Austin, TX—Emerson Process Management introduced Jan. 13 new connection, control, and display products, as well as migration services, all designed to enable quick and easy upgrade to its PlantWeb digital architecture from legacy control systems
Austin, TX— Emerson Process Management , and Schneider Electric.
Emerson reports that conversion to its PlantWeb digital plant architecture enables manufacturers to achieve up to 30% capital and engineering savings, and 2% gains in operating efficiency, including up to a 40% improvement in maintenance efficiencies. Using pre-engineered field connection products, Emerson adds that it can reduce rewiring costs as much as 50% and process downtime by 75%. Emerson’s new migration software includes pre-defined drag-and-drop display dynamos or icons, including those for pumps, valves and motors, which enable easier and faster setup of new displays. Or, Emerson can convert a customer’s existing graphics for the new display.
‘We understand the pressures on manufacturers to increase returns during these difficult economic times,’ said John Berra, Emerson Process Management’s president. ‘We also realize that making the transition from older automation systems hasn’t always been easy. That’s why we’ve developed a new set of products and services that allow manufacturers to capture new levels of performance with minimum transition hassles.’
A recent ARC Advisory Group (Dedham, MA) study estimates there are more than $65 billion worth of installed automation systems that are more than 15 years old. ARC’s report also claims a majority of these older systems are not suitable for the collaborative manufacturing era that the process industry is entering, and, unless they’re upgraded, these old systems will prevent many manufacturers from attaining the efficiency and productivity benefits necessary to remain competitive.
In one recent example, Tembec Paper (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) used Emerson’s new migration products and services to quickly upgrade the automation system at one of its paper mills. ‘We were able to migrate over 1,000 instrument signals from our existing Bailey system to a DeltaV system in just one hour,’ says Denny Efferson, Tembec’s process control engineer.
‘We engineered the DeltaV system, and had everything pre-wired. To change over, all we did was unplug existing cables; plug in the DeltaV system; and commission the signal points. This approach enabled us to make the upgrade during a brief scheduled shutdown, avoiding what might have taken two weeks using traditional upgrade approaches. It saved us a significant amount of time and money.’
Control Engineering Daily News Desk
Dave Harrold, senior editor
[email protected]
