2005 Press Releases-17

The ProSafe-RS safety instrumented system, a new product from Yokogawa Electric Corporation that was released just three months ago, has been successively adopted by many leading companies around the world including some in Japan.

Among the eight companies that have decided to introduce the system are BP, Total, and Japan’s Mitsubishi Chemicals, with a total value of more than four billion yen. These orders have been followed by a flood of inquiries from other companies.

ProSafe-RS will be installed at ethylene plants, natural gas fields, and an LPG import terminal that BP is currently constructing in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China, and which will become that country’s second largest facility of that type. Including related products, the total volume of orders for such plants is close to 800 million yen.

ProSafe-RS is a safety instrumented system for process automation that was put on the market in February 2005. This is a core building block of Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant™ solutions that promises to bring operational excellence to visionary plants, creating an environment where plant personnel can “See Clearly, Know in Advance, and Act with Agility.”

Safety instrumented systems are designed to constantly monitor the conditions of process-oriented plants, particularly oil, natural gas and petrochemical plants, and to reliably shut down a plant if it deviates from predetermined operating conditions, thus ensuring plant safety. These systems require exceptional reliability since they are crucial for plant safety. As users strictly examine and evaluate systems before adopting them, the fact that the brand-new ProSafe-RS has been adopted in rapid succession by such major global corporations attests to its outstanding functionality and reliability.

Another advantage of the ProSafe-RS is that it can be used in combination with the CENTUM series of integrated production control systems. Formerly, production control systems and safety instrumented system had to be configured separately, but Yokogawa has made it possible for the first time to integrate their operation. Yokogawa expects this benefit will create synergies between the ProSafe-RS and CENTUM series, boosting sales for both systems. Accordingly, Yokogawa has set a sales target of 10 billion yen in 2010 for the ProSafe-RS.