regional product manager at
Beijer Electronics (http://beijerinc.com),
reports, “Similar to smart phones that are
merging functions like global positioning
systems (GPS) and adding apps as needed,
HMIs and PLCs with onboard computing,
memory and data storage are running oper-
ating systems and software, and if they
have multi-core processors, then they can
run all kinds of apps. With added software,
we can add PLC and I/O functions to HMIs,
and add more hardware and software to
design HMIs for more specific applications
on ships, packaging machines or oil rigs,
and give operators whatever objects they
need to see that will make a difference.”
Hayes adds, even though capacitive touch-
screens with sweep and multi-touch zoom
functions continue to replace traditional
resistive touchscreens, there’s also been
a move towards “screen-less HMIs” that
include a circuit board and CPU memory,
power, enclosure and networking, but
dispense with the usual display and touch-
screen, leaving that function to a third-party
handheld with HMTL 5 and wireless net-
working. “Opto 22’s groov is a good
example of a screen-less HMI that’s simple
and costs less because about half the cost
of an HMI is the screen,” he says.
In fact, Opto 22 (www.opto22.com)
announced a new version of groov in
October that embeds IIoT technologies
MQTT and OPC-UA drivers directly into
its industrial edge appliance. Added to its
groov View software for web and mobile
visualization and open-source Node-RED
development environment, Opto 22 says
its new release offers engineers, techni-
cians, and developers a comprehensive set
of tools for edge deployment in industrial
environments. These new embedded capa-
bilities are made possible through forging
close partnerships with Inductive and Cirrus
“Twenty years ago, many operators only accessed
a computer when they interacted with their SCADA
system at work, but now they use laptops, tablet PCs
and smart phones all the time, so their expectations
of the user experience is much greater.”
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eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 11
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Link Solutions, and are part of the Ignition
Edge Onboard program.
Beyond skipping screens, Hayes says that
some HMIs are also adding calculation and
control capabilities. For example, Beijer
just released its X2 series of HMIs with PLC
functions, including X2 Extreme Sealed,
which is an HMI that doesn’t require an
enclosure because it can be mounted
almost anywhere. “Instead of a panel with
a DIN rail behind it, X2 has the HMI and
PLC all in one unit, which usually costs
half as much as running them separately,”
he adds.
ACCLIMATING TO INTERFACEEven with the best-designed, most-innova-
tive HMIs, developers report it can still take
time to get operators used to them. Luckily,
there are many helpful tools to get them up
to speed.
“For decades, SCADA has been the eyes
and hands of the PLC for the operator, but
modern SCADA hasn’t evolved as other
software has done,” says Mario Ishikawa,
co-founder and business director at scada-
HUB (scadahub.io), a CSIA-member system
integrator in Florianópolis, Brazil, which
often uses SCADA software from Elipse
(www.elipse.com.br) to build and renovate
HMI screens (Figure 1) for local power com-
panies and do outsourced SCADA projects
for other system integrators including some
in the U.S.
“Twenty years ago, many operators only
accessed a computer when they interacted
with their SCADA system at work, but now
they use laptops, tablet PCs and smart
phones all the time, so their expectations
of the user experience is much greater,”
adds Ishikawa. “Still, many in-plant screens
aren’t good and have old 3D graphics that
are too bright, so we’ve been programming
screens and graphics according to
principles in Hollifield and Habibi’s High
Performance HMI Handbook that stress
the actual needs of plants and users,
follow technical standards, and make HMIs
comfortable to use.”
Cox reports that Inductive also advises
its users to follow the handbook’s
techniques, such as presenting operators
with moving, analog indicators on their
HMIs. These vertical bars typically show
actual operating levels, but this data is
displayed within accepted operating
ranges, which are more effective for
maintaining operator awareness. [An
Inductive white paper on HMIs is located
at http://pages.inductiveautomation.
com/WhitePaperDesignLikeaPro_
HMIOptimization.html]
Ishikawa adds that new interfaces and
SCADA displays can be hard for users to
understand, but training can help them
progress from complaining on the first day
to acceptance and approval after the first
week. “We recently worked on renewing an
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application with panel displays with a lot of
cells that weren’t comfortable, were visu-
ally polluted, and hard to read from just a
few feet away,” explains Ishikawa. “The new
system has a much more comfortable inter-
face, but because operators had learned the
right positions on the old displays, their first
reaction was not favorable. However, after
one week, they got used to the new dis-
plays that were less complex.”
To help operators adapt to new HMIs,
Malyszko reports that some vendors
have added built-in software objects with
common equipment status indicators to
provide a common look and feel through-
out a system. “When operators are doing
material transfers, for example, there may
be many manual hookups using proxim-
ity switches for validation of flow paths.
Software objects in newer HMIs allow us
There are several primary organizations and standards for developing human-machine interfaces
(HMI). They include:
• ISA101 (www.isa.org/isa101) and its committee cover menu hierarchies, screen navigation con-
ventions, graphics and color conventions, dynamic elements, alarming conventions, security
methods and electronic signature attributes, interfaces with background programming and
historical databases, popup conventions, help screens and methods used to work with alarms,
program object interfaces, and configuration interfaces to databases, servers and networks.
• Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium (www.asmconsortium.net) conducts
research and testing; evaluates solutions that develop and advance the collective knowledge of
its members; directs development of tools, best practices, services that facilitate the conversion
of ASM knowledge into practice; defines what abnormal situations are and discusses key causes
of abnormal situations; and helps users handle abnormal situations.
• Center for Operator Performance (www.operatorperformance.org) is a diverse group of indus-
try, vendor and academia representatives addressing human capabilities and limitations with
research, collaboration, and human factors engineering. Its mission is to raise the performance
level of operators and improve health, safety and environmental effectiveness by openly shar-
ing knowledge and ideas, including vendors in research decisions, teaming with leading human
factors researchers and universities, and collaborating with a focus on health, safety and envi-
ronment (HS&E).
• The High Performance HMI Handbook by Bill Hollifield, Dana Oliver, Ian Nimmo and Eddie Habibi
contains the best practices for assessing, designing and implementing proper process control
HMIs. It details many poor yet common HMI practices, provides justification for change, and
shows in detail the best ways to design and implement a high-performance HMI.
HMI standards and resources
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eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 13
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to consolidate this verification informa-
tion into configurable faceplates to show if
their hookups are OK or not. For instance,
Rockwell Automation’s (www.rockwellau-
tomation.com) Library of Process Objects,
a part of the PlantPAx DCS, has built-in
permissive and interlock objects that can be
easily configured to show what’s holding up
a process. This means developers no longer
have to write custom code and one-off
graphics, but can instead use pre-devel-
oped, standard objects that are already
tested and valid. We’re not eliminating
application-specific code in the PLCs and
PACs, but rather simplifying the deploy-
ment for a more consistent and focused
user experience.”
SAFE AT THE EDGEAnother benefit of simpler HMIs and prior-
itized data is deploying these capabilities
further out in the field. For example, Lynch-
burg Regional Waste Treatment Plant
(www.lynchburgva.gov/wastewater) in
Lynchburg, Va., recently implemented
controls with an integrated development
environment (IDE) from Bedrock Automa-
tion (www.bedrockautomation.com) to
upgrade and control their dechlorination
and stormwater remediation applications.
The utility treats an average of 13 million
gallons per day from the city and sur-
rounding communities. System integrator
Instrulogic Corp. (www.instrulogic.com) in
Round Hill, Va., provided programming to
help deploy and integrate these functions
within the city’s existing Ignition SCADA/
HMI system from Inductive Automation.
“We wanted to transform from a centralized
to a distributed approach using edge con-
troller capabilities. Bedrock enables us to use
remote monitoring, bringing many devices
online into our SCADA system for the first
time,” explains Jason Hamlin, SCADA man-
ager, City of Lynchburg. “Providing public
access to the existing scanner/alarm in the
current environment meant opening access
to the SCADA system, which we could not
do. Bedrock’s cybersecurity allows us to
confidently monitor overflows and feed data
to the Ignition SCADA system, while provid-
ing public notifications.”
Chris Harlow, product and customer ser-
vice manager at Bedrock, adds that, “A lot
of infrastructure that’s more than 10 years
old can’t be torn out, so we need to better
protect PLCs that are in place. Bedrock’s
OSA platform helps secure legacy PLCs by
occupying slots between existing controls
and existing SCADA systems, and acting as
a hardware-based firewall that runs it’s own
control code. As a result, it doesn’t just pass
encrypted data, but also serves as a secure
proxy that monitors and translates data from
less-secure PLC protocols like Modbus, Prof-
inet and EtherNet/IP to more-secure OPC
UA using our public-private infrastructure,
and triggers alerts and alarms based on
anomalies that let users react in real time.
This is more effective than regular firewalls.”
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While working to consolidate and automate its manufactur-ing processes for raw-material antigens, Grifols Diagnostic Solutions (www.
grifolsusa.com) in Emeryville, Calif., recently
implemented a process that allowed staff
to view data from process operations side-
by-side with information from plant utilities
and building systems, compare their perfor-
mance more quickly, and achieve efficiency
levels and optimization that would’ve been a
challenge with disparate data and controls.
Grifols’ antigens are used by suppliers
like Abbott and Siemens to manufacture
diagnostic kits, which are used to check
patients for blood ailments like hepati-
tis-C and others. Its Emeryville plant is a
full-suite biotech facility with upstream
yeast and e. coli, including fermentation
processes, clean-in-place (CIP) and support
equipment, and downstream purification
processes, centrifugation, chromatography,
filling and packaging applications, all con-
trolled by PLCs and a variety of pressure,
temperature, flow, dissolved oxygen (DO)
and pH instrumentation.
The plant’s challenge in past years was
consolidating from multiple buildings into
one, and migrating its mostly manual and
separated applications into an integrated
whole. It also added new tanks, pipes, utili-
ties and skids for water purification and cell
inactivation, and implemented a PlantPAx
distributed control system from Rockwell
Automation (www.rockwellautomation.
com) for the fermentation, CIP, building
automation and other units, such as porta-
ble tanks for preparing growth media.
Uniform interfaces unify biotech operationsWhile working to consolidate and automate its manufacturing processes for raw-material antigens, Grifols Diagnostic Solutions in Emeryville, Calif., recently implemented a process that allowed staff to view data from process operations side-by-side.
By Jim Montague
eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 16
www.ControlGlobal.com
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“The available existing infrastructure cre-
ated challenges to acquire data from our
current facilities that are spaced in separate
manufacturing islands,” says Zubin Najmi,
principal engineer at Grifols. “We also
hadn’t implemented a common historian,
plus we didn’t have adequate automa-
tion to get data to it, even if we did have
an historian. We got the new building, so
we could put in the necessary infrastruc-
ture to optimize our process with better
efficiencies and yields based on data, and
establish a common platform for our util-
ities, upstream and downstream process
trains to assist our operators, maintenance
people and managers.”
Najmi reports that Grifols has already com-
pleted a handful of two-week production
runs in its new one-building application,
which includes a week in fermentation and
transitions from 10-liter to 250-liter ves-
sels. So far, he adds, the process controls
are performing well. Formerly manual CIP
processes, as well as mixing and transfer
procedures are automated with recipes and
Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Batch
and Sequence Manager software, which
saves a lot of time for operators.
Najmi explains, the Grifols plant’s process
and building controls begin to converge
around its air handling units and HVAC
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systems, which are also run by the PlantPAx
DCS, though their actual controls don’t
interact. “Our process, utilities and building
controls run separately, but they’re
displayed on the same operator interface,
and have the same look and feel,” he says.
“This makes it easier to troubleshoot and
to correlate and optimize them in relation
to each other, and that’s what today’s big
data and easy access to information are
all about.”
The new process plant and its air handlers
also use Rockwell Automation Allen-Brad-
ley PowerFlex drives with EtherNet/IP
networking, which generate valuable data
about frequency, power and health infor-
mation, which is also displayed by the
PlantPAx system.
“We’re also using Rockwell Automation
FactoryTalk Alarms and Events software,
which benefits from having a common
alarm platform,” adds Najmi. “We can view
all of the facilities alarms in one place, his-
torize them, and pull them up as needed.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and ISA 18.2 alarm standard stress
having an alarm philosophy, and these tools
make it a lot easier.”
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eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 18
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Najmi concludes, the first phase of Grifols’
consolidation project was getting the new
building and processes qualified, which is
mostly complete. Additional phases are
planned, including an expansion on the new
building’s second floor, which will house
other new production processes.
“The environmental conditions are just as
important as the process data to users
in the life sciences, food and beverage,
health and beauty, and other industries, and
recording their process now includes col-
lecting process control and environmental
data, too,” says Chris Steffas, application
center manager for the global solutions
delivery team at Rockwell Automation.
“This is where the value of a common archi-
tecture is demonstrated. For instance, a
common control platform makes it easier
to show compliance with regulatory and
quality requirements because users can
present their process and environmental
data together.”
Steffas adds, the value of the PlantPAx DCS
can be leveraged equally well by opera-
tions, engineering, quality/validation staff
and managers, even though they have dif-
ferent skills and objectives. “Operations
and facilities have different requirements,
but each can use the common platform
of the PlantPAx system,” he explains. “For
example, if a user knows how to add a valve
or a temperature transmitter in one area,
then a common platform means they can
do it across all areas in their facility, and it
will report back in the same way from all
of them. Previously, users had to employ
signal splitters to send data to different
supervisory systems, but now they can add
a device or alarm once, its data is shared
with both systems, and anyone has access
to the information.”
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If it had a face—and it sort of does—would you recognize supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) if you saw it on the street? Would SCADA even recognize
itself in a mirror these days?
Chance are, probably not. This is because
all the earth-shaking shifts due to data dig-
italization and the Internet are also turning
SCADA on its head, and taking it in entirely
new directions. Granted, its conceptual
borders were always pretty porous—some
water/wastewater users think it’s their
entire control system, while others consider
it limited to just their human-machine inter-
face (HMI), However, even as it continues
to display collected information in many
applications, the accelerating influence of
cloud and virtualized computing services
and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
SCADA reflects and reinventsThe cloud, IIoT, virtualization and other forces are reshaping supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) into new forms and functions, but can they do it securely?
By Jim Montague
KIWI WATER COMPLIANCEFigure 1: The municipal water/wastewater treatment and distribution system in Ham-ilton, New Zealand, recently upgraded its SCADA system to Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Historian ME and VantagePoint software to improve reporting, system sta-bility and compliance with drinking water standards requiring it to retain operating records for 10 years and generate monthly reports. Source: Hamilton City Council and Rockwell Automation
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are pulling SCADA into strange shapes to
perform unfamiliar tasks beyond its tradi-
tional jurisdiction.
“Where utilities used to have second
and third redundant control and SCADA
systems for comprehensive disaster
recovery, they’re now synching with dupli-
cate systems in the cloud,” says Michael
Chmielewski, offer management VP, pro-
cess safety and SCADA, Schneider Electric
(www.schneider-electric.us). “We have one
large, U.K.-based gas utility that’s talking
about moving its whole SCADA system to
the cloud. SCADA isn’t going to dissolve,
but it’s going to become more of a secure
service deployed out of the cloud.”
SEEKING DEFINITIONS“Even as a broad term, SCADA is not a dis-
tinct thing anymore. Now it’s all about the
data, and how what used to be SCADA is
converging with and incorporating a whole
bunch of new technologies,” says Chuck
Tommey, P.E., business development man-
ager at A&E Engineering (www.aeengineer.
com) in Greer, S.C., a member of the Con-
trol System Integrators Association (CSIA,
www.controlsys.org). “On-premise SCADA
with servers in racks, Ethernet to PLCs and
HMIs are still perfectly valid and will con-
tinue for a long time, but we’re on the brink
of a big mindset change.
“We’ve all heard about the cloud, IoT and
data analytics for 10 years, especially from
the information technology (IT) side, but
now they’re converging with operations
technology (OT) on the plant floor. Virtu-
alization, IIoT, cloud computing and data
analytics are all part of SCADA, or they
can be used to enhance or manage it. This
means the most successful end users and
companies will be those with well-inte-
grated IT/OT teams or IT departments with
significant understanding of OT.”
NEW SANDBOXES, NEW SHOVELSLogically, because the cloud, virtualization
and IIoT multiply the connections a SCADA
system can have with other systems, they
also increase the number of different func-
tions it can take on—along with the tools to
perform them.
To monitor and control more than 200
megawatts (MW) of utility-level, solar
generating capacity at five plants built by
Depcom Power (www.depcompower.com)
in Scottsdale, Ariz., Vertech (http://vertech.
com), a CSIA-member system integrator
in Phoenix, Ariz., developed an innovative
SCADA system that could handle each
facility’s thousands of connected devices
from many vendors. They include 15,000
tags, 30 screens, 10 clients, 10,000 alarms,
one local Microsoft SQL database, one off-
site database and 2,000 historized tags.
Besides coping with the volume of tags,
Josh McGuigan, Vertech senior control sys-
tems integrator, reports that Depcom’s new
SCADA system also needed to be robust to
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cope with new plant rollouts and data levels
that can quickly become overwhelming.
“For the solar power plant SCADA system at
Depcom’s plants, we used Inductive Auto-
mation’s (https://inductiveautomation.com)
standard Ignition software architecture,
including one local historian and one con-
nection to a database in the cloud,” explains
McGuigan. “On a typical site, an Ignition
gateway will be directly connected to
nearly 100 devices. However, some of those
devices act as gateways themselves, so the
total system is used to monitor and control
around 3,000 devices, which amounts to
more than 15,000 I/O tags per site.”
McGuigan adds that intelligent reporting,
which does more than provide the top
1,000 rows of a database table in a tabular
format, is essential for large solar arrays.
Using advanced scripting in the Ignition
Reporting module, Vertech designed a
report that analyzes data from hundreds
or thousands of strings of solar panels to
highlight low-performing equipment and
prioritize operations and maintenance
team activities.
“Ignition lets us provide a SCADA system
for Depcom that improves on the industry’s
status quo,” adds McGuigan. “Users now
have more data available and their interface
is easier to use, allowing operations and
maintenance teams to be more effective in
identifying and troubleshooting issues. The
analysis of site performance data, which
used to be a manual task, is now auto-
mated, so any site performance issues are
quickly brought to the appropriate people.”
DEALING WITH (BIG) DATASo, what can cloud-enhanced SCADA
do with its new powers? Probably the
most important job is make sense of the
buckets of data coming in from all its
new connections.
For instance, the water supply system in
Hamilton, New Zealand, consists of one
treatment plant that sources water from the
Waikato River, and delivers it through more
than 1,000 km of pipes to eight reservoirs
and more than 150,000 residents (Figure
1). The city also runs the Pukete Wastewa-
ter Treatment Plant (WWTP). To comply
with drinking water standards that New
“SCADA isn’t going to dissolve, but it
is going to become more of a secure
service deployed out of the cloud.”
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Zealand revised in 2008, including retain-
ing operating records for 10 years, the city
had implemented Rockwell Automation’s
(www.rockwellautomation.com) RSView 32
SCADA system 10 years ago, but its manual
data recording to Microsoft Exel spread-
sheets recently needed upgrading.
“Our previous system was outdated and
we required an upgrade to help simplify the
process of complying with current water
regulations in New Zealand,” says Gary Pit-
caithly, automation and electrical manager
at Hamilton City Council. “Not only that, but
we identified the potential for improving
operational efficiencies at the plant by imple-
menting an integrated system that aims to
increase productivity and reduce downtime.”
As a result, Hamilton implemented Rockwell
Automation’s latest FactoryTalk software,
including its FT View SE, FT Historian,
FT Vantage Point, FT Asset Centre and
FT ViewPoint, which provides real-time
exchange of information throughout appli-
cations and organizations for improved
business decisions, responsiveness and
productivity; reduced costs, and easier
regulatory compliance with long-term
data storage and automatically generated
reports. Staff can also externally manage
the system via tablet PCs or smart phones.
“The upgrade has delivered greater ease of
use of our system throughout the WWTP,”
adds Pitcaithly.
AFFORDABILITY AIDS ADOPTIONAnother of the unglamorous—but still cru-
cial—advantages that cloud and virtualized
computing add to SCADA systems is the
fact that they can quickly help reduce
operating costs after a relatively small
investment at the beginning.
For example, to help smaller and rural
water/wastewater utilities perform data
acquisition, alarming, reporting and other
SCADA functions on a budget, system
integrator Perceptive Controls (www.per-
ceptivecontrols.com) in Plainwell, Mich.,
developed its Perceptive Polaris cellular,
cloud-based SCADA system and software,
which employs SNAP PAC controls from
Opto 22 (www.opto22.com), and avoids
using costly servers and hardware. One of
the key development challenges Percep-
tive’s engineers faced was how to reduce
data sent between lift stations on the
SCADA network.
“We knew that using cellular modems
meant one of the most important require-
ments of this project would be the ability to
transmit the smallest data packets possible,
with as much data in each packet as possi-
ble,” says Kevin Finkler, software engineer
at Perceptive Controls. “We had to stay
under the data caps of the cellular provider
we planned to use.”
The system integrator first tried posting
data from a controller to a cloud-based
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server, but testing showed this method was
too slow, and couldn’t send configuration
changes back to controllers. While con-
sidering alternate options for transferring
data, Perceptive’s developers investigated
SNAP PAC’s Representational state trans-
fer (RESTful) application programming
interface (API) capabilities, which include a
built-in, secure HTTP/S server with an open,
documented API that creates a RESTful
architecture. RESTful and its technologies,
like HTTP/S and JavaScript Object Notation
(JSON) are intrinsic to IoT and essential
for web, data and mobile-based applica-
tion development.
“After switching to the new RESTful API
method, we now have a cloud-based soft-
ware application running on a dedicated
server that uses SNAP PAC’s RESTful API to
request data directly from the controller,”
explains Finkler. “Requests are made over
a private cellular network to avoid cyber-
security concerns, and avoid opening ports
in firewalls. We store data in float tables on
the PAC (about 44 indexes per table), and
the software can grab up to 100 tables per
request without slowing performance.”
Perceptive’s cloud application then uses
the RESTful API to write back how many
tables were retrieved, so the controller can
delete the old data, and move everything
up in the table with new data again at the
top. This ensures that all data is received
into the cloud application. “It’s more effi-
cient to make the cloud application process
large amounts of data, instead of making
the controller do the work in addition to
its normal operations,” adds Finkler. “This
method saved an average of 5.8 kb per data
set transmitted, which ended up saving us
about 250 MB per day, adding up to signifi-
cant savings in cellular data charges.”
A&E’s Tommey adds, “We see a lot of low-
er-cost SCADA solutions at shows, but
when you get down to it, their initial cost is
still high for users. However, when OT and
IT converge in the cloud, they can reduce
SCADA and other costs, and turn many
capital expenses into operating costs. Plus,
“Plant management that previously had
to migrate SCADA equipment every
three to five years can now extend
their lifecycles to 10 to 15 years.”
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today’s subscriber-based fee structures can
reduce costs even more, especially at the
front end, where these expenses can be
hard for users to swallow.”
For instance, Tommey reports that a typical
SCADA project with three servers, wired
and wireless networking, field devices and
software licensing can add up fast to an
average of $100,000, while an equivalent,
subscriber-based version on the cloud may
only cost $10,000 upfront with added sub-
scription fees on a monthly or annual basis.
“This is a lot more approachable for users in
their local budgets,” says Tommey.
Despite this tenfold cost reduction,
Tommey adds that many potential users
remain reluctant to do SCADA in the cloud
due to security concerns, worries that Inter-
net links will go down, and anxiety that their
data won’t always be available to them. “As
connectivity gets more reliable, more users
will make the switch,” he says.
To help users handle the transition from
traditional SCADA to the cloud, Tommey
adds that A&E is designing hybrid systems
with local, secure, second-by-second data
storage using traditional HMI and historian
software (such as Ignition, Wonderware,
WinCC, OSI Pi or FactoryTalk), and then
sends only certain pieces of data to the
cloud for analysis. The cloud allows this
data and analytical results to be more
available via tablet PCs and smart phones.
“This enables some remote data access,
distributed alerting, machine learning and
prescriptive maintenance without putting
everything in the cloud,” Tommey adds.
SECURITY UNDERPINS EVERYTHINGWhile the many benefits of cloud-enabled
and IIoT-aided SCADA are terrific, these
added connections to higher-level networks
and the Internet come with increased risk
of probes, intrusions and attacks, which
demand updated cybersecurity and con-
stant vigilance by staff.
“The big bugaboo impacting all these new
technologies is cybersecurity, especially in the
OT space,” explains A&E’s Tommey. “Cyber-
security must be addressed as a continuous
cycle, but a lot of companies on the OT side
don’t understand this yet. They all did 20-30
years of work on lean process improvement,
and that continuous improvement thought
process must be extended to cybersecu-
rity. The problem is this security monitoring
piece doesn’t exist in 95% of manufacturing
facilities because they just have traditional
air-gapped equipment or firewalls. There’s
more security monitoring on the IT side, but
there’s very little on the plant-floor side, and
many small startups and larger suppliers are
seeking to fill these gaps.”
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http://www.RittalEnclosures.com
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If you can’t see the forest for all the trees, it’s time get up above those trees.Because the need to know what’s
going on in process applications always
demands more data and finer resolution
from more places, one useful indicator just
sparks the desire for more. That’s why,
after process control engineers and other
plant-floor professionals gain mobile tools
and software, they still want to accelerate
and diversify their capabilities even
further, and extend them to new locations
and applications.
“We had one user with a telescope pointed
at a level instrument on an elevated water
tower across town, which he used regu-
larly until we added a supervisory control
and data acquisition (SCADA) system and
radio,” says Robert Touchton, chief design
officer at MR Systems (www.mrsystems.
com), a CSIA-certified system integrator in
Norcross, Ga. “He even kept the telescope
for awhile during the transition period.”
Similarly, when human-machine interface
(HMI) and SCADA systems gained Ethernet
and Internet networking that let them move
out of the control room, and bring data
in and send instructions out via handheld
interfaces, tablet PCs and smart phones,
it was logical and probably inevitable that
they’d keep going. Recently, they’ve been
going beyond fixed wireless devices to take
to the skies with multi-rotor drones, also
known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV),
which are typically equipped with cameras,
video recorders, laser or radar measuring
instruments, and other support devices.
Mobility rises aboveSpurred by the freedom granted by earlier mobility tools, many process users are further increasing their range with more diverse solutions—and even taking flight.
By Jim Montague
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Eric Lauber, project engineer at Matrix Technologies (www.matrixti.com), a CSIA-certified system
integrator in Maumee, Ohio, reports that, "Mobility means different things. Within a plant, it can
mean not being tied to a particular station, and being able to move around. Or, it can mean not
being in a plant at all, and accessing applications via tablet PCs and mobile phones off-prem-
ises. More recently, some of those tablets can be rated for Class I, Div. 2 safety environments, or
comply with non-intrinsically safe (IS) requirements, which are often needed in food processing
and petrochemical facilities. The point is, each situation is unique, and we have to ask questions to
learn what each one needs."
Before buying and installing mobility devices, Lauber explains, it's important for users to ask
and answer several questions:
• In what operational area are mobile devices going to be used?
• What restrictions exist in those areas?
• What safety levels are required?
• How durable must mobile devices be to be viable in those settings?
• If durability is unavoidably limited, how many spare devices will likely be needed?
"If you're going to use mobile devices in tank fields and other outdoor applications, they'll
also have to deal with inclement weather and need protection," says John Lee, department
manager of the Manufacturing Systems and Solutions division at Matrix. "These are the same
questions we have to answer for cabinets, panels, electronic components and any other equip-
ment in those environments."
Lauber explains, "It may turn out that a mobile device requires a hot work permit to be used.
In these scenarios, its use must be treated like welding or similar actions. Some recent consumer
devices, like the Galaxy Note 7 mobile phone, are known to catch fire, so devices need to be
tested and certified for use in industrial areas."
Lee adds that Matrix has always interviewed clients and onsite stakeholders about their busi-
ness needs, pain points and what they're trying to accomplish before trying to standardize their
work processes and further digitize their applications, and that mobility is a logical add-on to
this process.
"If a customer wants to start using iPads, then we also talk about security because home use
is different than the proper execution, requirements, solutions, safety and protecting intellectual
property needed in manufacturing," he explains. "If staff wants to take tablet PCs home from
work, is critical information going with it? There's a lot to be gained with mobility, but users have
to follow sensible procedures and best practices."
Defined, tailored, protected mobility
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“We use drones because they can give us
more information about sites,” says MR’s
Touchton. “We’d already been doing 3D
renderings of facilities, but drones can add
a lot of data because many water/waste-
water plants don’t have any aerial pictures,
which can help them orient and place
equipment during design and installation, or
show, for example, where special mounting
brackets need to be installed.”
INFORMATION ON THE MOVEIn the past, if the proverbial mountain of
data couldn’t come to its users, then they’d
have to go to the information. However,
some recent mobility solutions are loosen-
ing up the constraints of that old reality,
and just as often putting “wheels” on data
and bringing information back to users.
“Mobility can be transformative because
it gives more data to the right individuals,
brings in transparency and visibility to show
what’s going on, lets managers see from a
high level how efficiently their operations
and facilities are running, and lets users
interact with each other more effectively,”
says John Lee, manager of the Manufac-
turing Systems and Solutions division at
Matrix Technologies (www.matrixti.com),
a CSIA-certified system integrator, this
time in Maumee, Ohio. “Mobility can assist
maintenance rounds, data collection and
commissioning. Where users previously
gathered information on Excel spread-
sheets and sampled, audited and validated
it, mobile devices let them collect and
analyze data much closer to real-time for
almost immediate feedback and distribution
to other users. In one large refinery where
we worked with thousands of instruments,
mobility enabled better maintenance accu-
racy, less errors due to manual entry, and
immediate and thorough data tracking.”
To aid these efforts, Lee reports that Matrix
produces software for tablet PCs and other
mobile tools that queries operators for their
one- or four-hour checks, data reads and
log entries for their processes, and asks
dynamic questions based on the differ-
ent shifts peculiar to each application. “As
production workflows get more digitized,
mobility can help enforce them, and make
sure that standardized, required steps and
action sequences are performed, tracked
and followed up,” he adds. “This also gives
users better analytics about operations per
day, overall process performance, or how
long future installations or other changes
will take.”
Eric Lauber, project engineer at Matrix, adds
that mobile interfaces also make it easier for
users to employ metadata—or information
about other data collections—to improve
their decisions. “Previously, we might know
how many process inspections were made
for scheduling and staffing,” he says. “But
now, we access central data repositories
with mobile devices, put that data into his-
torical and future contexts, compare the
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performance of different sequences and
teams, gain insights and find bottlenecks we
couldn’t expect to know about before, and
make adjustments for individual applica-
tions and clients.”
HMIS EVERYWHERENot surprisingly, mobility these days often
means proliferating interfaces in new sizes
and formats, putting more cameras, moni-
tors and eyeballs in the field or close to it,
and sometimes supplementing displays with
virtual- and/or augmented-reality overlays
containing useful support information.
To manage increasing demands on their
water/wastewater, transportation, environ-
mental and renewable power systems more
efficiently, Carson City Public Works (www.
carson.org/government/departments-g-z/
public-works) recently deployed several
mobile and virtualization technologies. The
utility daily purifies and delivers more than
22 million gallons of water and recycles 6.9
million gallons of wastewater, controls solar
plants that generate 748,000 kwh per year,
and manages the municipality’s truck fleet
and traffic signals.
New technologies adopted include iPads
and smart phones that allow the utility’s
operators and managers to increase their
remote monitoring capabilities across three
Nevada counties. The devices were inte-
grated with Wonderware SCADA software
that Carson City has used since 1992, and
with its Wonderware InTouch HMI software,
both from Schneider Electric (www.schnei-
der-electric.com). Remote operations were
brought to the mobile interfaces by imple-
menting the Wonderware Mobile Reporting
application with SmartGlance software,
which makes their information, key perfor-
mance indicators (KPIs) and Wonderware
Historian data easy to read and manipu-
late using smart phone screen navigation
(Figure 1).
“SmartGlance gives our staff instant access
to KPIs and process information on their
iPads and smart phones, which increases
situational awareness and allows us to be
more efficient,” says Darren Schulz, deputy
director at Carson City Public Works.
James Jacklett, electrical/signal supervi-
sor at Carson City Public Works, adds that,
ALWAYS-ON AWARENESSFigure 1: Operators and managers at Car-son City Public Works use iPads and smart phones with Wonderware by Schneider Electric's SCADA, HMI and SmartGlace software to improve operational awareness and efficiency of their water/wastewater, solar power and transportation applications, and save 15% on drive-time hours. Source: Schneider Electric
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“Integrating with Wonderware also gives us
real-time status indications, alarm notifica-
tions and communications historization for
effective monitoring of our transportation,
power and water systems, providing better
operational readiness.”
So far, Schulz and Jacklett say their Won-
derware-enabled iPads and smart phones
have reduced operations staff hours by 15%
due to drive-time savings, and allowed the
department’s more than 120 staffers to tran-
sition their workweek schedules from five
eight-hour days to four 10-hour days.
Likewise, when Prima Frutta (www.pri-
mafrutta.com) in Linden, Calif., sought to
revamp its cherry production line in 2015
to make it the world’s largest by increasing
throughput 50% without increasing staff, it
enlisted Industrial Automation Group (IAG,
www.automationgroup.com), a CSIA-cer-
tified system integrator in Modesto, Calif.,
to help with the upgrade and expand its
existing implementation of Ignition SCADA
software from Inductive Automation
(https://inductiveautomation.com) to the
new cherry line. Ignition lets Prima Frutta to
share line data with 10 managers and 900
workers via more than 120 screens scat-
tered throughout the facility.
“Every second counts, so it’s very import-
ant to provide data to our staff on the plant
floor,” says Tom Augello, production man-
ager at Prima Frutta. “If a change is coming,
whether it’s in size, quality or variety, our
people have a very short time to react, so
we put that information up, flash alerts or
use different colors to make sure every-
one sees it. The large productivity increase
we’ve seen with Ignition is from these
added screens.”
Beyond its larger, fixed monitors, Prima
Frutta uses 10 tablet PCs from Dell to
directly control the cherry line. The tablets
have stationary holders, but they can also
be carried around the plant for full SCADA
with Ignition and networking via four wire-
less access points from Moxa (www.moxa.
com).
Jason Kieffer, project manager at IAG,
reports that Prima Frutta could have used
industrially hardened tablet PCs, but chose
less costly, consumer-grade tablets because
they’re easy to replace if needed, and were
easy to implement with Ignition. IAG also
mimicked Prima Frutta’s existing servers
by building a digital twin of them at IAG’s
office, which let the integrator develop
the new application in its native environ-
ment, and accelerated its installation and
accuracy. “It was so quick. Within two
hours of pulling a tablet out of the box, we
were running the application on it,” says
Kieffer. “We were really surprised at how
quickly it went.”
Greg Sinigaglia, production manager at
Prima Frutta, confirmed that using Ignition
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on the tablets and larger monitors saves
time and money. “Let’s take grading of
the fruit as an example,” says Sinigaglia.
“Before, we had to walk down and look at
the quality and see what the sorters were
doing. Now, with Ignition, we have all this
information displayed on screens. There’s
no more running around from spot to spot.”
SIMPLICITY = USABILITYJust like a hiker with a lighter backpack,
mobility in process facilities is greatly aided
by newer tools that are simpler and lighter,
which allows them to be used more fre-
quently. For instance, Kice Industries (www.
kice.com) in Wichita, Kan., designs and
builds industrial air systems for the flour
milling, biofuels, food and energy indus-
tries, and staff in its system integration
division always welcome better ways to
migrate large distributed control systems
(DCS), building panels, and implement-
ing numerous valves, instruments and
other components.
“We just installed a good-sized biofuel proj-
ect with 600-700 instruments and valves,
and expanded another biofuel plant with
1,200-1,400 instruments and valves, and we
thought there had to be a better way than
the outdated, 15-pound, $6,000-$7,000
handheld we’d been using to program,
test and commission HART valves, check
instruments and do loop checks,” says Peter
Love, senior systems engineer for automa-
tion at Kice. “Eventually, we came across
DevComDroid smart device communicator
from ProComSol (https://procomsol.com),
which costs $1,000-$2,000, and includes a
Bluetooth HART modem and app for doing
complete HART device configurations with
an Android smart phone.”
DevComDroid uses registered device
description (DD) files from the FieldComm
Group (https://fieldcommgroup.org) for
complete access to all features of a HART
device. All members of Kice’s onsite teams
can use it, including electricians, field com-
missioning staff and plant DCS operators.
“The main advantage for everyone is that
DevComDroid is a lot less weight because
all we’re carrying is an Android smart phone
and the 2 x 3 x 3 in. modem in our pock-
ets. This portability means we can have it
with us at all times, and use it more often,”
explains Love. “Also, the battery on the
old communicator only lasted two or three
hours, so we had to haul a spare around.
DevComDroid lasts as long as our smart
phone battery, which is usually all day. The
modem also has wire leads that allow it
to be clipped to a scissor lift, or otherwise
brought close to an instrument, while we
make changes from a safe distance. With
the old communicator, we’d have to be
right at the device.”
Beyond the benefit that HART data appears
the same on a smart phone as it does
on the older communicator, Love adds
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it’s easier to apply software updates to
DevComDroid and store information by just
plugging in the smart phone. “A multivari-
able flow transmitter has a commissioning
process, so you have to backup data from
the communicator to a PC. However, most
communicators have been limited in how
much configuration data they could store—
maybe 100 procedures—so active-stop and
storage operations were needed to free
space,” says Love. “With smart phones and
tablet PCs, we have far more data storage
available, and transfers are easier to file
servers, other PCs and the cloud. Plus, we
can backup configurations, store them a
PDF documents, and email them. With the
old communicator, we also had to deal with
complex file formats and proprietary soft-
ware to handle configurations.
“In all, I think we’ve saved 25-30% on our
commissioning time based on what we do
all day, added portability and battery life,
and the fact that we can do more by having
our smart phones with us all the time. Plus,
an old communicator can’t email you at 1
a.m., but a smart phone can do it. Also, a lot
of system integration work is done remotely
these days, so we’re also saving on travel
and achieving a better quality of life.”
STAY SAFE OUT THEREBeyond keeping networks and communi-
cations secure, many users and suppliers
stress that effective mobility tools must also
be employed to keep users and applications
safe, often by continuously monitoring
their locations.
To keep better track of its remote workers,
for example, pump and valve supplier KSB
Industrial Services (www.ksb.com) recently
adopted Spot LLC’s (www.findmespot.com)
Tracker device with satellite-based global
positioning system (GPS) chip to keep track
of staffers servicing equipment in remote
areas where there are often no cellular sig-
nals. Usually employed by backpackers,
Tracker was configured by KSB to transmit
GPS data in XML format. Next, Inductive’s
FactorySQL software collects the XML data
into an SQL database, and prepares it for
use by Inductive’s FactoryPMI software,
which can create dynamic applications for
analyzing lone worker whereabouts. KSB
calls this solution its Personnel On Site
Tracking System (POSTs). It’s now set up
on KSB’s servers, and users only have to
pay $100 per GPS unit and $80 per month
for unlimited monitoring, alerts and reports.
To protect mobile users wherever they’re
located, Jason Schexnayder, sales director
for the ecom division of Pepperl+Fuchs
(www.pepperl-fuchs.com), reports it
recently launched the world’s first explo-
sion-proof tablet PC approved for use in
Zone 1/Div. 1 and Zone 2/Div. 2 settings.
Developed in cooperation with Samsung,
Tab-Ex 01 can retrieve data in real time,
interact with remote experts and back-
end systems, and use optional cameras to
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capture and respond to maintenance errors
and other issues.
“All kinds of technologies related to mobil-
ity, such as Bluetooth, RFID, tablet PCs,
smart phones, cameras, WiFi and cellular,
are combining to provide more data and
enable better decisions,” says Schexnay-
der. “However, if you need redundancy,
then you’re going to need at least a
couple of them.”
DRIVEN TO DRONESThough remote-controlled, multi-prop, min-
iature helicopters or drones for exploring
and monitoring process applications may
seem exotic, some plants report they’ve
been used for years to examine equipment
in especially inaccessible locations, such as
towers and remote pipelines and cables.
Instead of using cranes or building scaffold-
ing to reach the top of a flare stack with
no ladder, for example, they simply fly a
drone to the top, and use its high-resolution
video camera to gather detailed equipment
health data and wear-and-tear status. Sim-
ilarly, power companies have long used
full-size helicopters to let technicians check
power lines, and many of them now use
drones, too.
Touchton reports that MR has employed
drones for about a year in more than 10
projects. It often helps conduct surveys for
wireless/radio installations, which means
it’s no longer necessary for MR to bring in
and raise a tower. The system integrator
typically uses a Phantom 3 quad-copter
from DJI (www.dji.com) with 4K (four times
high-definition) camera with 1,920 x 1,080
pixels, which costs about $1,500, though
overall UAV prices have been dropping
recently (Figure 2).
MR’s drone usually flies at less than 300-
400 feet, and can stay up for about 30
minutes on one battery charge. Though the
system integrator doesn’t race its drones
like many recreational users, Touchton
adds that DJI’s drones can travel at up to
50 mph. These drones usually operate at
a maximum distance of three miles, but
Touchton reports that adding an ampli-
fier to MR’s has given it a range of up to
20 miles. [A video showing how MR uses
UP, UP AND UAV Figure 2: MR Systems uses its Phantom 3 quad-copter 4K camera with 1,920 x 1,080 pixels to fly at less than 300-400 feet and conduct surveys for wireless/radio instal-lations. The drone can stay up for about 30 minutes on one battery charge, and can travel at up to 50 mph. Source: DJI
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drones to develop SCADA graphics is at
www.mrsystems.com/videos.]
“At height, the 4K camera’s real-time feed
shows the operator where the drone is, and
lets us zoom in but still maintain resolu-
tion, so we can see what’s happening,” he
explains. “The drone is controlled by an app
on an iPad, and it can be guided manually,
or it can execute a predefined flight. We’re
using it mostly for video surveys of proj-
ects, so we’re not using it to help assist any
operations yet, though it could be used for
that purpose.”
However, as MR’s operators gain experi-
ence with their Phantom 3 drone and its
controls, the applications where it can be
applied will almost certainly multiply. For
example, a drone with a tether and power
cable could remain aloft 24/7, and serve in
place of a tower. “For now, we just want to
rent a laser or radar unit for the drone, put
it in the middle of a room or facility, let it
scan, and automatically pull readings into
3D Max software to generate renderings.
This would let us scan and measure build-
ings that we usually have to measure and
model manually.”
Touchton’s advice to other potential drone
users is to buy or rent an affordable model,
practice with it, and learn where it might
be most useful in their own projects and
applications. “My eight- and 11-year-old kids
have flown ours, and even I haven’t crashed
yet,” he adds. “One of our other operators
did crash recently, but all we had to do was
replace a rotor.”
Likewise, IATEC Plant Solutions, an engi-
neering and construction firm in Sao Paulo,
SKY-HIGH SURVEYINGFigure 3: E&C firm IATEC used a DJI Inspire 1 UAV with 12-megapixel Zenmuse X3 camera con-trolled by Pix4Dcapture flight-planning software and compatible DJI SDK software to conduct an aerial, photogrammetric survey of a Petrobras-UTGCA gas-treatment plant in Brazil, fly automatic routes in 10 areas, and capture 2,588 images of the 750,000-sq-m plant in just three days. Source: IATEC and Pix4D
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Brazil, recently used a DJI Inspire 1 UAV
with 12-megapixel Zenmuse X3 camera
controlled by Pix4Dcapture flight-plan-
ning software and compatible DJI SDK
software to conduct an aerial, photogram-
metric survey of a large Petrobras-UTGCA
gas-treatment plant in Brazil. The survey
was needed to update 3D models, draw-
ings and databases of the plant, but the
job needed to be done without costly laser
scanning or a risky, time-consuming visual
inspection (Figure 3).
“Using telemetry data from GPS and GloN-
aSS satellite systems, Pix4Dcapture’s app
allowed Inspire to automatically fly routes
optimized for mapping,” stated IATEC’s
Luciano Araujo and Henrique Marques. “In
just three days, Inspire 1 captured 2,588
grid-based nadir and free-flight oblique
images in 10 sub-sections of the 750,000-
sq-m plant, and stitched them together with
Pix4Dmapper software, which is compatible
with IATEC’s CAD/CAE software and con-
figuration settings.”
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http://www.unitronicsPLC.com
-
Paul Studebaker is chief editor of Con-trol. He earned a master’s degree in metallurgical engineering and gath-ered 12 years experience in manufacturing
before becoming an award-winning writer
and editor for publications including Control
and Plant Services.
Starting up a new unit, facility or control
system can be the thrill of a lifetime, even
when everything goes according to plan.
An operator training simulator (OTS) can
contribute to that success by allowing
operators to be trained before startup, and
providing a way to test and improve the
controls. “You can shave off enough startup
time to pay for the system – it doesn’t take
many days to pay for it,” said Greg Rogers,
director of control engineering, Enterprise
Products. It also can help you achieve best
practices in operations, improve productiv-
ity and prevent upsets.
But only if it’s done right. Enterprise
Products is a leading North American
provider of midstream energy services
including natural gas processing, pipeline
transportation, storage and marine
services. “Enterprise exports more propane
than any country in the world, including
the U.S., if you take us out,” Rogers
told attendees of his session, “OTS: A
Safe BET,” on the topic of OTS benefits,
execution and traps (BET) at Honeywell
Users Group Americas 2016, this week in
San Antonio. He recently completed an
OTS project on a new system, and while he
didn’t go into details about the process, he
did say, “If it was just a simple fractionator,
we wouldn’t be here.”
Operator training simulator opens minds at EnterpriseEnergy services provider Enterprise Products describes how an OTS can be used to improve productivity, uptime and reliability – and pay for itself in just a few days.
By Paul Studebaker
eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 39
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LEARN BY DOINGLearning retention studies show that short
of actually teaching someone else, the most
effective way to learn is by practice, which
results in 75% retention. Simulation is a
safe way to allow operators to practice. An
OTS is a computer-based training system
that uses a dynamic simulation of a process
integrated into a replicated plant control
system. Components include dynamic sim-
ulation software, a process model, operator
and instructor interface, and control system
integration software. Depending on how it’s
specified and executed, the combination
of operator training and process simulation
can help:
• Better train operations staff on the pro-
cess; Train prior to startup
• Give better response to upsets and
at startup and shutdown; Reduce
startup time;
• Increase facility uptime with safer opera-
tions and improved reliability;
• Allow refresher training; Provide evalua-
tion tools;
• Standardize best practices among opera-
tors; Improve operating procedures;
• Protect production, prevent equipment
damage and avoid environmental upsets;
• Avoid costs of poor quality, material loss
and reprocessing; Validate control and
logic systems; and,
• Debottleneck and test plant oper-
ating ranges without upsetting the
running plant.
“Avoiding a mistake that costs two days of
downtime can save a lot of money.” Enter-
prise Products’ Greg Rogers discussed the
benefits, execution and potential pitfalls
of online training simulators at this week’s
Honeywell Users Group Americas.
Best practices can improve productivity
and increase reliability by retraining “the
overcautious control operator who is not
making you money, and the one who’s run-
ning the plant on the jagged edge,” said
Rogers. Well trained operators make fewer
mistakes, and “Avoiding a mistake that
“Avoiding a mistake that costs two days of downtime can save a lot of money.” Enter-prise Products’ Greg Rogers discussed the benefits, execution and potential pitfalls of online training simulators at this week’s Hon-eywell Users Group Americas.
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costs two days of downtime can save a lot
of money,” he added.
Simulation also can be used to validate
the control logic, tuning and fidelity of the
models, and provide a test bed for process
improvements. “I can see issues and get
them fixed before they affect production,”
Rogers said. “We can try out changes to try
to relieve a bottleneck without swinging or
knocking down the plant.”
EXECUTION STARTS WITH A VISION“When you know what an OTS can do, you
can begin to develop your scope,” Rogers
said. “You can decide what you really want
the OTS to accomplish.” Is your vision
just to replicate the logic, or do you want
to simulate the entire operator environ-
ment – the room, the workstation and the
chairs? Do you want it to be “kind of like”
the operator station, or exactly? What level
of training do you want to accomplish,
and what level of function (how it looks to
the operator) and fidelity (how closely it
matches the process) do you need?
What system will you use – the vendor and
architecture? Where will operators access
the system from, who will maintain it, and
do you need to manage operator com-
petency? The answers to these questions
will help define (and largely determine the
cost of) the system components, including
functional fidelity, model fidelity, interface,
software license, hardware and long-term
support requirements.
Enterprise selected Honeywell Unisim Oper-
ations for its process based on its dynamic
model accuracy, instructor capability, pro-
cess and control simulation, instrument and
control system (ICS) interfaces, and trainee
evaluation tools. The choice was also influ-
enced by Honeywell’s background in gas
processing and fractionation, and its support
capabilities. Other selection criteria include
in-house capabilities for integration and
long-term support, ability to use remote sup-
port, and initial, annual, and license costs.
“Answer these questions for both the model
and the system, and budget for support
because you’ll need it,” Rogers said. “If
you’re not going to keep the system up to
date with process changes, don’t waste
your money buying it.”
TRAPS CAN BE AVOIDEDLike any project, agreeing on the right
scope will avoid many problems, but, “You
also need to understand the bill of materials
(BOM) – what you’re getting,” Rogers said.
“And the vendor also has to really under-
stand what you expect.” Go over the BOM
and be sure you agree on exactly what’s
included and what it will do.
Consider contingencies. “Our DCS system
was delayed, but the operators had to be
trained, so we had to break the system into
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phases,” Rogers said. “It didn’t cost a lot
more, but it’s best to consider the possible
problems before you ask for the money in
the first place. Put in some contingency,
and you’ll be all right.”
Before you start, assemble a team with
engineering, operations, system and vendor
experts. “We put together an awesome
team, and you really need these guys. Also,
we had Honeywell, ourselves and pro-
cess licensor all give input on the models,”
Rogers said.
“We’re using the simulator now on one
system, but our goal is to use it for all of
them,” Rogers concluded. “Operations
loves it. At first, they were skeptical – they
thought they didn’t need it – but when they
saw it, they said it’s awesome.”
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Don’t stop us if you’ve heard this one. “One co-op student this summer was looking for the Rasp-berry Pi he was using to set up an HVAC
damping system, and asked the 25 people
at our daily huddle,” says Sandra Buf-
fett, P.Eng., founder and CEO at Jordan
Engineering Inc. (www.jrdneng.com), a
CSIA-member system integrator in Niagara,
Ontario. “After the huddle, one guy asked,
‘What’s this pie everyone’s talking about?’ “
(Cue drum-and-cymbal.) Ba-dum, chhh!
While unfamiliar terms are quickly cleared
up, learning new concepts and technologies
usually takes longer. Even those in-the-know
at Jordan aren’t all Raspberry Pi experts yet.
“We began learning about it when one of
our chemical compounding clients put one
on the back of a wall-mounted TV monitor
with an Ethernet jack and WiFi to display
alarms and notifications on their plant floor,”
says Buffett. “This let them go from a typical
LED display scrolling text, upgrade to more
graphics, colors and maybe dashboards, and
gain those capabilities with less expense.”
Buffett reports some of Jordan’s engineers
bought a couple of Raspberry Pi kits and
adapters two years ago, started playing
with one, and gave the other away at one
of its annual automation workshops. “We’re
very relationship-based, and we partner
with our clients for a long time,” explains
Buffett. “We’ve been holding our workshops
for the past 14 years. They usually include
staff presentations and project demos, and
give everyone a chance to sit down and
swap useful information. This past May, we
Open-source computers arrive for monitoring and controlRaspberry Pi, Arduino and other computers on open-source silicon boards are on the way for do-it-yourself monitoring—and even control.
By Jim Montague
eHANDBOOK: HMI & Industrial PCs and Enclosures 43
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did workshops in three cities for the first
time, and gave away Raspberry Pi’s to 150
clients with help from Schneider Electric
Canada (www.schneider-electric.com),
which has been a partner for 18 years.”
During the workshops, Schneider Electric
conducted a lab for attendees to explore
Raspberry Pi. “To open their minds to its
possibilities, groups at each table came up
with different ideas about how to use Rasp-
berry Pi, such as monitoring the weather,
energy prices, interest rates and inventory
costs, which could empower their opera-
tors by helping them make better decisions
on the best times to make their products,”
ad