Why it’s critical to integrate distributed control systems

DCS insights

• A distributed control system is critical to effectively analyze the data collected by automated organizations.
• Distributing contextualized DCS data provides a simpler and more cost-effective way to optimize applications.

Since its inception, the distributed control system (DCS) has been one of the most critical components of any automation strategy, bringing what used to be independent applications together. No other automation technology provides the ability to bring the same level of out-of-the-box integration of automation components, along with powerful data contextualization. Plants around the globe rely on their DCS to make it easier to implement the complex process control strategies that provide their critical business differentiators.

The world has changed dramatically in the last few years. Organizations worldwide are facing new calls for increased efficiency of production to meet changing and expanding global needs, while they simultaneously heed the call from government and the public to operate more sustainably. These shifts, requiring a never-ending wave of digital transformation, have increased the complexity of plant operations, requiring far more optimization and connectivity. Real-time control is still critical, but it is not everything.

The DCS as the integrated data broker

It would be easy to assume that as the process control world becomes more data-centric, the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) loop- and interlock-focused control system would grind away in the corner, siloed, performing its tasks while engineers and IT teams build new networks of independent systems to connect sensors needed for monitoring and optimization. Hypothetically, this strategy would allow organizations to bring data to key applications without having to deal with the complexity and expense of moving it through the DCS controllers.

However, as teams have begun that journey over the last decade, they have learned a valuable lesson: process optimization requires data contextualization. Leaving out the DCS and its ability to contextualize data results in a decreased ability to effectively use the collected data. This, in turn, forces teams to find new ways to integrate systems and gather context, which increases complexity, making it extremely difficult to maintain the resulting systems of systems, while reducing flexibility to drive future business.

Forward-thinking automation suppliers have taken note of this conundrum and are evolving the modern DCS. Instead of an architecture based on everything passing through controllers, the DCS is evolving into a comprehensive, software-based automation platform that is data centric, secure, extensible and easy to use, while maintaining its out-of-the-box capability to integrate different applications.

As a result, the best strategy to improve optimization is not to build complex rings of new solutions around a controller-centric DCS, but rather to engineer with a modernized DCS at the center of the automation strategy. Doing so empowers organizations to take advantage of the new capabilities available now and prepare for the coming paradigm shift, where operational excellence will be driven by a data-centric DCS at the heart of a comprehensive automation platform.

Powerful DCS capabilities are already available

When people think of control systems, they typically imagine field devices communicating with input/output (I/O) cards, which then transmit that communication to a controller and display the result on a human machine interface (HMI) in the control room. Yet today’s modern DCS solutions are already so much more than that (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Modern control systems incorporate advanced process control, alarm management, device management, advanced analytics, historians, simulation, advanced HMIs, OPC UA and more to create a cohesive, connected solution that eliminates data silos. Courtesy: Emerson

Technologies like advanced process control, alarm management, device management, advanced analytics, historians, simulation, advanced HMIs, open-source cross-platform unified architecture (OPC UA) and other applications are critical to managing complex processes with tighter control and lower variability, and they are already a part of the DCS today. Breaking these applications into a wide array of disparate solutions to isolate control can quickly create a complex web of custom-engineered connections that require significant overhead to manage and maintain.

A better approach is putting a modern DCS at the center of an automation platform, providing organizations with the ability to build solutions that provide all those capabilities but without the required complex engineering effort.

In addition, new technologies at the edge continue to increase the data flow from the DCS to external systems. Today, edge environment solutions provide secure data mobility via a data diode, unidirectionally moving data from the control system to a wide array of third-party applications, simplifying and making it more cost-effective to distribute contextualized DCS data to optimization applications running anywhere.

New technologies will augment the DCS as the central automation platform

In coming years, new technologies like Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (APL) will reshape the face of control, bringing more data from more devices connected via much faster networks. Not only will plants need a way to bring that data into their automation architecture — a task best accomplished with a modern control system that is Ethernet-APL ready — they will also need ways to keep it moving efficiently through the control system to other applications. Doing so efficiently and affordably will require avoiding the need to perform complex engineering.

Modernizing to a new DCS designed to operate at the heart of a comprehensive automation platform is the solution. Automation suppliers are already piloting new technologies, such as enhancing DCS flexibility with software-defined controllers. This decouples the controller software from its hardware, while creating new data pathways to move data through the DCS more efficiently and effectively. These solutions will make it easier to apply context, without adding complexity or reducing flexibility.

Moreover, innovators are designing new data fabrics, leveraging open protocols like OPC UA and MQTT, to move the control system from its primary focus on PIDs and interlocks. This evolution will create a platform for data-centric, secure, and efficient movement of data — while still providing real-time control. This new platform will allow a wide variety of applications to be fully integrated, benefiting from the contextualized data from intelligent field devices, without relying on controllers as the single data pathway for field data.

A future with Boundless Automation

Boundless Automation is the end goal where automation systems come together, without silos, to deliver operational excellence. As sustainability, reliability and efficiency goals continue to put pressure on teams to accomplish more with the automation they have, the boundless automation-driven integrated architecture for seamless data mobility from field to edge to cloud will help them accomplish those goals.

The DCS performs mission-critical operations, but legacy DCSs have an over-dependency on controllers, which makes handling field data and interacting with other systems significantly more complex. However, isolating the DCS by creating new architectures (and, by proxy, new silos) for every necessary functionality is not the answer — the data contextualization provided by the control system is simply too valuable. Instead, the right step is to modernize the DCS and position it at the center of the modern automation platform, leveraging the advanced functionality that is already available, as well as preparing for the new technologies and capabilities just over the horizon.

The flexible, data-centric automation platforms of the future will be critical to capturing competitive advantage in the years ahead. Those solutions are not decades away — forward-thinking suppliers are currently building their foundations. Today’s innovators are already using modern automation platforms that leverage the full value of the DCS, while seamlessly implementing their most valuable optimization technologies and process control strategies. In doing so, they not only improve performance today, but ready themselves for the technologies that will create a boundless future.

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