EMERSON INTRODUCES SMART REMOTE AUTOMATION, A NEW EXTENSION OF THE PLANTWEB® DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE
Emerson Process Management something they call Smart Remote Automation, an extension of its PlantWeb® digital architecture that the company says will improve businesses comprised of processes that go well beyond the confines of the typical plant. The Smart Remote technology enables continuous diagnostics to run at remote sites and connect in real-time to centralized operations centers where they allow predictive operations and maintenance, and enable staff to increase site availability and throughput.
The first industry to benefit from this extended architecture will be upstream oil and gas, where production, transportation, and distribution operations can cover hundreds or even thousands of square miles. To maintain these sites has traditionally required many man-hours and miles of driving.
Jon Milliken, president of the Flow Computer division of Emerson Process Management, said,"Smart Remote Automation represents an entire new category of technology that will give our users continuous visibility to the health of their field instrumentation, enabling operation and maintenance that is more proactive and efficient, and increasing up-time of their dispersed facilities."
"This launch marks the beginning of the end of run-to-fail practices," Milliken claimed. "Smart Remote Automation embraces our customers' process instrumentation and equipment, and represents an architecture platform for future additions that we are developing," continued Milliken. "Throughput and yield should increase."
Smart Remote Automation provides health of such equipment as pressure, temperature, flow, level transmitters, and control valves. Centralized real-time access to this information may produce a major impact on maintenance and repair budgets, and improvement in uptime.
Technology Enables Smart Remote Automation
Smart Remote Automation relies on HART-based field devices that power PlantWeb with predictive intelligence, and on the ROC800 Remote Operations Controller. Extending the values of this technology to remote sites is made possible by the technology of Emerson's ROC field server and AMSâ„¢ Suite with ROC Polling Service. AMS Suite is the company's family of software products that convert health status from the intelligent devices into predictive information for use by those running the facility.
ROC Field Server is a new field device that manages communications as it merges low-bandwidth, low-speed field diagnostics communication with high-bandwidth, high-speed Ethernet host communications by prioritizing data packets, caching and bandwidth management, and automatic directory generation.
AMS Suite provides the real-time configuration, calibration, diagnostics, documentation, and the user interface for the smart instrumentation. The suite includes Intelligent Device Manager and Asset Portal software for managing smart instrumentation. ROC Polling Service is software that resides on the AMS Suite and provides the communication and database interfacing between the suite and the ROC800 Remote Operations Controller located at each remote site.
ROC800 Remote Operations Controller is a field-proven measurement and control device that serves as the communication link between the smart instrumentation located at a remote site and the ROC Field Server or ROC Polling Service. It passes data between the smart instrumentation and AMS Suite. The ROC800 communicates to smart instrumentation using HART protocol. The ROC800 supports a variety of communication and networking technologies including both low and high speed wired and wireless.
Emerson Claims Broad Benefits To Be Delivered by Smart Remote Automation
- Improve process availability by using predictive intelligence to help detect and avoid causes of equipment failure that can lead to unplanned downtime.
- Increase maintenance efficiency and effectiveness by detecting and diagnosing potential equipment problems before they become issues that detract from performance.
- Help regulatory compliance and reporting by enabling companies to provide device alert tracking and a detailed audit trail of operations.
- Increase throughput and yield by reducing downtime, and by improving basic and advanced control, reducing variability.
- Improve quality by helping keep instruments and equipment maintained and performing at their best
