Industrial Process Control Data Center for Scalable Plant Integration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Distributed industrial process control systems face challenges in scalability and integration with other systems due to fixed networking technologies, making it cumbersome and costly to scale up or down, and integrate with systems at different security layers, while also requiring significant data integration to provide actionable information.
Innovation Solution
An industrial process plant data center is introduced, decoupling process plant data from fixed networking technologies, using a plant information model and generic framework with APIs to enable secure and scalable data integration, and providing a set of pluggable hardware modules with discovery and execution engines to automatically sense and connect with field devices, populate the plant information model, and execute control routines.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If fixed networking technologies are used in distributed industrial process control systems, then system stability and reliability are maintained, but scalability and adaptability deteriorate, making it cumbersome and costly to scale up or down and integrate with other systems
Solution Approach 1:
The system is divided into independent pluggable hardware modules, each capable of autonomous operation. This segmentation allows the system to scale by adding or removing modules without affecting the core control functionality, resolving the contradiction between maintaining reliability through fixed architecture and achieving scalability through flexible configuration.
Solution Approach 2:
A data center intermediary layer is introduced between the fixed networking infrastructure and the process control systems. This intermediary provides standardized data integration and security layer adaptation, enabling seamless integration with systems at different security layers while maintaining the stability of the underlying fixed networking technology.
2Ease of manufacture
If fixed networking technologies are used, then established communication protocols are maintained, but device complexity and integration cost increase when integrating with systems at different security layers
Solution Approach 1:
The data center is designed with universal data integration capabilities that can interface with multiple types of systems across different security layers through standardized protocols. This multi-functionality allows a single platform to serve diverse integration needs without requiring separate specialized systems for each security layer, reducing both complexity and cost.
3Loss of information
If significant data integration is performed to provide actionable information, then information completeness and decision-making quality improve, but processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The data center performs preliminary data integration, validation, and structuring activities in advance, maintaining ready-to-use data models and integration templates. This preliminary action ensures that when data needs to be integrated for decision-making, the processing time is minimized while still providing complete and actionable information.
Data Source
AI summary
A distributed control system (DCS) of an industrial process plant includes a data center storing a plant information model that includes a description of physical components, the control framework, and the control network of the plant using a modeling language. A set of exposed APIs provides DCS applications access to the model, and to an optional generic framework of the data center which stores basic structures and functions from which the DCS may automatically generate other structures and functions to populate the model and to automatically create various applications and routines utilized during run-time operations of the DCS and plant. Upon initialization, the DCS may automatically sense the I/O types of its interface ports, detect communicatively connected physical components within the plant, and automatically populate the plant information model accordingly. The DCS may optionally automatically generate related control routines and/or I/O data delivery mechanisms, HMI routines, and the like.