PROCESS CONTROL
Engineering on a global scale! Today’s engineering projects are executed by a variety of stakeholders. But, can the process control system provide a reliable basis for effective and efficient collaboration? Manuel Keldenich believes they can.
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raditionally, engineering projects were carried out within a department of the operating company itself, maybe with support from a system integrator or a machine builder. This is now changing and sticking with familiar working methods, silo mentality and serial work will mean that plant owners and operators will no longer be able to compete. New forms of cooperation and knowledge transfer are necessary. One factor is web-based collaboration in engineering, which integrates all stakeholders and ensures that they can work consistently and in parallel. This need can be met with the Simatic PCS neo process control system. The system software is based on web technologies and has a consistent object-oriented data
model. It is no longer necessary to install software on specific workstations for administration, engineering, and plant operation. Thanks to HTML5, it is possible to have secure access to the system and to operate it efficiently, just requiring a common browser. To create an intuitive operating environment, Siemens has simplified the operating philosophy across all applications and implemented the concept of ‘one workbench’ for all applications and tasks: An authorised user can toggle between an engineering view and a monitoring & control (operational) view with one single mouse click. Access to operating elements, control sequences, alarms, or interlocks is therefore directly achievable at any time from a single point of entry. Administration is integrated into this
Bulk data processing via spreadsheet engineering. By selecting a predefined query, all matching objects are displayed in a table form (center). Now similar attributes of different object types can be processed efficiently.
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November 2019
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concept. License and user management is controlled from here as well as the administration of all software- and security-related procedures. As the applications are carried out via the browser, local installations, such as on-site updates, become increasingly redundant: The application is in the latest version every time it restarts.
Collaboration Interdisciplinary collaboration of new project teams assembled from all parts of the world is already a reality for many. Simatic PCS neo tackles this trend with functions designed to enable global collaboration. For example, consistent, object-oriented data management with centralised data storage ensures that everyone involved in a project can access up-to-date data at any time. At the same time, they bring knowledge from their own working environment to the centrally administered project. A clear session concept with automatic consistency checks ensures that all data is always free of contradictions: A new session starts with each opening of a project and all user activities are recorded in their own change context. If several users access the public database, e.g. during concurrent engineering, it is clearly visible which changes the logged on user has made himself and where object processing is currently restricted due to the work of other users. Individual objects are locked automatically by the system and not manually by the user. If changes have been made and can be shared with other colleagues, they must be published. During the publish process, changed object sets are consistently and controllably introduced into the system automatically. On this basis, change tracking and versioning for the engineering data is also implemented. In this way, the various project statuses can be identified and restored at any time. These technical principles allow engineering and operational processes to be developed simultaneously. Project engineering that is not dependent on the hardware also offers an extremely high degree of flexibility. The following Control Engineering Europe
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