At this site technical articles published at the YOKOGAWA technical report are introduced.
Standardization for Driving the Transformation in the Manufacturing Industry
The Future of the Manufacturing Industry
- Fumihiko Kimura*1
*1 Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo
- Shinji Oda*1
*1 External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
International standardization activities contribute to the realization of a sustainable society through sharing the best practices of developed countries for solving social issues around the world. This paper reviews the objectives and directions of international standardization in the manufacturing industry that the Yokogawa Group is working on. Specifically, it covers areas including factory modeling, the establishment of a foundation for information exchange, and contributions to sustainability in the manufacturing industry.
The Digital Factory Framework: An International Standard for Semantic Interoperability
- Kaoru Onodera*1
*1 Technology Marketing Department 1, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
“Smart Manufacturing” is an internationally agreed concept of an ideal state of the manufacturing industry. To achieve this, systems with different architectures must exchange information without compromising its meaning. In other words, systems must not only connect to, but also understand, each other. This crucial requirement is called semantic interoperability. The Digital Factory framework is an international standard that Yokogawa has contributed to its development. Its purpose is to achieve semantic interoperability and thus establish a foundation for Smart Manufacturing. This standard defines the structure of common model elements and their usage rules based on common concept dictionaries and integrates various information of a “system of systems” related to production. When related implementation technologies worldwide comply with this standard, digital information representing production systems (Digital Factories) will be available to all parties throughout the lifecycle of production systems while keeping up-to-date. This paper outlines the Digital Factory framework, the significance of international standardization for Smart Manufacturing, and Yokogawa’s commitment to this effort.
A Modular Production System That Can Respond to Changes in the Market
- Shinpei Kurokawa*1
- Toshi Hasegawa*2
*1 Technology Marketing Department 1, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
In recent years, the functional chemicals industry has been facing various changes in the market, such as diversifying customer needs, shorter product lifecycles, rapidly growing markets in developing countries, and the need to reduce CO2 emissions and waste. A promising solution is a modular production system, which modularizes the operation units of the conventional batch production and can easily reconfigure them. This paper outlines the features of this system and the trend of international standardization of the module type package for automation engineering. It also explains the iFactory project, which is leading the implementation of modular production systems in Japan, and Yokogawa’s efforts in this project.
A Framework for Enhancing the Interoperability of Information across a Plant
- Atsushi Sato*1
- Toshio Ono*2
- Tetsuo Takeuchi*1
*1 Technology Marketing Department 2, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
*2 Technology Marketing Department 1, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
Since it is becoming increasingly difficult for a single vendor to meet diversifying user requirements by itself, interoperability among multi-vendor components and control systems such as distributed control systems (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) has been improved by adopting open industrial communication protocols. However, these protocols, and the information generated, stored, and transferred, are not fully compatible with each other. Accordingly, the open platform communications unified architecture (OPC UA) and related international standards are attracting attention from many vendors and users as a key to high interoperability. This paper introduces how OPC UA improves interoperability among plant components and systems and describes Yokogawa’s prospect.
Ethernet-APL for Evolving Field Devices and the Future of Industrial Ethernet
- Taro Endoh*1
- Shuji Kuwahara*1
- Seiichiro Takahashi*1
*1 Standardization Strategy Department 2, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
Communication technologies used in process automation (PA) plants must satisfy several requirements such as long-distance communication and stable operation in hazardous areas. Although 4–20 mA devices and fieldbus devices satisfy these requirements and thus have been used for many years, general-purpose Ethernet technology in PA plants is expected to achieve DX and IT/OT convergence at the field device level.
From the viewpoint of standardization, this paper explains how Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (Ethernet-APL) can meet the requirements of PA plants, shows what benefits Ethernet-APL will bring to PA plants and what challenges are expected to emerge, and describes the prospects and expectations of Yokogawa’s contribution to this field.
Yokogawa’s Activities on International Standardization for Energy Management
- Tomoyuki Ikeyama*1
- Kazuo Sueyoshi*1
*1 Standardization Strategy Department 1, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
Organizations of all kinds are required to pursue energy conservation, decarbonization, and high energy efficiency. In particular, factories consume huge amounts of energy, and thus even a small improvement in their energy efficiency may greatly reduce energy consumption. Factories can also reduce energy costs by optimizing the operation of in-house power generation systems, production plans, and the amount of electricity purchased from the power grid. To help these efforts, the introduction and standardization of the Industrial Facility Energy Management System (FEMS) is eagerly awaited. Yokogawa is leading projects to develop international standards for FEMS such as IEC 63376 and other methods for measuring energy management status such as ISO 50011. This paper describes these international standards for energy management and FEMS and overviews Yokogawa’s activities on developing international standards.
5G Wireless Communication for Driving Digitalization in the Process Industry
- Hideo Nishimura*1
- Shuji Yamamoto*2
*1 Technology Marketing Department 2, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
*2 External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
The fifth-generation mobile communication system (5G) has been developed not only for consumer use but also as a fundamental communication infrastructure for various industries. The importance of wireless technology is becoming increasingly recognized in the process industry; this technology enables devices in the plant field to be connected wherever they are, which is also essential to accelerate digitalization and improve productivity. To drive digitalization using 5G technology, Yokogawa has been actively involved in the standardization of the technology while working on proof-of-concept tests to clarify use cases in the process industry. From the viewpoint of how the process industry utilizes 5G for digitalization, this paper overviews 5G technology, its potential use cases, and challenges in practical use and describes Yokogawa’s commitments.
A Framework for Ensuring Safe Plant Design and Operation in the Process Industries
- Naoto Arai*1
*1 Technology Marketing Department 1, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
The safety of industrial plants is a prerequisite for reassuring local communities and achieving a sustainable society. The process industries operate large, complex man-machine systems and even a single accident in a plant could cause immense damage to facilities, local communities, and the environment, and, in an extreme case, could destabilize the whole of society. To prevent such serious accidents, laws and regulations concerning process safety were discussed globally and the concept of risk reduction with multiple protection layers and a management system through the design and operation of safety instrumented systems was established as a framework for the safety of the process industries. This paper reviews this framework with reference to the trend of related standardization activities and introduces how AI is used to support safety in the process industries.
A Cell Counting Process and Its Quality Assessment According to ISO 20391
- Hidetoshi Aoki*1
- Masahiro Araki*2
- Kei Hirotani*3
- Tetsushi Namatame*1
- Minako Mishima*1
*1 Life Research & Development Department, Innovation Center, Marketing Headquarters
*2 Product Strategy Department, Marketing Center, Life Business Headquarters
*3 Technology Marketing Department 1, External Affairs and Technology Marketing Center, Marketing Headquarters
The cells used in regenerative medicine and cell therapy must be of stable quality. To understand their status, the number of cells is counted during the cell production process. However, it was difficult to evaluate the quality of the measurement process because a standard counting method had not been determined. Therefore, the ISO 20391-2 international standard was developed. This standard describes the dilution fraction experimental design and statistical methods in cell counting and shows how to evaluate the cell counting process using quality indicators.
Yokogawa’s CQ1 Confocal Quantitative Image Cytometer can acquire fluorescence and bright-field images and count the number of cells in the images. We counted cell numbers in each dilution fraction of TF-1 suspension cells by using CQ1 and assessed the quality of the process in accordance with ISO 20391-2. We also compared the performance of CQ1 with that of devices from other companies and found that Yokogawa’s CQ1 delivered far more precise counting. This paper describes these results and Yokogawa’s standardization efforts in the biotechnology field.