Yokogawa Electric Corporation has strengthened the solutions that it offers to the manufacturing sector by significantly enhancing the configuration and control functions of its STARDOM network-based control system. This newly enhanced system is being released to the market today.

STARDOM is made up of function-specific control, operation, and monitoring components that can be interconnected flexibly and scalably using networking technology. The system simultaneously achieves both the reliability and supportability of distributed control systems (DCS), and the openness, versatility and cost-effectiveness of systems that combine PCs, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and other devices.

In keeping with Yokogawa’s unchanging emphasis on introducing new functions and improving reliability, the Company is committed to making continuous enhancements to STARDOM. The latest improvement to be made is the development of release 1.50 of STARDOM’s autonomous controllers. With this new release, the application library has been completely redone, with the result that the engineering of control loops is now 50% more efficient. In addition, reliability has been enhanced through the support of dual redundant Fieldbus modules.

With these functional enhancements, Yokogawa aims to increase the number of applications applicable to STARDOM in order to further boost this business.

Development Background
Thanks to the brisk semiconductor and LCD-related markets, high added-value raw materials industries such as fine chemicals and semiconductor materials are actively investing in plants and equipment. This is also true of the food and pharmaceutical industries.
In applications combining processing (continuous processing of liquids, etc.) and discrete operations (assembly), there is a growing tendency to use PLC-based instrumentation with small- to medium-scale systems. In the energy field, there is increasing demand for the use of networking-enabled control and monitoring systems in upstream equipment and facilities such as oil- and gas-well drilling rigs and pipelines. However, general-purpose PLCs are often inadequate for the task and thus there is a strong need now for inexpensive control and monitoring systems that are highly reliable, are capable of handling large amounts of data, and support a wide range of networks. In response, these functional enhancements have been made to STARDOM.

Overview of Functional Enhancements
1. Increased Reliability for Connection with Field Devices
Modules have been made dual-redundant while complying with FF-H1*, a global standard in the process field. In the area of software function enhancements, a block view function has been incorporated. It is now possible to configure FF-H1-compliant, highly reliable systems also for small- to medium-scale facilities.
* FF-H1 stands for FOUNDATION Fieldbus-H1. It is a global standard for connecting field devices such as sensors and valves with control stations.

2. Dramatic Increase in Engineering Efficiency
The IEC61131-3* compliant control library has been completely redone, resulting in increased engineering efficiency. In addition, control loop configuration tools utilizing this library are now available. Overall, the efficiency has increased by at least 50%.
* IEC61131-3: IEC stands for International Electrotechnical Commission. IEC61131-3 is an international standard for the languages used to program programmable controllers.

• Major target markets
General manufacturing plants where a system controls a wide range of small- to medium-scale process and assembly type production facilities. This includes petroleum and chemical processing, electrical and mechanical equipment assembly/processing, food and pharmaceutical production, and widely distributed facilities for co-generation and other purposes.

• Applications
Operation, monitoring, and control, including:
- Monitoring and control of production facilities
- Remote monitoring and control of district heating and cooling systems and co-generation   systems
- Remote monitoring and control of semiconductor manufacturing equipment

• Planned sales volume (including markets outside Japan)
2000 systems for fiscal year 2004
4000 systems for fiscal year 2005