Yokogawa marks 30th anniversary of production control system

CENTUM CS 3000 R3, Yokogawa’s latest production control system, features an open architecture, flexibility, and compatibility with existing systems.

Yokogawa ’s Centum Series production control system, a core product of its industrial automation (IA) business, is 30 years old. The company marks the milestone anniversary of the system in June.

The initial version of Centum, a distributed control system (DCS), debuted in June 1975. It employed multiple microprocessors, each of which was assigned to different areas of the plant for effective risk distribution. By allowing plant operation and monitoring to be performed by CRTs, the DCS helped operators work more efficiently, reducing labor costs and instrumentation room space requirements. Before DCSs, plant control and monitoring was done through analog panel instruments. Control and monitoring instruments had to be mounted on the display console for each control loop, taking up space and requiring numerous operators.

Succeeding versions incorporated new technologies in response to user requests for greater scale, efficiency, and computerization of plant control. Centum Series systems have been applied in all process industries, including petroleum and chemical plants. More than 10,000 have been installed worldwide since 1975, the company says.

Centum CS 3000, the sixth and latest version, uses FOUNDATION fieldbus and offers plant control and plant-wide integration. Production support solutions include:

Exaquantum, a plant information management system that integrates production control systems with corporate management systems;

Exapilot, a plant operation efficiency improvement package; and

ProSafe-RS, a safety instrumented system, used by Exapilot, which integrates with the Centum CS 3000 product.

The latest Centum system is a core building block of the company’s VigilantPlant solution, a suite of products and services for plant optimization, process control, and automation.

—Jeanine Katzel, senior editor, Control Engineering, jkatzel@reedbusiness.com

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