Competition is remaining fierce among automation suppliers keen to provide the most integrated and energy efficient solutions to their customers. Sean Ottewell outlines the latest developments

Spiralling energy costs are making the business of whole plant, site and company integration ever more important, a point that is not lost on the major suppliers.

For example, Yokogawa has released Centum VP, a new integrated production control system that will become the flagship platform for the company's VigilantPlant operational excellence initiative.

VigilantPlant is Yokogawa’s automation concept for safe, reliable and profitable plant operations. According to the company, it aims to enable an ongoing state of operational excellence where plant personnel are watchful and attentive, well-informed, and ready to take actions that optimise plant and business performance. This initiative eliminates unplanned downtime, improves asset utilisation, and allows businesses to adapt to shifting market conditions quickly and efficiently.

Centum VP is the eighth generation of this series, and succeeds the Centum CS 1000/Centum CS 3000. While securing clear backward compatibility and consistency with previous systems, Yokogawa says it redefines the role of a production control system – commonly known as a DCS.

Going beyond the traditional DCS function of controlling and monitoring a plant, Centum VP integrates plant information management, asset management, and operation support functions, achieving a unified operating environment. The idea is that it provides a foundation for operational excellence by delivering information in context and allowing easy role-based access to all key information.

Satoru Kurosu, senior vice president of Yokogawa’s industrial automation business headquarters, said: “Centum VP is designed to empower real-time decision makers at all levels of a plant's operations. A significant improvement in information efficiency enables our customers to enhance both plant safety and business agility.”

According to Yokogawa, one of the key advantages of the Centum VP system is its unified architecture based on a single real-time plant database. Plant operations require various functional components such as production control and monitoring, plant information management, asset management, and operation support. Usually these functions are handled by a variety of products from different suppliers. This means the plant is operated by a patchwork of disparate systems, leaving gaps and barriers that constrain smooth and integrated operations.

In contrast, Yokogawa’s new offering establishes a single real-time plant database that serves all of these key functions in real time, setting the foundation for a unified operating environment. This unified architecture improves information efficiency and enhances the safety and agility of plant operations.

With this unified plant database, Centum VP enables single-source seamless integration of advanced applications that manage plant information, stabilise processes, and improve operational efficiency. Quick and flexible deployment of these applications enables the user to improve the safety, availability, and profitability of a plant on an ongoing basis. This also simplifies change management, thereby minimising the life-cycle ownership cost.

Centum VP is particularly aimed at process control and monitoring of plants in industries such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, power, pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, food, iron and steel, waste, and water and sewage treatment.

For its part, Wonderware, a business unit of Invensys, is celebrating its fifth successive year as Frost & Sullivan’s product of the year award in the human-machine interface (HMI) category.

Wonderware InTouch 10.0 and System Platform 3.0 software also were recognised for their ability to assist manufacturers in achieving operational excellence by maximising equipment utilisation and operational effectiveness.

In making the award, Frost & Sullivan said that customers using InTouch 10.0 HMI and System Platform 3.0 software identified several outstanding features including ease-of-use offered by ArchestrA graphics, scalability via object-based creation, interoperability with other hardware and robust customer support. These factors were cited as key to reducing engineering time and lowering overall lifecycle costs.

According to Frost & Sullivan, Wonderware InTouch 10.0 HMI and System Platform 3.0 software solutions are likely to emerge as a benchmark for innovative approaches to real-time operational challenges faced by customers in the discrete, hybrid and process industries. The global growth consulting company also noted that InTouch 10.0 HMI and System Platform 3.0 software provide the necessary tools to help companies build applications that address the business complexities of the entire enterprise. Instead of different software for supervisory control, predictive maintenance, quality control, batch processing, product genealogy, recipe management and downtime analysis, Frost & Sullivan said customers benefit from the single integrated solution.

“Wonderware continues to have a solid understanding of challenges faced by companies in the expansive automation and information industry and continues to develop solutions that successfully integrate automation systems with business applications,” said Sivakali Prasad Dasari, Frost & Sullivan industry analyst. “Wonderware has consistently stayed ahead of competition by quickly identifying new trends and developing innovative approaches that go beyond customer expectations.”

InTouch 10.0 HMI and System Platform 3.0 software also were recognised for interoperability which enables manufacturers with plants worldwide to easily integrate global operations. Wonderware solutions can be used to develop the required tools to effectively view plant and business performance, enabling customers to improve execution and quality, streamline business strategy and provide performance analysis to increase competitiveness through greater speed, efficiency and innovation.

“Being recognised again by Frost & Sullivan continues to reinforce the Wonderware strategy of developing software that's easy to use and provides outstanding business benefits by solving some of our customer's toughest operations management challenges,” noted Mark Davidson, Wonderware vice president of global marketing.

Meanwhile, a third new initiative comes with the announcement by Emerson Process Management that it has expanded its existing global offshore alliance with Wärtsilä. Under this expansion, the two companies can now deliver integrated energy and automation systems for floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels and semi-submersible oil and gas drilling rigs.

The expanded relationship combines the process automation knowledge and state-of-the-art measurements and digital automation technology of Emerson, with the high efficiency power-generation, power-distribution and vessel-automation systems and products of Wärtsilä. Combined, they offer a single point for serving the FPSO segment. In particular, they can now offer all system engineering, purchase, installations, commissioning and servicing for this market.

“The global sourcing and supply required in FPSO construction amplify the importance of the expert engineering and project management that our alliance makes available,” said Jaakko Eskola, group vice president, Wärtsilä Ship Power. “Emerson and Wärtsilä's enhanced alliance delivers efficiency, true system integration, turnkey delivery and extended engineering services. We will also enable smooth tanker conversion and commissioning at the site, effectively delivering first oil rapidly at the highest speed.”

“The expanded alliance provides a strong local presence in the most dominant areas of oil and gas exploration around the globe. This worldwide capability ensures that single-stop service is closer to the customer,” commented Tom Snead, president of Emerson’s systems and solutions division. “The comprehensive project and engineering capabilities provide unique advantages for builders, owners, and operators in the marine industry by reducing risk in their capital intensive projects,” he added.

Emerson is a global supplier of process automation and control for oil and gas, refining, chemical and other industries, while Wärtsilä supplies power, automation and propulsion systems to marine and energy customers worldwide. The expansion of their alliance is based on the strength of two major FPSO conversions completed by the companies – YKN, now operating in Gulf of Mexico, and Teekay Petrojarl, now installed in Brazilian waters – and two other major conversions in process. The engineering teams from these two industry leaders began their collaboration in 2006 within an alliance then mainly covering FPSO vessels.