System upgrade: New Yokogawa PRM release adds GE utilities

By Control Engineering Staff January 2, 2008

Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces that it has released the latest upgrade to its Plant Resource Manager (PRM), version R3.02. PRM is a key component of Yokogawa’s asset excellence initiative that integrates and manages maintenance information, monitors online conditions, and records historical data of assets ranging from field devices to plant equipment.

Integration with GE’s System 1 platform —Yokogawa and GE Energy are now able to provide an integrated solution bringing together the System 1 platform and Yokogawa’s asset management offering. System 1 is a companion condition monitoring and diagnostic software platform to GE’s Bently Nevada 3500 and 3300 series online monitoring hardware. It reportedly provides both preventative and protection benefits for critical assets. The System 1 platform performs a detailed diagnosis of critical assets such as turbines, rotating, and reciprocating equipment, improving performance predictability.

By using the System 1 interface package, PRM R3.02 is able to provide a consolidated supervisory window for critical machinery assets as well as field instrumentation such as transmitters and flowmeters. The interface with GE’s System 1 has widened the scope of PRM’s asset management capabilities, helping operators make decisions by providing easy access to rich information on the health of their critical assets.

Interchange of data with FieldMate—The FieldMate versatile device management wizard is a software application for PCs that can be used to set, adjust, and troubleshoot parameters of field devices using either HART or Foundation Fieldbus protocols. Adjustment parameters, historical data, operation records, and other FieldMate data can be synchronized with a PRM database and displayed in a single window. For example, the company says FieldMate can set the initial parameters for devices, then upload and store the data in PRM. Conversely, the parameters stored in PRM can also be downloaded to FieldMate and accessed when performing maintenance or replacing a field device.

Yokogawa expects PRM R3.02 to bring changes in how maintenance is performed, enabling an evolution to a much more predictive and even proactive approach. The resulting improvements in plant operations will reduce total cost of ownership.

—Edited by Peter Welander, process industries editor, PWelander@cfemedia.com , Control Engineering Weekly News