Your plant’s distributed control system (DCS) is the brain behind your operations. But over time, it ages and becomes less effective just like many other parts of your plant. A DCS upgrade brings your system up to date, resulting in improved availability, reliability, security and plant economics.
Six signs your DCS might need an upgrade
- Fewer of your operators and engineers understand your existing DCS
- Vendor support for your hardware and software ended long ago
- Control problems are causing unplanned outages and increased downtime
- Spare parts are becoming obsolete and can no longer be sourced
- Maintenance spends more time repairing components than improving processes
- You have only limited remote access capabilities
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Benefits across your plant and business
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Operator benefits
- Less unplanned downtime
- Lower maintenance costs
- Greater visibility and control
- Faster troubleshooting
- Better data export and reporting
- Protection from cybersecurity threats
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Business benefits
- Improved plant availability
- Lower operating costs
- Better asset utilization over time
- Greater data transparency
- Faster response to changes
- Regulatory compliance
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Download
Distributed Control System Brochure
What’s in an upgrade?
- An onsite evaluation and formal needs assessment
- Replacing old control desk with modern HMI
- Replacing IT hardware, IO modules, control panels/ boxes, sensors, interfaces
- Upgrading control network to more reliable technology (e.g. fiber based)
- Integrating different control technologies into a single, reliable system
- Upgrading server and workstation software to latest version
- Adding redundancy, auto-backup, long-term history, high-resolution archiving, remote access
- Implementing GPS-based time synchronization
- Improving ability to monitor alarms, events and other plant data
- Making it faster and easier to export data and produce reports
- Ensuring compliance with standards and regulatory requirements
- Operator training on the updated DCS platform
- Program modifications based on the operator’s build experience
