One of the greatest concerns of today's automation technology vendors is providing the cost and flexibility benefits of commercial mass market technologies without sacrificing performance, reliability, or security requirements to the customers served.
Using mass market hardware, software, and networking components in automation applications can have many advantages for bringing technology advancements more quickly and cost effectively to end users. Sometimes referred to as "commercial-off-the-shelf" (COTS) technologies, mass market solutions can be produced in higher volumes, so they typically cost less. Because they are often produced by companies that specialize in a certain technology, they are more likely to be best-of-breed solutions. And because such components are designed to be interchangeable between vendors, spares are more widely available, replacements are faster and overall maintenance costs are reduced.
From the control vendor's perspective, once they get past any NIH (not-invented-here) bias, they can start with a product that is already well advanced, and can divert critical resources to areas of their own core competencies to deliver additional value to their customer. Also, because they can source components from multiple vendors, suppliers can compress lead times in support of modern just-in-time manufacturing practices.
But we are far from the day when robust, competitive process control solutions will be created entirely by plugging and playing off-the-shelf components. The cost of integrating open technologies can often be much higher than anticipated, especially if they are intended to support unique applications. Even some solutions that are marketed as open may still requiring additional tweaking to match customer needs exactly.
Securing open applications is probably the greatest challenge, but there may be performance issues as well. It is, for example, much easier to optimize proprietary systems for complex, data-intensive, or physically hazardous industrial applications than it is for COTS-based solutions. So unless vendors pay special attention to these areas, end-users risk security breaches and performance surprises. To ensure that their customers reap the maximum competitive benefit with the least risk, automation vendors can take the following measures:
- Commit to using commercially available components whenever appropriate.
- Map mass market technologies to customer needs.
- Industrialize mass market technologies.
- Build a bridge to the past.
- Build a bridge to the future.
1. Commit to using commercially available components whenever appropriate:
There is no turning back. Mass market technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent in control systems. Virtually all leading vendors, for example, have significant COTS initiatives. At Invensys, our Foxboro I/A Series system has made extensive use of commercially available technology. This has included UNIX workstations and servers from Sun, Microsoft Windows-based workstations, and servers from Dell and standard Ethernet technologies for communication.
Even our mission-critical controllers and other industrial stations have utilized widely available technology to a certain extent. These include standard Intel or AMD microprocessors and the VRTX real-time operating system, packaged in purpose-built industrial controllers. VRTX, while not technically a "commercial" product, certainly represents standard, generally available technology. And we continue to do so, with a major initiative to deliver products based on Microsoft .NET protocols now well underway.
2. Map mass market technologies solutions to customer needs:
Despite the potential benefits for end users and vendors, system performance improvements must be the primary consideration in implementing commercially available technology. The mass market is far from delivering a robust, reliable process control solution so it is imperative that automation vendors understand where open technology can help their customers, where it may not apply, and where it may even cause problems.
It is important that automation vendors be intimate with their customers' applications. They must know where commercially available technologies can work for their customers and where they can't. Customers may, for example, be able to save money by moving certain applications to a COTS-based solution, while keeping other applications running in a known legacy environment.
Lifecycle costs are another issue. Control systems typically have a life of 10 or more years. Vendors must be certain that the components they use will perform accordingly.
Ease of use is another key factor. Commercial technologies should be integrated effectively, not patched together in a do-it-yourself fashion. Cost savings will do little good if system operation compromises environmental compliance, for example, and results in a fine or shutdown.
It behooves automation vendors to provide the expertise that can implement COTS solutions in a way that adds to -- not detracts from -- the functionality that the customer expects and may have actually been achieving with their existing automation systems.
3. Industrialize mass market technologies:
Automation vendors must move to leverage the low-cost and enabling technologies that are available in the marketplace to provide new functionality. Much of the innovation that will be occurring on process control over the next few years will involve creative application of mass market technologies that were developed outside the automation industry.
Implementing mass market technology is not simply a matter of the process control vendor becoming a systems integrator. Understanding the most critical factors involved in control system design -- reliability, fault tolerance, real-time speed, historical record keeping, to name a few -- becomes more, not less, important when integrating mass market technologies into control systems. Control system knowhow is still the most fundamental issue for the control system supplier.
Delivering adequate redundancy is one of the most important issues when integrating commercially available technology into an existing design. Because Invensys started with the standard Ethernet networking protocol, for example, we have been able to offer our customers the fastest communications infrastructure in the process control industry. Our switched Ethernet technology deploys standard 100 megabit/1gigabit switched Ethernet in an advanced redundant/fault-tolerant "mesh" configuration. This provides a secure, fiber-optic network featuring highly reliable message delivery between I/A Series workstations and control stations that have 1 gigabit backplane capability. The new backbone significantly boosts overall system performance while eliminating the cost and complexity of carrier-band LANs, which might otherwise have been required in a demanding industrial application.
We have now applied switched Ethernet in our automation platform all the way down to the I/O. We have created a mesh network that connects the I/O module to the automation backbone for secure, reliable, redundant operation. We have also improved fault tolerance, by enabling multiple passes and tolerating multiple wiring failures. We are continuously flattening our topology, enabling users to deploy operator stations, control processors, and I/O, across a single, highly reliable network backbone.
4. Build a bridge from the past:
Since most of the older systems are built on proprietary technology, maximizing investment protection for end users requires enabling the older systems to communicate with the new, as much as possible. This is where knowledge of the old system, knowledge of the new, and knowledge of the customer applications also come into play.
Very few customers can afford to reinvest in automation from the ground up. Unless the new solutions can also work with legacy systems, their benefits could be lost. In the Ethernet network mentioned above, for example, we've been able to make out-of-the box network technology work with our existing technology so that there is no need to reprogram or replace existing equipment that is tunneled into the new network.
Moreover, we have made it possible to bring users of competitive proprietary systems one step closer to a fully open network through a unique system migration approach. This approach utilizes special input/output (I/O) modules that are functionally identical to our I/A Series I/O modules, but which are re-packaged to plug directly into the I/O racks of most leading DCS vendors. These I/O modules enable the physical switchover to be accomplished without moving any field wiring, thus dramatically lowering the cost of implementation of a new open DCS while minimizing production downtime.
5. Build a bridge to the future:
In recent past, control system vendors used "partnerships" with suppliers to reduce design costs. These partnerships led end-of-life issued and "last time buys" as the supplier changed technologies and made the parts obsolete. Now, with greater integration of commercially available technologies, newer systems are increasingly vendor-independent, which will help alleviate end-of-life problems related to a single vendor.
And as we evolve toward a more open future, automation vendors must extend mass market software as well. Our ArchestrA software platform, for example, builds directly upon the open connectivity and flexibility of Microsoft .NET architecture and adds an industrial strength applications environment that is easy to use, and robust for process, discrete, and hybrid manufacturing.
Attributes such as determinism, security, and availability are part of the ArchestrA implementation. At the same time, users can easily extend their applications due to the use of standard Microsoft SQL Server databases and direct extensibility with Microsoft.NET web services.
ArchestrA-based solutions can utilize more than 1000 proven plant protocols that have been previously integrated to Invensys offerings, as well as communicate to the latest Fieldbus protocols and OPC. The latest generation of ArchestrA-based device integration (known as DataAccess Servers) extends beyond standard OPC by providing device and network diagnostics as well as easier administration and software deployment. OPC is fully supported, but ArchestrA services go beyond OPC to include functions such as security, scripting, historization, configuration, and data modeling.
Toward Pervasive Process Control
As automation vendors implement the steps mentioned above, especially as they involve Internet technologies and mobile computing, we will move ever closer to what is coming to be called a pervasive control environment, an environment in which every device can communicate with every other device in real time. As we progress in that direction, all of the issues mentioned above, the pros and the cons, are intensified. If we could indeed replace all field devices with wireless devices and eliminate all field wiring, for example, enabling communication of any point in the production line to any other point, it could be as significant to the industry as the DCS itself.
Between now and then, applications, networking, security, and business process challenges for implementing these systems in mission critical applications will be even greater than those we are facing today. And the fact that cost constraints have cut plant staffing so thin makes vendor knowhow even more important than ever before. Vendors must have the knowhow not only to deliver mass market technologies safely and cost effectively, they must know how to help customers build competitive applications using the new technologies.
