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CONTENTS IN THIS ISSUE PACE Awards 4 Publisher: Martin Sinclair Email: martin.sinclair@cirrusmedia.com.au
History 6
Editor: Kevin Gomez Tel: (02) 8484 0976 Fax: (02) 8484 0722 Email: kevin.gomez@cirrusmedia.com.au
Sensors 8
Group Sales Manager: Tim Richards Tel: (02) 8484 0829 Mobile: 0420 550 799 Email: tim.richards@cirrusmedia.com.au
Robotics and Machine Control 10
QLD Sales Manager: Sharon R. Amos PO Box 3136, Bracken Ridge, QLD 4017 Tel: (07) 3261 8857 Fax: (07) 3261 8347 Mobile: 0417 072 625 Email: sharon.amos@cirrusmedia.com.au
HMIs and Operator Interfaces 12
Graphic Designer: Nicolle Lawson Email: nicolle.lawson@cirrusmedia.com.au Production Co-ordinator: Tracy Engle Tel: (02) 8484 0707 Fax: (02) 8484 0722 Email: tracy.engle@cirrusmedia.com.au
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Process Instrumentation 14 Safety Products and Systems 18 Control Systems 19
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Motors and Drives 22 Networks and Communications 25
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Security Systems 26
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PA1113_004.pdf
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COMMENT WHAT’S ON
EDITOR’S MESSAGE
Profinet & Profibus EXPO 6 November 2013, Brisbane www.profibusaustralia.com.au
Drawing on our past to shape our future
Alarm Management and High Performance HMI Workshop 18-19 November 2013, Melbourne www.apex-opt.com IICA Technology Expo 27 November 2013, Wodonga events@iica.org.au
Kevin Gomez Editor
IChemE: Human Reliability and Failure 26-27 February 2014, Brisbane www.icheme.org/humanfactors
Next Issue For daily updates visit www.pacetoday.com.au
• Sensors & Analysers • Process Control in Power Generation • SCADA & MES • Water & Wastewater
THIS is truly a special time for PACE as we celebrate our 60th anniversary. It’s almost a lifetime in human terms and much has changed in the industry over the past several decades. The move from pneumatic instruments to 4-20mA devices was considered a major achievement at the time. Now we’re extending our boundaries with wireless and fieldbuses, intelligent instruments and the quest to build self-managed factories. PACE has charted these and numerous other exciting industry developments and will continue to do so for time to come. We have grown and evolved along with the industry,
building new digital and social media channels and events, thereby forging closer links with the community. We have no doubt that process control and automation has a bright future in this country. The challenges will change, the solutions will become smarter and through it all, PACE will continue to chronicle the people and technologies that shape this fantastic industry. A special thanks the numerous individuals and companies who dug through their archives and provided us with plenty of historical material including some extremely rare images. A selection appears in these pages and a lot more are on www.pacetoday.com.au.
Check them out and give us your feedback. I must acknowledge the efforts of former PACE editor, Sarah Falson, who interviewed several industry veterans and helped source the interesting visuals that appear in this issue and associated articles online. Looking to the future, we are pleased to announce the PACE Zenith Awards 2014. The event will be held in Melbourne next year and it’s time to start getting those nominations ready as we celebrate innovation in Australian industry. kevin.gomez@cirrusmedia.com.au
Like us on Facebook and join the conversation facebook.com/PACEtoday
INNOVATION
PACE Zenith Awards 2014: Entries open NOMINATIONS for the 11th Annual PACE Zenith Awards are now open so get your submissions ready. We smashed records this year - both in terms of the number and quality of entries and aim to go better in 2014. This is a unique opportunity to showcase your project in the company of your peers. All finalists get two free tickets to the gala dinner which be in Melbourne in June 2014. It is a entertaining and fun night and a fantastic opportunity to network with other professionals in the industry. The annual PACE Zenith Awards was established by PACE magazine in 2004 to recognise companies that demonstrate leadership in engineering, along with technological excellence and innovation. The awards evaluate projects in these industries and offers an opportunity for engineers, suppliers, integrators and industrial business-owners to be recognised publicly in front of their peers and potential customers. The official nomination kit can be downloaded from www.pacetoday.com.au 4 www.pacetoday.com.au NOVEMBER 2013
or by emailing editor@pacetoday.com.au Categories for the eleventh Annual PACE Zenith Awards are: Automotive & Manufacturing; Food & Beverage; Oil & Gas; Machine Builder; Mining, Minerals and Exploration; Power and Energy Management; Transport, Power and Infrastructure; Water & Wastewater; Young Achiever Award; Best Fieldbus Implementation; Lifetime Achievement Award; Project of the Year. We encourage you to nominate colleagues and peers for the two peoplebased awards. The Project of the Year Award is given out to the most innovative project overall. Entering the PACE Zenith Awards is free. This is the only awards program specific to process, control and automation professionals in Australia and New Zealand. Participating in the awards is a great way to boost your team’s morale by celebrating their work and exposing it to a large audience. Finalists are profiled in PACE magazine, on www.pacetoday.com. au as well through as our social media channels. www.pacetoday.com.au/Awards
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PA1113_006.pdf
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PACE: Sixty years young HIS year, PACE marks it’s 60th anniversary, having begun life as a journal for the chemical sector in 1953, under the title Chemical Industry and Engineering. Our original manifesto still rings true today. In the words of the magazine’s first managing editor and publisher of E G Holt Publishing Pty Ltd, Eric Greenville Holt, more than half a century ago: “This journal has been launched to serve as a handmaid to the Chemical and Allied Industries of Australia,� he said on the editorial page of the firstpublished issue. “It will chronicle their activities, progess and plans; report upon new products, processes and production methods; describe new equipment and techniques; and generally keep executives informed on technical and commercial matters of importance to their industry.� Our vision has not changed and PACE sees itself as an integral part of the process control and automation industry. Our content channels have evolved to take full advantage of social media and new technologies, allowing us to more effectively deliver and share content and build closer links with our growing community. This special issue sets out to capture the exciting growth and development of the industry and record key moments in its evolution. There is a lot more content and images on www.pacetoday.com.au. PACE looks forward to informing and educating our community for years to come.
T
The industry has seen numerous remarkable developments over the last six decades but the best is still to come.
In the 1990s, the Swagelok bus toured Australia and New Zealand displaying their range of instrumentation products. “Many customers have fond memories of the bus arriving at their sites around our two great countries,� says Graham McCormick, General Manager, Swagelok New Zealand, who provided these images.
The inexpensive transmitter.
HygroFlexl t 5IF MBUFTU HFOFSBUJPO PG )7"$ USBOTNJUUFST t .FBTVSFT SFMBUJWF IVNJEJUZ BOE UFNQFSBUVSF t "EKVTUBCMF BU BOE 3) &NBJM JOGP!QSZEF DPN BV PS DBMM 1SZEF .FBTVSFNFOU 1UZ -UE 6OJU 8BSSJHBM 3E "TICVSUPO 7*$
6 www.pacetoday.com.au NOVEMBER 2013
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Kevin Gomez, Editor, PACE
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This cartoon was drawn 60 years ago to celebrate 60 years (now 120 years) of the Great Boulder Gold Mine that is now the Superpit in Kalgoorlie. The Yates Universal Miner was an example of process control being applied to the mining industry. Colin Yates was a mining engineer educated in South Australia who came to Norseman in 1935, when that site was being setup. In 1938, he moved to Kalgoorlie. The graphic was provided by his son, Donald Yates.
The system allowed simple and low cost identification of what was in a tub, and made decisions on where the tub should be directed to next. This was before the common usage of PLCs and this large electrical box was the processor that interpreted the information and controlled the whole process. In the 1970s, sensor manufacturers also provided processors for all common applications (image courtesy SICK).
A sheep shearing robot demonstrated at the University of Western Australia in 1980: advances like this led to wide international recognition of Australia’s robotics capabilities (image courtesy National Archives of Australia).
The black and orange sensor in the center is an NT7 contrast scanner that used a low voltage ac lamp to detect the difference between dark and light targets. The two blue WL10 sensors on either side are reflex optical devices that detected the presence of the tub. The positioning of the two WL10 devices was done so that the NT7 was turned on only when both WL10s saw the tub. This meant the NT7 was only on when the label was in front of it. The NT7 was used as a primitive barcode reader in the late 1970s and all the $ symbols were the bar (image courtesy SICK).
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PA1113_008.pdf
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SENSORS
Modernising our industry Sensors have played a critical role in moving our process control and automation engineering sectors in to the modern day
A
USTRALIAN sensor experts and sensor manufacturing companies continue to develop unique ways to utilise technology to create innovative and competitive products and solutions. For SICK Australia customer service and expert technical office manager, Ken Collishaw, the evolution of sensors is tied necessarily to the history and development of our process industries. “The history of sensors in Australia is a critical part of the history of manufacturing in Australia. Without sensors there could be no automation, and without automation Australian manufacturers could not be competitive,” Collishaw told PACE. Collishaw has worked in Australia’s manufacturing and process industries for 31 years, and for thirty of these years he has specialised in sensors. Launching his career with NHP in 1982, Collishaw went on to manage the company’s Schmersal, Datalogic and TER ranges of sensors up until 1987, when he moved to SICK. “A clear memory I have from 1983 was climbing a 3-metre ladder to reach a hopper full of polystyrene beads and changing the existing and unreliable capacitive sensor for an optical device,” he said. “Back then, it was quite common for the incorrect unit to be utilised for a job – such as the capacitive device in that case – because we really had very few specialists in the sensor field, and pretty much no training.” For Collishaw, the major
Capacitive sensors used in the production of ceramic tiles (circa 1970s) (image courtesy ifm efector).
developments in sensor technology during his time in the industry include: adjustable background suppression sensors; analogue output devices – particularly distance measurement; vision systems; safety area scanners; programmable rotary encoders; and the wide-spread implementations of programmable logic controllers (PLC) and bus control systems. ifm efector managing director, David Delany, began his career in the mid1980s as an electrical apprentice with a company that manufactured components for ships and pumps. “My first experience working with sensors was replacing mechanical limit switches with proximity switches in a foundry in 1986. This environment was very hard: it was extremely hot and dirty and the atmosphere caused a lot of
machine down-time as the mechanical limit switches would foul-up with dirt, contacts would stick and mechanical arms would bend or move out of alignment,” Delany told PACE. “Replacing these with the new proximity switches removed all these causes of down-time; I remember the older tradesmen being sceptical of the new technology, as you could not see if the units where working. “At that stage there were no LEDs to indicate status and, being solid state, you could not hear a clicking of contacts being made when operated.” For Delany, the invention of transistors and microprocessors have been two major milestones in sensor technology over the years. “With transistors you could perform the same functions using less power and space,” he said.
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8 www.pacetoday.com.au NOVEMBER 2013
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PA1113_000_IFM
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ROBOTICS & MACHINE CONTROL
Evolution and revolution Vision technology has remained a constant focus for robotic systems engineers since day bot.
10 www.pacetoday.com.au NOVEMBER 2013
I
N 1961, the world’s first working robot joined the assembly line at General Motors (GM) in New Jersey, USA. And, true to form in the manufacturing industry, this groundbreaking event happened quietly and without flourish; GM’s executives refrained from publicising their new investment, perhaps afraid it might go terribly wrong. The robot, called ‘Unimate’ and remained on the GM assembly line for the next 10 years, tirelessly dropping red-hot handles and other die castings into pools of cooling liquid; the parts were then moved along to workers for trimming and buffing. Declared a success, in 1967 the first Unimate was adopted abroad, debuting at a Swedish metalworks. Shortly after, the system was launched in Japan, with Kawasaki Heavy Industries – recognising the robot’s labour-saving potential – earning the rights in 1969 to manufacture and market Unimate model 2000s for the Asian market. It would be another five years before Unimate travelled Down Under. According to the Australian Robot Association (now the Australian Robotics and Automation Association), the first local installation was performed in 1974 by Eric Fender for a client in the automotive industry. “Although we cannot be sure, we think it was for Ford, performing spot welding,” Engineers Australia National Committee on Mechatronics’ immediate past chair, James Trevelyana, told PACE. By the late 1970s, a number of robot systems were operating in automotive and whitegoods factories around Australia, most performing the more dangerous production tasks of spot and arc welding, machine loading and spray painting. “Few of these robots had any ‘intelligence’. They were programmed to follow a fixed sequence of movements, with only elementary sensing,” said Trevelyana. Though rudimentary, robots grew in popularity both for relieving workers from dangerous duties, and helping raise product quality levels. As demand grew, a number of foreign companies began exporting their systems to Australia, including: ASEA (now ABB) from Sweden; Kuka from Germany; Yaskawa and Fanuc from Japan; and Cincinnati Milacron from the US.
An ASEA IRB2000 robot demonstrates its capabilities in the Victorian Pavilion at World Expo 88 held in Brisbane during Australia’s bicentenary celebrations (image courtesy ABB).
“Many of these robots were supplied by Australian companies who designed the manufacturing systems, such as Robotics Automation. The first Australian company to actually manufacture robots was Machine Dynamics in Melbourne,” said Trevelyana. Founded in 1972, Machine Dynamics was originally a manufacturer of pneumatic equipment for the metal and
The next step will be omni-sensors that can image the entire workspace coupled with adaptive and predictive computer modelling textile industries, but soon became a pioneer in robotic applications, designing and manufacturing systems based on aeronautical engineering principles. In 1988, the company designed, built and installed a robotic manufacturing line at Ford’s Broadmeadows assembly plant, for the production of the new EA Falcon. The line was the first of its kind in
Australia, generating a door every 30 seconds, and remained in production for many years. It consisted of 13 ASEA spot weld robots and 13 Machine Dynamics Journeyman gantry robots and controllers, all with coordinated movements. One of the system’s key benefits was reducing tooling changeover time and cost; while previously it had taken five operators an entire shift to re-tool manually, the same task could now be performed in around two minutes by a single operator pushing a button. “The 1980s also saw the demonstrations of robotic sheep shearing at the University of Western Australia and later by a small startup called Merino Wool Harvesting in Adelaide. These technological advances led to many other robot development projects, and led to wide international recognition for Australian capabilities in robotics,” said Trevelyana. “Unions realised that without automation and the associated productivity improvements, their jobs would disappear completely.” While Australia may not have started the robot revolution, it has clearly been at the forefront of its evolution since that first Unimate began spot welding on the Ford production line – or, as we like to say, since day ‘bot’.
PA1113_000_BUR
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HMI AND OPERATOR INTERFACES
Bridging the gap with IT The role of the HMI and the functions it performs has regularly been evaluated throughout history
Australia
12 www.pacetoday.com.au NOVEMBER 2013
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UMAN-machine interfaces (HMI) have come a long way from the early days of the selector switches and thumbwheelers that assisted the operation of automated manufacturing. While the next generation of textbased and programmable DOS terminals allowed simple graphical representations of the factory floor, these models still relied on primitive push buttons for operator control. Through the evolution of the Windows operating system, today’s HMIs and other operator interfaces have been able to evolve in to true clientserver applications, bridging the gap between automation and IT systems. When Wonderware Australia general manager, Jose Lobato, first entered the industry in the late 1980s, operators were still relying on DOS-based HMIs. “I first got involved with HMIs in 1989 through propriety-based operator interfaces compatible with specific hardware. These were very limited and clumsy compared to today’s products, however they did a very good job at the
Control panels and operators for Calutrons at the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during World War II (between circa 1943 and 1945). Controls were toggles and thumbwheelers; very primitive compared to today’s touchscreen models.
time,” Lobato told PACE. Lobato has been involved with a number of leading industrial automation companies during his 25 years in the industry, and has been working with Wonderware products for over 17 years. For Lobato, the transition to Windows and the networking and security features this allowed has been the biggest development in HMI technology throughout his career. “This has been Wonderware’s number-one strength; we were the first HMI vendor to supply full HMI products on Windows-based operating systems back in1988. At that time many in our industry laughed at this and predicted that this was never going to be an accepted standard in industrial automation,” Lobato said. According to Lobato, the scalability, distributed architecture and the flexibility of today’s products are a world apart from their predecessors. “Today’s needs are very different and the justification of incorporating HMI and SCADA installations are no longer on the grounds that we saw even five years ago when pretty pictures, number of colours, 3D graphics and many other cosmetics were the key drivers of decision making,” he said. “Our clients have to remain competitive, reduce waste, increase productivity – let alone efficiency – to stay in business. Our existing and future clientele looks at Wonderware products to achieve return on investment and to demonstrate benefits to business owners and management. Look and feel is important but no one is now assessing our products on these grounds anymore.”
Roy Lumley, a solutions consultant and operator effectiveness discipline lead for a multi-national corporation, has been working in the process industry since 1987. He is currently engaged in applying industry best practices in data visualisation to improve situational awareness in HMI and alarm management applications at several process sites around the world. “I started out working in process simulation solutions for operator training; picture a flight simulator for process operators. The experience was both very challenging and very exciting because I was exposed to a wide range of industries and also to a wide range of control systems,” Lumley told PACE. The earliest graphical HMI Lumley worked with was the Yokogawa Centum system, which was followed later by Foxboro’s Fox1 and Honeywell’s TDC2000. “These systems were mostly used by oil and gas companies because they were so expensive. ESSO in Altona would likely have been one of the first sites in Australia to have one,” he said. “My first HMI experience was in 1988 with a SCADA package called Screenware. It was an EGA-resolution, raster-based package which functionally was much like MS-Paint except that you could display values and cause colour changes using floodfills.” For Lumley, the biggest milestone in HMI technology occurred in the early 1990s when the screens transitioned from low resolution/low colour packages with a few limited functions, to high resolution/high colour, object-oriented packages with full programming capabilities.
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ADVERTORIAL
Deliver sustained high-performance production
I
N THIS post global financial crisis era, a significant disruption in industrial operational landscape is taking place. This new landscape focuses on creating an operational environment that enables timely decisions and actions across a highly diverse and geographically distributed team to deliver sustained high-performance production. Requiring a shift away from traditional, inflexible operational processes to a new operational experience that provides agility and flexibility in execution. This new landscape is driven by significant changes in key dimensions of the operation: people, process, and technology. This new world enables new ways of operating where traditional operational tools like Human Machine Interface (HMI) on the desktop will not be sufficient as the mode of operations evolves from: • Individual to a flexible distributed team of different roles and skills, collaborating and sharing in real-time • From one location (control room) to a dynamic role that is free to move to a location best to execution the action. There are many drivers affecting this operational transformation, as a first step, let’s explore the trends and drivers behind this fundamental shift in the operational landscape. The major elements are shown in the figure.
People One of the most dominant global issues facing industrial operations is the transition from a well-established and experienced workforce to dynamic, transitional workforce with a very different approach to addressing tasks, accessing information, and working together. The specific elements that will affect the design of supervisory operational systems include: • Worker retention challenges mean that the “time to experience” must be shorter than ever: The experienced generation is retiring and transitioning to an age group 20 years their junior, where in 2020 it is expected the tenureship in role will be less than 2.4 years. • Operational Decisions Now: To be competitive, decisions must be
The changing operational landscape.
Operational transition of supervisory world.
made now, causing requirement for workers to transition to “knowledge workers” empowered to be have greater responsibility, making more decisions, requiring contextualised information, higher knowledge and access to experience. • Operational Agility requires collaborative Flexible Operational Teams: With the move to integrated operational centers, requiring the formation of dynamic operational team, from site workers, to support, to those in the center and subject matter experts who physically distributed yet making collaborative real-time decisions. The challenge of these operational teams, is allowing consistent “trusted” information access across the total team, and the ability to collaborate, share and manage work items across the team. • Transition to digital native worker, with decidedly different expectations: The new generation is “digitally native”; they expect access to the knowledge they expect “touch experience”, they multi task and
expect multi-tasking applications, they expect to collaboration and learn on the fly. The traditional industrial operational experience of HMI or DCS interface will not “fly”.
Technology and process Combine the above changes with aging existing HMIs/ DCS workstations that were built for a process and are now “island, underlines that the industrial world is facing a significant disruption in the way design, operate and the philosophy behind the end to end operational experience on plants. Addressing that significant disruption will require a combination of techniques: 1. A new generation operational experience. That must include embedded knowledge access, experience access, actionable procedures and natural intelligence, empowering the operational workers in all roles. The information must be more exception-based and situationally aware of the plant status, enabling faster realisation of conditions and required actions.
2. Device Independent Operational Experience. So that operational content can be displayed and actioned across devices from desktop, pda, tablets to collaboration walls. New content and navigation can be added without knowledge of the devices and roles using them. 3. Integration and alignment across systems and sites. Requiring an industrial platform that embraces the “loosely coupled but aligned philosophy, while enabling federation, contextualisation with standards management. 4. Collaboration and team sharing. The system naturally enables sharing, collaboration and notification across team members in real-time. 5. Consistency of Operations/ Roles Actions. A foundation for operational innovation is the consistency of operational actions/ processes across teams and sites. Combined with consistent interface experience, notifications, required for reliable support for rotating roles and people. 6. A New Operational Culture. Technology is only one step; success with this new model requires a collaborative team culture, where sharing and partnering needs to be natural within the organization. Reviewing these requirements in their totality, it becomes clear that vendors and design engineers as well operational leaders will need to consider a new paradigm in operational execution beyond the traditional supervisory control to sustain operational agility/ excellence with this dynamic and culturally different workforce. [By Tim Sowell, Vice President & Fellow, Invensys. Follow him on invensyssysevolution.blogspot.com] Wonderware Australia www.wonderware.com.au
Australia NOVEMBER 2013 www.pacetoday.com.au 13
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ADVERTORIAL
Endress+Hauser takes pole position For 12 years Chris Gailer was Managing Director of Endress+Hauser’s agency in New Zealand. In January 2011 he took over as Managing Director of Endress+Hauser Australia. Here he outlines the key drivers behind the company’s continued success.
Beginnings
Future direction
Endress+Hauser started off as a level instrumentation company in Germany in 1953, so like PACE, this is also our sixtieth year of operation. The company quickly added to its portfolio and subsequently included flow and analytical instrumentation to the basket as well as recording and data logging, and then pressure and temperature measurement. We now have a complete instrumentation portfolio, all developed and manufactured by Endress+Hauser. Our biggest selling product line, both here and globally is flow instrumentation. We’re number one in the world with magnetic flow meters and number two in Coriolis flow meters. We also supply Vortex and Thermal mass flow meters however of particular interest to the Australian market are Ultrasonic Gas Flow meters for the CSG industry. Recent major investments have been more in the analytical area. So where we have developed traditional measurements of analytics with pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and turbidity, we are now advancing more into the analyser arena. We also provide value added services with our calibration rigs, onsite audits and software. Once the user has completed an audit, our web based asset management system W@M, allows them to look up online all the details pertaining to that instrument, including documentation, spares parts and calibration data. In fact every instrument we have manufactured since the year 2000 is now entered into a common equipment record allowing every customer to access full data just by entering the serial number or scanning the QR code with your smartphone. Endress+Hauser aren’t in the market of providing complete control systems so we have formed strategic alliances with companies such as Rockwell. But we are happy to work with anybody according to our customer’s requests. Integration with control systems from other manufactures is obviously key so we have our own integration laboratory called ‘System World’ to prove to customers that we can interface to their preferred control system.
When we launched products in the past, most of the testing was based around the hardware. Now, the longest testing phases involve the software. It’s ironic that it’s relatively complicated to make our instruments simple to use for everybody. I like to compare product development to building a house: the plumbing is still pretty similar to what it was 50 years ago, but we all know that the electrics have evolved tremendously. As Klaus Endress says, we have a secure future in instrumentation for at least another 100 years. As a company we try to avoid boom and bust - our motto is sustainable growth. With steady growth, we will be able to continue to support all our customers and at the same time develop new markets. As a group, we are very strong in chemicals, pharmaceuticals and also food and beverage. In fact, we have the highest market share in the food and beverage industry in Australia based on our hygienic instrumentation campaign. Our other focus industries in Australia are Water and Wastewater, Mining and Oil & Gas. We see a lot of our future growth and product development coming from Oil & Gas. Endress+Hauser recently signed an Enterprise Frame Agreement with Shell, nominating us as their preferred supplier, which enables us to further develop instruments suited to the specific needs of that industry. Oil & Gas will continue to be a big focus going into the future. Water is always an area of interest and we’re very well set up in that area thanks to a best fit product range. Water quality monitoring is becoming more and more important which is why investments have been made in analysers and other environmental areas. Recycling of waste water is going to become a bigger topic in the years ahead. Also, our population is ageing and this gives us other opportunities in pharmaceuticals and special foods to provide the elderly a high quality of life. Energy management is another big topic as every kilowatt you save is one you don’t have to generate. An interesting trend in biotechnology is the emergence of disposable sensors. Endress+Hauser has always prided itself in building long lasting sensors. But with
the new biotech reactors, sensors are ‘use once and throw away’ and requires an entirely new product range as we become more involved in this market. We have recently realised we have to make investments in sectors where we don’t have the long term expertise. An example is SpectraSensors which we purchased last year. Their products monitor moisture in pipelines using tuneable diode laser technology. There are several SpectraSensors analysers already in Australia which are used to measure moisture content in Coal Seam gas pipelines.
USPs Endress+Hauser is the world’s largest privately owned instrumentation company. There’s a family charter which states that the company will not be sold and this family ownership gives us stability and a clear direction. Another bonus is we don’t have shareholders requesting dividends, meaning the company can reinvest a lot more into R&D, which is important for us, as the company prides itself on innovation and technology. These family values run through every Endress+Hauser company and our people make the difference. I’d love to say that we have the best technology, and we do in a lot of areas. Amongst all the instrumentation companies, we hold the most active patents. However the customer’s perception is that products are becoming more similar every day. It’s now a pretty crowded market so differentiation is becoming a challenge. Our sales team now find it difficult to go to a customer and say our instruments are made in Switzerland and are of a higher quality than somebody else’s. So we are promoting other differentiators, such as our web enabled asset management (W@M) and our common equipment record. We also promote our value added services and try to provide the customer with the best on-going support for the complete lifecycle of the instrument. Ultimately we want to deliver outstanding value to our customers and not necessarily focus on being number one because that doesn’t mean a hell of a lot, especially if you have to make compromises along the way. Our difference, we feel, is in our
tooling software and the support we are able to offer. How easy is it to maintain your product? How easy is it to calibrate? How easy is it to verify in the field? Here’s where we are different.
Winning products In terms of products, our diverse range of Coriolis meters with a straightthrough free draining design and immunity to vibration is in a class of its own. Time-of-Flight instruments - radar and guided radar - are also a very big portion of our portfolio. We are also the world’s leading supplier of pH electrodes and in head temperature transmitters. In terms of concepts I need to include our unparalleled two-wire platform, which is key part of our product offering and available across our whole range of products including all of our flow technologies. Being 4-20 mA, there is no need for an external power supply and this offers a huge advantage and is really where we are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. Our analytical product range uses a digital sensor technology called Memosens which is short for memory sensor. As the name suggests the sensor stores the calibration and diagnostic data internally and digitally sends this information to the transmitter. The sensors achieve this digital data transmission through inductive coupling. This has enormous advantages over traditional analogue systems which use expensive high impedance coaxial cable that is highly susceptible to moisture ingress, EMC interferences and potential matching issues. Our Memosens platform can be used together with an 8-channel transmitter; you just plug in whatever sensor you like and the transmitter recognises it and uploads the information. So to summarise I have to agree with Klaus Endress, that the future is looking very bright for Endress+Hauser for the next 100 years. Endress+Hauser Australia www.au.endress.com
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PA1113_016.pdf
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PROCESS INSTRUMENTATION
Dramatic increase in data quality From manual to remote operation, the field of process instrumentation has come far over the years
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ROCESS control has come a long way since the early years when process variables were monitored manually by an operator who walked around the plant and adjusted valves to obtain the desired pressures, temperatures and flows. As technology evolved, pneumatic controllers were invented and mounted in the field; later, these were moved to a control room and would monitor the process via signals from a valve or pump in the field. Bürkert Fluid Control Systems managing director – Pacific Region, Chris Hoey, started his instrumentation career in 1979 at Amoco Oil Refinery in Brisbane, working with a broad range of process instrumentation from a variety of vendors. “This was a time of pneumatic control, circular chart recorders, individual loop controllers and manual data acquisition,” Hoey told PACE. “Instrumentation was back then, a truly specialised field. You had to deal with all forms of mechanical and electromechanical instruments. “Whilst 3-15PSI and 4-20mA were the signals used, these were generated from predominantly mechanical instruments. Force balance relays, bellows driven recorders, and even pneumatic square root extractors and computers (yes GenYers, pneumatic computers). “This mechanical background led to a far deeper understanding than you could ever get from the market today, where most of these elements are embedded and invisible. Back then you had to deal with every aspect of the control loop in a singular way.” According to Hoey, while the fundamentals of process instrumentation remain the same, the technology has come in leaps and bounds. “The major changes in the industry have been in technology, but this has led to a vast reduction in the cost of products and their implementation. Individual wiring, individual controllers and I/P converters gave way to DCS systems, but the first versions of those were extremely expensive ($50K plus for a single operator screen). Due to this, high-end process automation stayed with the bigger plants,” he explained. “The PLC came into existence, but the early versions just replaced relay logic and were not suitable for continuous control. Even after they added scaling and PID blocks, they were still clumsy at modulating control and hopeless at
In the early years of process control, process variables were monitored manually by an operator who walked around the plant and adjusted valves to obtain the desired pressures, temperatures and flows. This photograph of a control post for a steam turbine was probably taken pre-1950s (image courtesy Wikimedia Commons). complex batch applications. But they played a big part in forcing DCS to come down in price and opened vast new markets where instrumentation was only a small part of the process.” Now, PLC and DCS have merged into advanced process automation controllers (PAC), which are able to handle all forms of complex process automation, explained Hoey. “Sensors as well have undergone significant change and now fit firmly into
PLC and DCS have merged into advanced process automation controllers which can handle all forms of complex process automation the ‘commodity’ market rather than with specialist vendors. They also started to embed all of those individual components we once needed, like square root extractors, signal isolators, I/P converters and even the PID loops themselves as standard features. There are now so many more options when designing a system,” he said, Siemens Australia product manager - PCS 7 Process Control System, Marek
Lisik, has been working around Australia’s process industries for 24 years, in various sectors including food and beverage, automotive, chemicals and healthcare. “My first major experience with instrumentation, around 1989, was on an animal feedstock plant, where there was a problem with the level sensors in bulk storage bins. As it turned out, the capacitive-type sensors were not really suitable for the type of material in the bins, causing a fair degree of havoc in the control program,” Lisik told PACE. “Another early experience was driving and subsequently carrying half a tonne of test weights to calibrate the load cells on a weigh bin. “A sobering experience with actuators came after spending hours tuning a particular PID loop, only to realise that the actuator had a stiction problem and hence exhibited a ‘highly unpredictable degree of non-linearity’.” In Lisik’s opinion, there have been various significant developments in process instrumentation technology since he first began working in the industry, but none reaping as many benefits as the introduction of intelligent instruments and serial communication, for example HART, Profibus PA and Foundation Fieldbus, and more recently, Ethernet-based communications, such as Profinet. In the last 10 years there has been a huge shift in the acceptance with recent major DCS installations in the range of 30,000 plus signals, predominantly via fieldbus.
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SAFETY PRODUCTS & SYSTEMS
Evolution of safety The advent of programmable safety systems earmarked a breakthrough in the development of safety products and systems in Australia
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AFETY is an issue that you could be excused for taking for granted in 2013. But it hasn’t always been this way: workers – not employers – were once responsible for the safety of their own bodies and that of the machines they used. According to Machine Safety By Design managing director, Frank Schrever, safety relays and presence sensing systems began surfacing via machinery imported from Europe around the late 1980s. “Safety in terms of machine control systems really started to take off in the late 1990s after the appearance of the first edition of AS 4024 Safeguarding of Machinery in 1996,” Schrever told PACE. Schrever is a trainer and consultant in machine safety, and also chairman of the Australian standards committee SF041 for the AS 4024 series of standards. Schrever was responsible for starting the Australian subsidiary of Germany company, Pilz, in 1998. “In 1999 it was clear that not many people really understood what risk assessment, let alone safety-related control systems really meant. If a machine had been stopped by the safety system because a dangerous fault had been detected, the safety system was usually blamed, cursed and bypassed to keep the process running,” recalled Schrever. In Schrever’s opinion, a revolution in safety systems occurred in the early 2000s when low-cost safety PLCs entered the market, teamed with the advent of safe fieldbus communication
In 1987 Pilz developed the first emergency stop safety relay, called the PNOZ, to protect man and machine.
systems. “This has enabled designers to apply sophisticated safety control to even fairly low-cost machinery,” he explained. Some companies have also started to develop safe vision systems that can ‘view’ a three-dimensional space and slow or shut down machinery if a person is seen to be getting too close. “There are also big changes in the interlocks being used; 15 to 20 years ago, if a guard interlock was used, it was probably a mechanical roller cam-style device. These days, transponderstyle systems, which integrate a radio frequency tag, are becoming common and available from many manufacturers. “They have the advantage of being more difficult to defeat, resistant to environmental effects, able to be integrated into electro-magnetic and mechanical guard-locking systems and
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overcome most of the failure modes of the older-style mechanical interlocks.” For Schrever, the more recent bid to harmonise Australia’s occupational health and safety legislations has been another significant change which has lead to safety compliance being a top priority for industry. “Although not yet complete (Victoria and Western Australia have not yet adopted the harmonised legislation), the key principles that affect machine safety are now identical in all states and territories,” Schrever said. “I refer to the risk control hierarchy, which requires risk control by engineering means before reliance on administrative control and personal protective equipment, and the guarding hierarchy, which establishes an excellent principle for selection and design of guards.
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CONTROL SYSTEMS
Software is key to evolution Control systems have evolved to do a lot more than simply control plant machinery, now providing operations information and enabling operational excellence
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UTOMATIC control has evolved a lot over the years, and today’s industrial plants rely on an array of control systems, including DCS, MES, SCADA systems, and PLCs. Though has its own unique history, each system shares the workload of gathering data and controlling disparate machines in the plant, allowing them to work in a cohesive fashion. When the first DCS units appeared on the industrial market in the mid-1970s, they were mainly focussed on control and providing an operator interface. Today, DCS technology integrates plantwide assets and operations information. Omron Electronics engineering manager, Harry Mulder, has been working in the industry for 24 years; 23 of these have been with Omron. He first came across industrial control systems after finishing his apprenticeship. “It was in 1989 that I worked for a medium-to-large integration company that installed both building management and water treatment systems, all with their own purpose-built hardware. This was before the days PCs really took hold, so our (propriety) SCADA system also ran on our own computer hardware,” Mulder told PACE. Mulder explains that Omron’s first control systems involved the automation of simple, stand-alone machines. “They were mostly just PLCs that replaced old relay logic systems. The main reason for the switch to a microprocessor-based control was that systems with relay logic were proving rather cumbersome and difficult to
Yokogawa introduced the company’s CENTUM in 1975, making it one of the world’s first distributed control systems (image courtesy Yokogawa).
maintain, even for machines with modest functionality,” he said. Mulder claims the biggest changes in PLCs over the years have been in the software they use, rather than the components themselves. “Hardware-wise, control systems have become cheaper, faster, and more capable/powerful; all at an ever-increasing rate of change. This is much like what computer hardware has done. However, due to the importance placed on the reliability of a control system, they have always been several iterations behind computer hardware,” he explained. “But the really big changes have been in software, both programming software and also the software used within the control system itself.
The single biggest advance has been the implementation of standards, which have resolved so many of the interoperability problems that used to plague the older, propriety control systems.” According to Mulder, modern control systems are more powerful and incorporate more functionality than their predecessors, however their basic makeup hasn’t changed much. “PLCs still have ladder diagram, but they also incorporate motion control and safety. “Networking is the other big change, not only can we now connect to the internet (for truly global connections), but at the other end of the spectrum, our field networks work so much faster and can connect to almost any device,” he said.
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NOVEMBER 2013 www.pacetoday.com.au 19
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ADVERTORIAL
Invensys leads the way Invensys Australia Managing Director, Keith Marriner looks at the big drivers behind some of his company’s innovations over the years and how that has been applied to the latest product release - Foxboro Evo.
Technology breakthroughs The evolution from propriety products and systems to open, standards based solutions, is the most significant technology driver in the process automation industry. This trend has delivered much innovation whilst enabling solutions from vendors to unlock the inherent information available in the process systems. These technologies are apparent at the instrument level, think Fieldbus; the control room, Unix and Windows operating systems and associated fixed and mobile COTs hardware platforms; at the Information layer, OPC enabled interfacing and more recently Cloud based solutions.
Invensys innovations In the early 20th century Foxboro led the instrument field in manufacturing
gauges, developing low and high pressure gauges often found in luxury automobiles of the day. World War I saw Foxboro instrument gauges quickly applied to aircraft. Peace time began with Foxboro leading the industrial process field with the pneumatic controller. Moving forward Foxboro continued innovating with products such as the differential pressure cell, integral control and fully redundant digital controls. Process control innovation was leading edge, however it was time for safety to catch up. In 1983, Triconex was founded, changing the way we see safety control forever by applying aviation industry inspired TMR technology to process safety. Thirty years on, Triconex remains the number one process safety system in the world. In 1987 Foxboro launched the I/A series process control system, the first
DCS to be based on standards, open technology, object based software and a promise to maintain a continuously current architecture. 2006 heralded further technology innovation and defined a new industrial control space, ECS, Enterprise Control System. Launching the first industrial SOA enabled unification of control, applications and information domains to achieve not just process control but business control.
Looking into the future Manufacturing and resource industries face a number of challenges which require higher levels of operational insight, with context sensitive information available real time, capable of being consumed from a variety of locations, devices and media. The underlying systems must provide
increased operational integrity for maximum production availability, whilst minimising exposure to threats, all this and be adaptive to change. With these challenges in mind, Invensys recently launched its latest Process Automation System, aptly called the Foxboro Evo. An evolution of our I/A series heritage, inbuilt functionality such as Situational Awareness Graphics, managed workflows, integrated safety and mobile device integration enable industry to realise the value of this technology today whilst building a future-proofed asset for tomorrow. Invensys iom.invensys.com
NOVEMBER 2013 www.pacetoday.com.au 21
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MOTORS & DRIVES Helping to put you in Control 100 mm Large Display
Large 5 digit process indicator accepts 4-20 mA signal. It features; 24 VDC excitation for powering 4-20 mA transmitters & 2 relay alarms. 24 VDC powered. Parameters are set via IR remote control. Accuracy ±0.1% F.S. ±1 digit. Other models are also available. SKU: DBI-001 Price: $599.00 each + GST
4 Button Pendant
Single-row LADY series push-button stations comes in 6 different sizes, ranging from 2-12 buttons. All materials are resistant to atmospheric agents, oils, temp changes & are shockproof. Other models are also available. SKU: MEE-004 Price: $166.00 each + GST
Control and efficiency drive the industry Smooth operation and speed control have been at the heart of motor and drive equipment developments since the 1960s
Paddlewheel Flow Sensor Based on Hall-Effect operated sensing principle the padGOHZKHHO ÀRZ VHQVRU IHDWXUHV open collector pulse output with measuring range of 4.5 to 12 L/ min. ½” BPS threaded connection. 3-26 VDC powered SKU: DBS-405 Price: $199.00 each + GST
Linear Position Transducer
IP65 rated aluminium enclosed linear transducer features measurement range of 0-600 PP 9'& SRZHUHG ZLWK Nƻ potentiometer output. SKU: DBS-305 Price: $259.00 each + GST
FieldLogger 24 VAC/DC Powered
Fully featured data logger that has 8 universal inputs and can use Modbus slave devices for many more. 2 UHOD\ RXWSXWV FRQ¿JXUable alarms. Ethernet, USB & RS-485 interfaces. Custom web pages, FTP servers, e-mail & SNMP facility card expansion. A 320x240 px colour HMI included. SKU: NOD-004 Price: $1159.00 each + GST
RTD Sensor Head & 50 mm Probe Aluminium RTD/Pt100 sensor head comes with a 316 stainless steel probe. ½” BPS threaded connecWLRQ &DQ EH ¿WWHG ZLWK D P$ “hockey-puck” transmitter. SKU: NOS-002 Price: $64.90 each + GST
Modbus RHT Transmitter
LCD wallmount RHT transmitter that can EH FRQ¿JXUHG YLD WKH RS-485 interface, operating as a slave in Modbus RTU protocol. 12-30 VDC powered. Housed in an IP65 rated module case. SKU: RHT-010 Price: $225.00 each + GST
For OEM/Wholesale prices Contact Ocean Controls Ph: (03) 9782 5882 oceancontrols.com.au
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SK any industrial business-owner today and they will tell you that gaining and achieving efficiency is the main impetus behind the majority of major business decisions – especially where capital equipment is concerned. Whether for environmental or cost efficiency – or both – finding faster, cheaper, more consistent ways of doing things has been an ongoing objective for plantowners throughout Australia’s manufacturing and processing history. At the heart of the production line, motor and drive systems have offered a prime opportunity for efficiency gains over the years, with engineers looking for features such as smooth operation and speed control since back in the 1960s. According to WorleyParsons principal engineer – instrumentation and control, Ian H. Gibson, the invention of the variable-speed drive (VSD) was one of the most memorable developments in the technology over the last 50 years, affording manufacturers much more control over their operations. “My first home-made VSD control system had a mechanical speed variator, fitted with a pneumatic cylinder positioner, driving a small Mono pump back in about 1964. This was feeding PVC slurry to a spray dryer on outlet temperature control. The manufacturer of the dryer said it couldn’t work; two years later I found them using a copy on their milk dryers,” Gibson told PACE. Gibson designs and commissions process plant control systems for a variety of sectors, including offshore and onshore oil and gas, and minerals processing. Having worked in the industry for 55 years, he has experienced first-hand the drive’s evolution from a simple mechanical unit to the sophisticated models now selling on the market. “Early came the various mechanical systems, with variable pitch pulleys or similar devices, then hydraulics with variable capacity pumps and/or motors. The electromechanical couplings (eddy-current couplings) which were grossly inefficient, DC electrical drives, then the first of the AC variable frequency drives – unreliable and bulky,” Gibson said. “Then came the silicon revolution, as reliability increased while size and cost plummeted. Now they are commodity items, sold (and bought) in many cases by folk who know little about the application theory.
March 7, 1902 – The first Allen-Bradley Motor Starter – 40HP, 110V, Direct Current (image courtesy Rockwell Automation).
The hydraulic and mechanical drive systems are still out earning their keep.” ABB Automation Products Division drives service engineer, Stefan Ludomir Ostrowski, has worked in the industry for 40 years and agrees that the efficiency benefits offered by the VSD have made it a mainstay in processing plants across the country. “At the beginning, electric motors were started DOL (Direct On Line) or by a Star/Delta switch, and the speed of a machine was adjusted mechanically by gear boxes. Later, as thyristors were invented, analogue drives came in use so variable speed adjustment could be implemented both in scalar and vector controls,” he told PACE. “Now, almost all plants use digital VSDs for efficiently controlling manufacturing processes, saving energy and the environment.” One of Ostrowski’s customers, Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group (NCIG), uses VSDs to drive underground mining conveyors at its Kooragang Island coal export terminals, replacing labour-intensive, onwheel transport driven by man-power. Thirty-two medium-voltage drive systems, rated at 1000 and 1250 kW, provide soft start, and speed and torque control for the 20 conveyors; eight conveyors feature a single drive each, while 12 have two single drives each in a master-follower arrangement. “Among the benefits are energy savings, accurate and fast load sharing, high availability and smooth ramp-up,” said Ostrowski. In the future, drives will continue to play an important role across industries, helping new and emerging sectors reap environmental and cost savings, according to Ostrowski. “Renewal/green energy such as wind and sun could not be harnessed without inverter technology, which is an integrated part of drives,” he said. In the manufacturing industry, companies have become increasingly reliant on motor and drive systems over the years – not just in their processing lines but also incorporated into manufactured products themselves.
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SEW-Eurodrive reinforces its position SEW-Eurodrive Managing Director, Robert Merola, recently celebrated his 30th anniversary with the company and is the longest serving member of staff in Australia. He outlines the key drivers behind the company’s success and also offers his perspective on the manufacturing sector.
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he last 30 years have arguably seen the most rapid and constant change to the manufacturing sector since the industrial revolution. Throughout this time, market pressures have had an impact on businesses everywhere. Establishing and growing a quality engineering company in the midst of all of this has required one constant commitment. SEW-Eurodrive’s commitment to its customers, staff and to the community at large has not waivered since Australian operations commenced in 1982. This approach has taken us from a single site in Melbourne to a national presence. We now have sites in Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane and over 180 employees nationwide. The distinctive logo of SEW-Eurodrive is a familiar sight in and around industrial sites across the country. SEW-Eurodrive recently celebrated 30 years in Australia, having been incorporated on 11 August, 1982. The company was formed in Germany in 1931 and is still family owned. Currently the fourth generation of the family are working in the business and this is quite unusual for a company of this size. Over 15,000 people are employed worldwide and the company has a turnover in excess of two billion Euros a year.
this as well. Electronics has become a sizable piece of the business model globally. It stretches beyond classic inverters to servo technology, which is prevalent in robotics. We are currently setting up a business unit in Australia called MAXOLUTION, which will allow us to provide complex solutions for automated guided vehicles in warehousing, storage, retrieval and so on. A qualified engineer has been training in Germany for almost a year on this solution and will bring high end capabilities already available in Germany/ Europe to the Australian market. MAXOLUTION will be introduced to the market early next year.
Mining sector In addition to SEW-Eurodrive’s classic gear motor business – revolving around materials handling equipment such as classic conveyors, pumps cranes, palletising, de-palletising storage and
felt, particularly in service. SEW has been winning service work due to unmatched capabilities in Australia. Providing excellent servicing to our customers throughout the life of their product means that when the product gets to the end of its serviceable life and the customer needs to replace it, hopefully SEW will be under serious consideration. SEW covers a very broad spectrum of products Australia-wide and still has the largest stockholdings of all our competitors put together.
Think global, act local People always ask why don’t you manufacture in Australia? The answer is simple — SEW Australia doesn’t have the volume. Australia represents just two per cent of the global market. There are huge facilities in Germany and France that manufacture in vast quantities
SEW-Eurodrive’s commitment to its customers, staff and to the community at large has not waivered since Australian operations commenced in 1982
Evolution SEW-Eurodrive’s product range started off quite basic in the early 80s – classic geared motors, mechanical variable speed drives and friction type variable speed drives. By the late 80s electronics came into vogue via inverter technology, so we made the investments to introduce it into the product range, which opened a whole new market for the company. Since then, SEW has become dominant in technology advancements, evolving from a classic gearbox and motor supplier to a total turnkey solutions provider. We work closely with very large OEMs in Germany to meet their demands and this results in new products and technology advances. The rest of the world gets to benefit from
high bay retrieval— we have made a considerably large investment in large industrial gears. In November, 2012, SEW unveiled a 10,000 square metre Heavy Industrial Solutions division in Melbourne. The state-of-the art facility includes cranes capable of handling 50 tonne loads, an automated two pack paint line, offering epoxy paint as standard, and a storage capacity in excess of 3000 pallets, making it unsurpassed in Australia when it comes to stocking, assembly and servicing extremely large industrial gear units. Although SEW was late coming on board with a product range and capabilities for the mining industry, we are certainly making our presence
and keep production costs down. It is much more economical to manufacture centrally and assemble decentrally. That’s why SEW keeps stock in Australia. Being a long way away from Germany, the replenishment time isn’t quick. To maintain the levels of same day or 48-hour service that SEW Australia introduced into the market 30 years ago, it’s important to maintain stock levels locally. Wth technological excellence and customer focussed support fundamental to our business, in addition to the local stock holding, local engineering excellence is a must. Highly regarded for their ability to innovate and adapt, Australian engineers have traditionally embraced new technologies and shaped
them to suit the country’s unique environment. Advances in drive technology exemplify this ability. Since the local SEW-Eurodrive operations first began, our engineers have used their mechanical and electronics skills to tailor end-to-end solutions for a wide range of Australian manufacturers.
Future of Australian manufacturing Looking to the future, Australian industries and business owners could take a leaf out of European family type businesses – like SEW, for example – where you invest for the future and make decisions based on the future. Due to the uncertainly of manufacturing in Australia, a lot of companies just want to invest and get a quick return. That’s sad. I have a feeling we’ll get by, the economy will grow, businesses will grow, but at a very pedestrian pace. I don’t think we will see any outstanding booms in our time, purely because there’s too much focus on shareholder returns, on cost cutting, so there are no real incentives to invest from Government. There are so many ingredients to make a recipe, and healing the manufacturing economy in Australia is quite a complex recipe. You must have industry wanting to invest for the future as well as the Government and the bureaucrats giving them the opportunity and incentives such as tax benefits, write-offs, accelerated depreciation. We have the knowhow. Anything Germany, France or the US can do, Australia can do as well. There’s no reason why we can’t be world’s best practice, but the costs of doing this in Australia are prohibitive. That’s the harsh reality. SEW-Eurodrive www.sew-eurodrive.com.au
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© 2013 Swagelok Company
PA0513_000_SWA.pdf
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PA1113_025.pdf
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NETWORKING
Making connections Industrial networking is increasingly becoming a discipline in its own right, bridging the gap between enterprise and plant floor networks
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NDUSTRIAL automation has come a long way since the mid-20th century when ‘communications’ referred to pneumatically-controlling remote systems via a centralised control base. Daanet senior consultant – automation, electrical and networks, Mark Elrick, began working around the processing and automation industries in the mid-1980s; though local area networks had started to gain traction, many sites still relied on more traditional forms of control. “At that time, there were mainly point-to-point connections between devices and controllers – few pieces of equipment were networkable,” he told PACE. Elrick’s first job was an Indentured Traineeship at Australian Iron & Steel in Port Kembla from 1982. “After 10 years of hands-on maintenance and project engineering roles, including a significant role in the Hot Strip Mill (HSM) upgrade in the mid-80s, I moved to a contract management role in water treatment, where systems tended to be smaller, single controller-based with hard-wired interlocking where a network would now be employed,” he said. Elrick recalls the programming of PLCs on the mid-80s HSM upgrade was via a bulky dedicated programming workstation with a tape backup. “Individual serial connections from each PLC were run to a patch panel in the engineer’s workspace of each local control pulpit, with uplinks joining the three pulpits. Any PLC could hence be accessed from any location through manual patching, much like an old telephone exchange. It would be another few years before PCs became commonplace as programming terminals, using networks like Data Highway with expensive interface cards.
An enclosure using EtherCAT fieldbus, an open, high-performance, ethernetbased fieldbus system for control automation technology, allowing short cycle times and low bandwidth utilisation (image courtesy Beckhoff Automation).
For Elrick, the biggest development in networking and communications technology during his working career has been the introduction of industrial Ethernet, which lead to the opening of connections between vendorspecific equipment. Beckhoff Automation Australia and New Zealand managing director, Steven Sischy, started out in the process industry in 1990, before moving to specialise in factory and building automation. The first fieldbus networks to be deployed widely in Australia were RS-486 and ARCNET, however Ethernet has since become more commonplace. “Ethernet-based systems started to find their way into process and factory automation in 1990. The early adopters of Ethernet technologies were Beckhoff Automation, Siemens, Mitsubishi Electric and Schneider,” Sischy told PACE. “In 1990, I was involved in the installation and commissioning of a diamond mine and overland coal conveying systems. We deployed Ethernet and RS-485 networks in the application.” Though industrial Ethernet is a relatively new technology, Sischy says it has allowed users to get more information and greater efficiency out of their machines and processes.
M Rutty & Co 1883
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PA1113_026.pdf
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SECURITY SYSTEMS
Plant defence comes of age Industrial security technologies are constantly evolving, and now encompass a wide range of physical and cyber solutions
26 www.pacetoday.com.au NOVEMBER 2013
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ROM gates and fences to CCTV surveillance and critical infrastructure preservation, safeguarding an industrial plant requires an armour of different security hardware and software systems, all working together to prevent both intentional and unintentional interference with the daily operations of a business. Though some forms of industrial security are well-established – including safety-related technologies like alarms, sirens and warning lights, access control, and equipment monitoring systems – applications such as cyber security for industrial control systems are still gaining traction. For Security Infrastructure Solutions (SIS) managing director and principal industrial control systems (ICS) security consultant, Dr Christopher Beggs, any business incorporating process control operations would do well to look more closely at their options, with a view to investing in securing their assets. “Cyber security for industrial companies became more of an issue and realisation from about 2006-2007 onwards, however still today we identify some sectors and some organisations still pay little attention to the need and importance for cyber security in this space,” Beggs told PACE. Beggs has spent over 10 years working with SCADA, ICS and DCS, and researching technology to defend these systems from cyber-attack. His company, SIS, is the only national organisation solely dedicated to the preservation of these critical infrastructures. Though industrial cyber security solutions have become more sophisticated in recent years, the uptake of these technologies is still fairly low in Australia, due to managing, supporting and resourcing issues, says Beggs. “Security systems or products – such as intrusion detection systems (IDS) and security information and event management platforms – are not widely-implemented in industrial control environments due to the lack of security governance and management of SCADA environments. The maturity of managing security technologies at field layer environments is immature at present,” he explained. “Security awareness of the cyber threats is rising, as is the development of international security standards and frameworks for ICS, however funding and investment from C-level senior management to fix these problems is still
Industrial security implementations require hardware and software.
lacking across most industries.” One organisation that takes cyber security extremely seriously is the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), a statutory body of the Australian government and the centre of Australian nuclear expertise. ANSTO technical IT security officer, Mitchell Hewes, works with stakeholders across the organisation, along with
The evolution of the way we use technology has only served to increase the risk external regulatory bodies, to produce internal standards, design guidelines and procedures on how cyber security is to be implemented. As part of his role, he assists with the implementation and review of systems to ensure both compliance and that policies do not hinder the rollout of new technologies. According to Hewes, cyber security originally became an issue for industrial process control around the 1970s, due to unaddressed risks in the sector. The team at ANSTO now implements secure design methodologies at both a physical and cyber level on all its ventures, including its Open Pool Australian Lightwater (OPAL) reactor – a state-of-the-art, 20MW
reactor that uses low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel to achieve a range of nuclear medicine, research, scientific, industrial and production goals, built in 2007. “It started when programmable devices were first used to control industrial processes, most notably the movement away from hardwired relay logic systems to PLCs [programmable logic controllers] in the 1970s,” Hewes explained. “Cyber security then became an issue, just as physical security was before it. Previously, an engineer would need to physically modify the wiring; now, only a soft-modification in program logic is required. While likely unidentifiable at the time, today this is firmly seen as a cyber security risk. “The evolution of the way we use technology has only served to increase the risk – global inter-networking has connected everyone and computers have reached such a complexity that it is no longer feasible to track and review every single logical operation being undertaken.” For Hewes, the integration of thirdparty security technologies in to major commercial operating systems has been a positive step in the evolution of cyber security in industrial process control environments. “Where there was once a substantial cost involved (which may have conflicted with other organisational priorities), now the core functionality of these technologies is bundled into existing licensing,” he said.
PACE_AWARDS_FP_V1.pdf
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Nominations are now open for the 11th Annual PACE Zenith Awards 2014, to be held in Melbourne on Thursday 12 June 2014. A total of 11 project and people awards will be up for grabs on the night, highlighting innovation and excellence in Australia’s engineering community. All finalists will receive coverage in PACE magazine, on www.pacetoday.com.au and associated social media platforms. Finalists will also receive two free tickets to the gala dinner where the winners will be announced.
For more information visit www.pacetoday.com.au/awards Sponsors
PA1113_000_BES
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