The key to asset management is predictive maintenance which, estimates indicate, will cost approximately one tenth the cost of a reactive maintenance programme. Predictive maintenance utilises intelligent equipment or ‘assets’ to report on equipment condition and inform operators and maintenance staff through a control system, such as Simatic PCS 7.A less tangible, but significant benefit, isoperator involvement. All too often, with a reactive maintenance programme, the plant fails and the operator passes the problem solving over to the maintenance team. Including operators in the maintenance strategy can aid problem diagnosis and rectification.

could be eradicated by a regime of standards for programmable safety systems(IEC61508 & 61511) which integrate safety into the process operation and control systems. Traditionally, safety systems have been separate from the Basic Process Control System but IEC61508 allows for the combining of safety and control within an integrated control and safety system. The safety system within Simatic PCS 7, known as Simatic S7-400FH, can meet SIL 3 with diagnostics coverage of near 100% with no known undetected failures providing availability figures of >99.999%. The benefits of shared engineering tools can be enhanced by integrated safety lifecycle tools, such as Simatic Safety Matrix, which generates safety programme code and operator mimics and faceplates used to visualise and interact with the safety programme from the operator console. In operation, the Safety Matrix is an excellent maintenance troubleshooting and management of change tool. The Safety Matrix Viewer incorporates an events recorder which automatically times, dates, stamps and logs activity.

Integrating intelligent devices and disparate systems, such as air compressors, building management systems and metering, into the DCS systems means it is possible to monitor and optimise utility consumption, including water, gas, compressed air and electricity. It is also a possibility to include operators in this process by measuring and presenting meaningful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)and rewarding improvement.

Integrating Batch Management into the DCScan result in optimised production and give the flexibility to quickly change production schedules to meet dynamic customer demands. A term ‘Golden Batch’ is often used - in other words saving, re-using and optimising a mass of process parameters that give the ultimate in batch quality and yield. Integration of the DCS into an MES layer can provide a flexible interface into the ERP system. This means less paper with production schedules and more automation of actual customer orders. For anyone running process plant operations, the benefits of automation and Simatic PCS 7 are hard to ignore. When shareholder value is the corporate goal, Simatic PCS 7 is the only solution.