Yokogawa Technical Report / English Edition 2007 No.43

Yokogawa provides various kinds of Advanced Operation Assistance Solutions to enable plant operators in large process industry companies to improve their operation skills on a daily basis and to consistently achieve ultimate daily operations. Omegaland, an integrated training environment that includes a dynamic simulator as its core, and Exapilot which formalizes the operation knowledge of skillful operators, are both highly effective solutions that enhance operators' skills. As well, CAMS for HIS, which supports alarm design, high-value addition, and integrated monitoring, AAASuite which creates advanced alarms, and Exaplog which quantitatively reveals operational problems, are very effective solutions to make the best use of operators' skills during plant operation.

This paper reports the advanced control and optimization solutions which Yokogawa Electric Corporation has developed. More than 200 projects applying these solutions have already been implemented, and have been operational on-site in the global market since their release in 2000. Exarqe, our online quality estimator, estimates the properties of influents and products. From the control of a single process unit to plant wide operation, Examoc's multi-variable predictive optimizing function maintains specifications for plant conditions to realize peak production and maximize profits. Exapot, an online real-time optimizer with monitoring and diagnostic functions constantly monitors control and optimization functions to improve control operations. By integrating these solutions into plant operations, pivotal issues such as stability, safety and environmental impact will be resolved.

We have proposed a new support system that shows the internal state and future behavior of plant operations using an online process simulator. For improved simulation accuracy, we propose a tracking simulator that works simultaneously with actual process operations and automatically adjusts the simulation parameters. In this paper, we describe the application of the tracking simulator to an actual steam reforming process for fuel cells. We also present composition estimation and prediction as features of the operation support system.

ISA-95 is now highlighted as a standard interface specification to secure interoperability for P2B (Plant-to-Business). We have developed an integration platform according to this standard to integrate ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and MES (Manufacturing Execution System) in short term and low cost.

The “P2B (Plant-to-Business) solution” proposed by Yokogawa Information Systems Corporation is an IT solution that facilitates prompt decision making by integrating plant information with management information. The P2B solution is achieved by automatically collecting real-time plant operation data generated on the manufacturing premises, while simultaneously implementing systematization according to factory management with the visualization of plant information, and subsequently interconnecting it with the business management system. Consequently, users from field staff to managers and management executives can utilize the unified information with high reliability in a timely manner, and establish the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Action) cycle. This facilitates the accomplishment of the specific aspirations of parts of the enterprise and of management goals as a whole, thereby realizing more efficient, consistent management. Based on this concept, Yokokawa Information Systems Corporation provides a variety of excellent support for improving customer value and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) based on provenin- use open package systems, including those for business systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Supply-Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relations Management (CRM) for plant systems, and system packages such as Quality Information Management (LIMS) and Plant Operation Information Management (PIMS).

We have developed DXAdvanced DX1000/DX2000 which has substantially strengthened the basic performance and features of the DAQSTATION DX series. DXAdvanced has realized multiple channels and increased measurement interval speed, with DX1000 having up to 12 measurement channels and DX2000 having up to 48 measurement channels. If connecting to an external DAQMASTER MX100 Series unit or the like, DX2000 has a maximum measurement capacity of 348 CH with 1 sec being the shortest measurement interval. In addition to the reinforcements made to the basic performance with display variations, network features, increased memory capacity and so on, the new DXAdvanced is housed in a drop-proof structure that protects it from dust.

This paper outlines the strengthened measurement capabilities, the display variations, the increased memory capacity, the network and so on, and introduces the PC software.