Yokogawa Releases CENTUM VP R6.07.10 Integrated Production Control System
September 21, 2020
Yokogawa Electric Corporation recently announced the September 18 release of CENTUM VP R6.07.10, an enhanced version of the CENTUM VP integrated production control system. CENTUM VP is a core product of the OpreX Control and Safety System family of solutions.
Yokogawa has enhanced CENTUM VP R6.07.10 through the introduction of a unified alarms and conditions server (UACS) that ensures safe and secure operations, even with large-scale systems. Based on standard rules, the UACS organizes and consolidates the alarms issued by plant devices so that only the more important alarms are brought to the attention of operators, allowing these personnel to concentrate on monitoring processes and improving overall plant efficiency.
Development Background
In recent years, manufacturers have sought to consolidate and integrate their plant control rooms and control systems to enable more efficient operations with the minimum number of human operators. This requires individual operators to monitor a wider range of activities and respond to an increased number of alarms while prioritizing their actions depending on the indicated type of process abnormality. However, if many alarms are displayed in quick succession, an important alarm may be ignored, leading to a delayed response and a potentially serious accident. Yokogawa has developed the UACS to integrate and manage alarms across large scale systems and thereby ensure that all important alarms are brought to the attention of operators.
Enhancements
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Unified alarm management for large-scale systems The UACS operates based on a client-server architecture*, centrally managing alarms that are displayed at operators’ human interface stations (HISs). The UACS is suitable for use even with large-scale plant control systems that include safety instrumented systems, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), electrical systems, and other components. The server and the control functions have been designed to operate in a redundant configuration, so if an abnormality occurs in the operating server, operation is smoothly and automatically switched over to the standby server.
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Alarm management that drives compliance with IEC 62682 (Ed1, 2014)/ISA18.2-2016 standards The UACS includes functions that meet the shelving, suppressed-by-design, and out-of-service requirements defined in the IEC 62682 (Ed1, 2014)/ISA18.2-2016 alarm management standards. The UACS supports an advanced function that suppresses alarm indication based on predefined alarm logic, so that only the more important alarms are brought to the attention of operators. To improve efficiency, this function can be set to, for example, display only key alarms when alarm flooding occurs, or suppress all alarms during equipment maintenance. Alarm status can be displayed in a format that complies with the requirements of the alarm status transition diagram defined in the aforementioned standards. In conformance with these standards, the UACS also supports alarm management with other Yokogawa solutions and services in the OpreX Control and OpreX Transformation categories.
* A computing model whereby specialized tasks are executed by a server and user-specific tasks are handled by clients connected to the server via a network
Major Target Markets
Oil and gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, electric power, pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, food, iron and steel, water supply and wastewater treatment, non-ferrous metals, metal, cement, etc.
Applications
Monitoring of plant operations and management of alarms for automated operations
https://www.yokogawa.com/news/press-releases/2020/2020-09-17/
