What's CENTUM VP?

It has been 33 years since the DCS was first introduced to the market. The role of the DCS has changed with the times. What has changed at the customers’ plants? What issues are the huge process industries facing nowadays? To name a few, severe competition in the global market, area-dependent energy resources, global environmental issues, the need to ensure safety, and an outflow of know-how. And what are our dear customers doing to solve all these problems? They are under pressure on many different fronts to sustain operational safety, maintain security, apply and maintain more than 150 different automation applications, manage and maintain tens of thousands of field devices, educate new operators, introduce new technologies, use plant equipment to maximum effectiveness, eliminate production losses, and put up with tight loading allocations. Yokogawa is fully aware that it is no longer enough just to manufacture products safely and soundly.

Imagine that you are trying to operate a plant at maximum capacity without knowing the following: the production plan for the following day, which field devices are about to fall apart, when you are about to exceed your maximum production capacity, how current costs compare to previous costs, and how much loading is possible. It would be an exercise in futility.

CENTUM VP solves all these problems! CENTUM VP maximizes the performance of production activities by integrating all the real-time information scattered around the plant into a single database, and makes it available without restriction to all the people in production and all applications and information systems. All these functions can only be achieved by Yokogawa’s CENTUM VP. If you think that your management systems, MES, sensors, asset management systems, and LIMS keep your plant safe and secure, you are mistaken.

Skilled operators and highly reliable production control systems play a pivotal role in ensuring safe and sound plant operation. CENTUM VP makes possible a well-planned production plan and the utilization of plant equipment at minimum cost. Although management efficiency rises when a DCS and other information systems are integrated, the need grows for security measures against cyber attacks. A DCS can be considered an information system that provides a production control function. CENTUM VP is of course equipped with sufficient security measures against cyber attacks and enables both safe plant operation and improved management efficiency for customers.

It is my pleasure to introduce the 8th generation of our CENTUM series. CENTUM VP was released to the world market in February, and I hope I have helped you understand its features. This first-phase CENTUM VP features an enhanced human machine interface (HMI) that serves as an information window for plant operations. It runs on both Windows Vista and Windows XP, ensuring that it will be around for many years to come. In CENTUM VP’s next phase, a real-time database will be introduced that integrates all plant information. This will be accessed by all production personnel via the latest HMI.

In future development stages, Yokogawa will offer a solution to maximize the utilization of facility and engineering assets throughout the plant lifecycle, next-generation control functions that apply field digital technologies, and so on. The evolution of CENTUM VP will never stop. By continuing to develop its flagship CENTUM production control system, Yokogawa is contributing to growth in the manufacturing industries.