April

Far
Out
in the Field
How to ensure your
project survives
in a third-world
environment.
APRIL 2014
IMPROVE OPERATIONS
WITH MODULAR
BEST PRACTICES
CT1404_01_CVR.indd 1
SMART DEVICES
25-YEAR STRUGGLE
TO BE HEARD
BIG CHEESE NEEDS
BIGGER DATA
3/25/14 3:36 PM
Get InTouch
2012 Siemens Industry, Inc.
and shake it up with mobile, real-time visibility.
The worlds leading HMI software is now mobile. Get the power and
ease of use of InTouch, wherever and whenever you need it.
Wonderware.com/GetInTouch
INTOUCH
ACCESS ANYWHERE
Copyright 2013 Invensys Inc. All rights reserved. Invensys, the Invensys logo, InTouch and Wonderware are trademarks of Invensys plc, its subsidiaries or affiliates. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
CT1404_full page ads.indd 2
3/25/14 12:38 PM
Ad SITR
2014 Siemens Industry, Inc.
Scan to
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Unique support tools provide direct

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FC410 and the FC430 are amongst the
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Ad_SITRANS_FC430_Control_APRIL_2014_NEW.indd 1
3/25/2014 1:46:33 PM
3/25/14 2:44 PM
Are you in control?

Naturally.
Of course you are. Your automation software is up-to-date and secure; new cost saving
initiatives are in place; your control system is a model of efficiency and ergonomics driving
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3/25/14 12:39 PM
April 2014 Volume XXVII Number 4
Far
Out
in the Field
38
COVER STORY
Establishing process automation

projects in developing economies
and other remote locations requires
better preparation, stronger supply
chains, more accessible expertise,
simpler controls and added training.
Heres how veteran players make it
happen. by Jim Montague
F E AT U R E S
S U P E R V I S O R Y
C O N T R O L
48 / Modular Procedural
Automation Improves
Operations
Using a standard automation methodology prevents incidents by allowing operators to share best practices.
by A.N. Vennavelli, A.Y. Ogundeji and M. R. Resetarits
2 5
Y E A R S
I N
C O N T R O L
52 / Smart Devices Fail

to Fulfill Destiny
57 / Big Cheese Needs Bigger Data

Foremost Farms doubles production and adds DAQ and historian functions to its SCADA/HMI system to find exceptions and improve operations. by Jim Montague
W E B
E X C L U S I V E S
Three Reasons SCADA Software Is Going Nowhere

http://bit.ly/1de2ogy
Improving Decisions with Smart Instrumentation
http://bit.ly/1pxzQ1r
For 25 years, intelligent instrumentations major problem

has been being heard. by Paul Studebaker
CONTROL (ISSN 1049-5541) is published monthly by PUTMAN Media COMPANY (also publishers of CONTROL DESIGN, CHEMICAL PROCESSING, FOOD PROCESSING, INDUSTRIAL NETWORKING,
PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING, and PLANT SERVICES ), 1501 E. Woodfield Rd., Ste. 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173. (Phone 630/467-1300; Fax 630/467-1124.) Address all correspondence to Editorial and Executive Offices,
same address. Periodicals Postage Paid at Schaumburg, IL, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the United States. Putman Media 2014. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or part
without consent of the copyright owner. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CONTROL, P.O. Box 3428, Northbrook, IL 60065-3428. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Qualified-reader subscriptions are accepted from Operating Management in the
control industry at no charge. To apply for qualified-reader subscription, fill in subscription form. To non-qualified subscribers in the Unites States and its possessions, subscriptions are $96.00 per year. Single copies are $15. International subscriptions
are accepted at $200 (Airmail only.) CONTROL assumes no responsibility for validity of claims in items reported. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40028661. Canadian Mail Distributor Information:
Frontier/BWI,PO Box 1051,Fort Erie,Ontario, Canada, L2A 5N8.
A P R I L / 2 0 1 4 www.controlglobal.com
CT1404_05_07_TOC.indd 5
3/26/14 9:42 AM
The Proof (test) is in the measurement.

Is safety important to you?
Validate safety function with
in-situ proof testing
Levelflex FMP51
Guided wave radar
If you are implementing functional safety systems such as IEC 61511,

ANSI/ISA 84 or API 2350, you are familiar with mandatory level
instrument proof tests. Most require you to take your vessel off line
and manipulate the level in the vessel or remove the instrument
completely for testing.
Traditional proof testing methods typically:
Require hours to complete the test
Increase risk to personnel by placing maintenance staff on tall vessels
Cost money due to extended down time and lost production
At Endress+Hauser, we can help you migrate to in-situ proof testing
using free space radar, guided wave radar or vibrating tuning fork
instruments installed in your safety system.
Micropilot FMR5x
Free space radar
Liquiphant FTL80
Point level switch
This solution provides the ability to:

Verify the health of the instrument and the associated wiring
Significantly reduce downtime and the risk to your staff
Improve your maintenance cycle, productivity and bottom line
Provide up to SIL3 rating in overfill prevention with one device
www.us.endress.com/process-safety-SIL
Endress+Hauser, Inc
2350 Endress Place
Greenwood, IN 46143
info@us.endress.com
www.us.endress.com
Sales: 888-ENDRESS
Service: 800-642-8737
Fax:
317-535-8498
3/25/14 12:40 PM
April 2014 Volume XXVII Number 4
On-site
On-line
Hands-on
Classroom
or in the
D E PA RT M E N T S
9 / Editors Page
Who Needs Energy Incentives?

regulations are an imperfect solution for a
lack of common sense.
15 / On the Web
26 / In Process
Hart Plant of the Year and other news.
36 / Resources
online aids for process analyzers.
From Loop Control to Process

Performance
Plus checking loops and field instruments,
and cowboy cascade control.
Can you use Ziegler-nichols controller tuning methods for non-interactive controllers?
17 / Feedback
63 / Roundup
readers weigh in on overrule safety and

how often to calibrate instruments.
18 / Other Voices
Reliability vs. Safety

responsibilities typically reside in different
departments, with neither having responsibility for the whole picture.
23 / On the Bus
60 / Ask the Experts
Check out the latest in PlCs and PaCs.
66 / Products
Cool new tools for your automation needs.
67 / Control Talk
How Good Is Good?

How to estimate and prove the value of advanced process control.
Unhand Me, Handheld!

as powerful and convenient as handhelds
are, they still require careful management.
69 / Ad Index
24 / Without Wires
70 / Control Report
Standards Are Just the Beginning

When we finally get smart instruments
communicating effectively, what will we do
with them?
You choose.
A blended training
approach to help you keep
up with todays challenges
Customize your training
experience through the
unique offerings provided
to you through our Process
Training University. Whether
it be on-site, on-line or
in the classroom, choose
a training package that is
tailored to meet your needs.
a list of very important pages.
Overseas Is So Over
developing economies are more complex
and approachable than third World and
other old labels indicate.
Find out more about

Endress+Hausers unique training:
www.us.endress.com/training
CirCulation audited June 2013

Food & Kindred Products............................................ 13.356
Chemicals & Allied Products ...................................... 10,257
Systems Integrators & Engineering Design Firms ......... 8,197
Electric, Gas & Sanitary Services .................................. 4,313
Primary Metal Industries ............................................... 4,312
Pharmaceuticals ............................................................ 3,884
Petroleum Refining & Related Industries ....................... 3,770
CT1404_05_07_TOC.indd 7
Paper & Allied Products ................................................ 3,413

Rubber & Miscellaneous Plastic Products .................... 3,117
Miscellaneous Manufacturers ....................................... 2,525
Stone, Clay, Glass & Concrete Products ....................... 1,681
Textile Mill Products ..................................................... 1,077
Tobacco Products............................................................. 118
Total Circulation .......................................................... 60,020
3/26/14 9:42 AM
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3/25/14 12:41 PM
EDITORS PAGE
Who needs Energy incentives?
any of you know that I live in beautiful

Northwest Indiana and that our offices
are in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg. Having had one foot in Illinois and the
other in Indiana for my entire life, I can say that
the populations are not all that much different
its hard to tell a rural Hoosier from a rural
Sucker, or most of Chicago from much of Indianapolis, or a Boilermaker (my brother) from
an Illini (me). Both states have run successful
programs to incentivize industrial, commercial
and residential energy efficiency.
Under Indianas program, called Energizing Indiana, utilities collect a fee from ratepayers to fund an outreach and incentive program
that encourages and subsidizes customers to
use less energy. The program was put in place
in 2009 by the state utility board in cooperation
with the state government, and is intended to
recognize the equivalence of saving energy to
increasing generating capacitysince building
more power plants would have to be funded by
ratepayers, they should instead pay into a program to reduce consumption. Large manufacturers like steel mills have paid millions of dollars into the program, while typical households
pay an extra $2 or $3 a month.
The program tasks utilities to make a goodfaith effort to reduce electric power consumption 2% by 2019. The program includes free
energy audits, weatherization for low-income
households, subsidies for residential lighting products, heating and cooling retrofits at
schools, education about energy efficiency, and
rebates for commercial and industrial retrofits.
Six utilities are covered by the program, which
resulted in a savings of more than 416 million
kWh in 2012. A 2013 study showed $2 in energy
savings for each $1 spent on the program.
Now the state legislature has put a bill on the
governors desk that would end the program this
year. The bill, SB340, started as a provision that
would have allowed large industrial users to opt
out, but was modified as it passed through the
pAul StudebAker
legislature to end the entire program.

Industrial energy managers are well-advised
to look beyond incentives for the best ways and
reasons to implement a long-term energy strategy. Government and utility energy programs
come and go, and may not incentivize the projects or equipment that ultimately will have
the highest long-term impact on a companys
bottom line. So you might expect industry to
support SB340 and encourage governor Mike
Pence to sign it. But that has not been the case.
A host of major companies, including Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Siemens, Ingersoll
Rand and United Technologies sent a letter to
Pence opposing the bill. The American Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade association representing makers of air conditioners
and chillers, also wrote to legislators opposing
the bill. Ending this initiative would eliminate approximately 381 direct program jobs,
over 1,200 indirect jobs and over $500 million
of economic investment each year that the programs are not operating, said the letter from
Johnson Controls and other companies.
Well, those folks just want to sell energy efficiency stuff. What about the large industriesthe original intended beneficiariesthat
would be allowed to opt out? These are your
plants, whose energy efficiency depends in no
small part on the effectiveness of your control
systems. Does it make sense to you to pay millions of dollars toward reducing consumption
instead of building more capacity?
Do you see any value in requiring utilities
to prioritize energy efficiency in their business
plans, programs and communications with ratepayers? Or is it enough to simply build costs into
the rate structure and let industry act accordingly?
If youve been exposed to good-faith efforts
to improve your plants (or your homes) efficiency, what do you think about them?
Editor in chiEf
pstudebaker@putman.net
Energy managers
are well-advised
to look beyond
incentives for
the best ways
and reasons to
implement a
long-term energy
strategy.
A p r i l / 2 0 1 4 www.controlglobal.com
CT1404_09_Edit.indd 9
3/26/14 10:05 AM
800 453 6202
3/25/14 12:41 PM
#1 Value in Automation
The best values in the world . . .
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As an automation integrator, AutomationDirect

is usually my first stop when starting a new design
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Another great advantage to my business is the
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0414-2014-spring_magazine_insert.indd 1
1-800-633-0405 | www.AutomationDirect.com
2/7/14 5:42 PM
You need to save money and save time . . . we can help.

You need quality products at a great
price from a solid supplier. . .
. . . Since 1994 our prices have been
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Since our industry-changing catalog first hit mailboxes in 1994, weve been
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research and purchase by becoming the first automation supplier with a 24/7
online store. Weve made the commitment to offer the best products at the best
value we could deliver so you have a better choice.
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more info
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Price/Part Number
Price/Part Number
Proximity sensor, 18 mm,

3-wire NPN DC shielded,
with 2-meter cable
AC Drive, 5 hp, 460V
$22.00
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AK1-AN-1A
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$410.00
$1,100.00
GS2-45P0
Supplementary Protector,
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D trip curve
$9.00
NEMA 12 Enclosure, steel,

wall mount (20 x 16 x 8)
$234.00
WMZS1D05
N12201608
Drives
Soft Starters
Motors & Gearboxes
Steppers/Servos
Lowest cost
$48.50
All new CPUs

that work with
existing DL205 I/O
$424.70
More program memory

Faster program execution
Hoffman A-201608LP
All prices are U.S. published prices. AutomationDirect prices are as of September 2013. Hoffman prices are taken from www.
newark.com 2/5/14. Allen-Bradley list prices are taken from http://www.rockwellautomation.com/en/e-tools 2/5/14. Prices
may vary by dealer. Many other part numbers are available from vendors. All prices subject to change without notice.
Built-in Ethernet on
CPU (optional)
FREE Do-more
Designer software with
all-new instruction set
You bought the products,

you want FREE manuals . . .
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and documention are FREE downloads
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Advanced discrete
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Expandability
Ethernet
You paid hard earned money for our products. Why should you
have to pay more for the manuals to use them? That doesnt
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If youre evaluating a product, download the manual to help you
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Advanced discrete
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Extensive
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www.AutomationDirect.com/support
Distributed I/O
more info
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Encoders
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A-B 1492-SP1D050
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Motor Controls
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Limit Switches
Whether youre a newcomer to PLCs, or a seasoned

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you can find what you need among our cost-effective
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A-B 22B-D010N104
AutomationDirect.com
or 1-800-633-0405
** 2-day transit time does not apply for LTL shipping of heavy orders or drop-shipped items not in Cumming, GA warehouse. For orders under $49, a flat $6 ground shipping rate is applied; you
may request that your order ship via the 2-day (transit)method; shipping charges will be added to invoice. For updated details on shipping methods and charges, see Terms and Conditions on
our Web site. We do not guarantee delivery times of the carriers. AutomationDirect is not responsible for carrier delays due to weather, mechanical failures or other issues.
Programmable Controllers
Field I/O
Software
HMI
A controller for
every application
Process
Relays/Timers
Communications
Terminal Blocks
Wiring
Power Products
Circuit Protection
Enclosures
Tools
Pneumatics
Safety Products
and more!
2/7/14 5:43 PM
The best values in the world . . .
Weve shopped around to bring you the most practical industrial control products
that are in-stock, ready to ship and at the right prices!
They seem to have culled down all the products
in the world to a useful set that are properly
priced, yet no junk. And they can offer their own
support for most of them, not shuffle me off to
the manufacturer. Many people have started
using them based on my recommendation, and
they thank me.
- Chris in Kettering, Ohio
Your company is exactly what I was looking for.

Detailed specs are a must when working with
automation products, and I have not needed to
ask any questions as all the information is already
on the site.
Lightning fast shipping has been great, and when
I make future orders I will not think twice about
availability; again right there on the site. Keep up
the great work! You are truly making it a pleasurable experience to shop online.
- Dan in Akron, OH
As an automation integrator, AutomationDirect

is usually my first stop when starting a new design
or developing a proposal. Their web site has all of
the specifications and information needed when
trying to come up with solutions for easy and
difficult design challenges.
Another great advantage to my business is the
ability to get pricing, check availability and place
orders after normal business hours (this is the
time I can work without interruption). Keep up the
great work!
y
a
W
e
s
n
e
S
n
o
m
m
o
C
s
l
o
The
r
t
n
o
C
l
a
i
r
t
s
u
d
n
I
y
u
B
to
Since 1994 . .
- Jay in Collegeville, PA
Programmable
Controllers
Universal Field I/O
Motors and
Motor Controls
Relays &Timers
Communications
Motion Control
Sensors
Power Products
Software
Safety
Pushbuttons,
Switches and Lights
Enclosures
Operator Interface
Pneumatics
Terminal Blocks
and Wiring
Circuit Protection
AC Drives
Process
I/O and
Communications
Wiring
Tools
Do it all online!
Check prices
and inventory
Place orders 24/7
See complete specs
Read product
reviews
See order history
Get a quote
Create a BOM
Ask tech support
Download
FREE software,
manuals, CAD
drawings, example
programs
View FREE
how-to videos
Read helpful
technical articles
Plus much more . . .
A quality product line, with FREE #1 rated technical support and quick shipping!
Call 1-800-633-0405 or visit us at: www.AutomationDirect.com
1-800-633-0405 | www.AutomationDirect.com
2/7/14 5:42 PM
Control online
SCADA Software Going Nowhere?

http://bit.ly/1de2ogy
Control Talk Talks Process Performance
http://bit.ly/1qWjqTK
Big Data: Improving Decisions through

Smart Instrumentation
http://bit.ly/1fIkgdQ
Flare Gas Mass Flow Metering

http://bit.ly/1hCZ2k3
Flowmeter Accuracy Specifications

http://bit.ly/1hD2drY
Unfettered: A Tale of Two Cities

http://bit.ly/1gf8Sfz
Overrule for Safety
Loop Checking and Field Instrument Checking

Our digital editor, Katherine Bonfante, raised some
best-practices questions on this subject that generated
some buzz. What does your company do? What are
its guidelines and procedures? Do you use flowcharts?
Written guidelines? Go to http://bit.ly/NuIlxP to see
some of the answers and contribute to the discussion.
Control Talk: Cascade Control Tips

Artificial lake
http://bit.ly/1ijEOho
Open
Controlling Interests: Trust Your Car to

the Robot with the Star?
Containment
flooded
Lifting rod
Reactor
http://bit.ly/1nGVdC1
Real-World Industrial Wireless Solutions

http://bit.ly/1g1WLkJ
How Often Should You Calibrate Your

Instruments?
MuLtiMedia
Our Ask the Experts panel also made the

Artificial lake
hit parade with their answers to two questions: A reader asked for explanation of the
Closed
terms overrule safety and underwater
Containment
evacuated
nuclear reactors, and another wanted to Lifting rod
Reactor
know about appropriate valve sizing in industrial pipelines. For the answers, go to
http://bit.ly/1kJ1BUt. Dont forget to check
out the dissenting opinion from Dick Caro
in the comments, which can also be read in Feedback on page 17 of this issue.
BLOGS
ur Control Talk columnists, Greg McMillan

and Stan Weiner, make the hit parade again.
Their interview with Lew Gordon, formerly
of Invensys, on leveraging loop control to improve overall economic performance was one of
our best-read articles in the past month. Theres
a lot more to it than mastering Ziegler-Nichols.
Go to http://bit.ly/1g1dmFn to read the article.
And, for a follow-up with Gordon about selling
advanced process control to the powers that be in
your plant, go to page 67 of this issue.
What Makes RFID Systems

Industrial-Strength?
http://bit.ly/1fTI5DH
Cybersecurity: What Is It and Why Does

It Matter?
http://bit.ly/1aiV7oo
SCADA: The Movie

http://bit.ly/OEW7yW
Control Engineers and Cowboys

Yippie-ki-yi-yi-yo! The always-interesting Bla
Liptk raises the somewhat unlikely question,
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like herding cattle? Do control engineers need
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toolbox? Or would a German shepherd, a border collie or Welsh corgi do? Find out at http://
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15
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G N I K A E P S YL L A C I N H C E T
FEEDBACK
IN MEMORY OF JULIE CAPPELLETTI-LANGE,

VICE PRESIDENT 1984-2012
1501 E. WOODFIELD ROAD, SUITE 400N
SCHAUMBURG, ILLINOIS 60173
No Complete Disconnect for Nuclear Plants?
Editor in Chief: PAUL STUDEBAKER
I almost always agree with Bla Liptk, but

I must take exception to one of his overrule safety solutions to the nuclear power
plant problem. (See Februarys Ask the
Experts, p. 49, http://bit.ly/1gLErMK.)
You cant isolate a nuclear power plant
from any external data communications.
I seem to recall an NRC requirement for
remote operation of a nuclear power plant
in case the local control center becomes
damaged or is otherwise inoperable. The
requirement was for that plant to be operated from a distant location sufficient to regain control, and safely operate it or shut it
down in an orderly manner. This does not
require an Internet connection, but it is a
communications line out of the plant.
Ive often heard people exclaim that
there should be no Internet connections
to the process control network as a solution to the potential for control systems
being hacked. Well, that didnt protect
the Iranian uranium enrichment plant
from the Stuxnet virus that was probably
planted into the operating system of the
Siemens System 7 at least a year before it
was shipped.
These days, its unrealistic to insist on
no Internet connection for any process
control system. There are too many vendor support services connected via the Internet that are necessary to keep a modern
process control system and the attached
smart instrumentation in good repair and
fully operational. As always, the Internet
connection must be secure and allow only
previously authorized connections. Its
not impossible to achieve protected access, and all communications must be encrypted to prevent damage and covert data
transmission.
I didnt say it was easy, and it is usually
not fast, but protected Internet connections must be allowed.
pstudebaker@putman.net
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IAN VERHAPPEN, STAN WEINER

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DICK CARO
CMC Associates
technical editor Dan Heberts column,

Calibration Can Be Conditioned-Based
(http://bit.ly/1ijUbq2).]
If your process is involved in quality standards, such as BRC, HCCP, etc., then you
should calibrate your instruments with
the frequency you established in [your]
plan, and never go
longer than a year.
Just try to minimize
your critical control
points, be smart,
work hard, and you
will find a thin and
Certifiably
adequate list.
Famous
If youre not suffocated by quality,
first of all you should have this basic element: a list of plant instruments with
their criticality (high, medium, low).
Such criticality must be clearly established in your main maintenance manual [in terms of] impact on production,
impact on environment, level of safety
and health risks, etc.
Once you reduce your entire list to a
handful, its time to evaluate the inspection period for such instruments.
Remember the bathtub figure percent fails against time for electronics
equipment: high percentage in the first
hours of life, steady figure during the
working life, and high percentage in the
final stage of its life.
This figure tells you, Take your hands
out of the instruments unless they show
signs of malfunction. In other words, if
it works, dont mess with it. The signs of
malfunction could be established from a
condition-based monitoring routine inspection period. At the end, I agree with
controlglobal.com.
25 Years of
Analyzers
Level Reaches
New Heights
Project Priorities:
This Isnt a
Disney Movie
The Operators Role

Flock of Fieldbuses
Control Talk: Robots

Are the Last Step
FEBRUARY 2014
editorial team
This years inductees took very different

paths to earning our highest honor
CT1402_01_CVR.indd 1
2/12/14 10:11 AM
ARMANDO FARFN
PLC Net work plant in Tucumn
Talk to Us
We love to hear from our readers. To
When Should You Calibrate

Your Industrial Devices?
comment on an article, please email
[This comment appeared on the ControlGlobal LinkedIn page referencing senior
putman.net) or Nancy Bartels (nbartels@
either Paul Studebaker (pstudebaker@

putman.net).
CT1404_17_Feedback.indd 17
17
3/25/14 2:42 PM
Other VOices
Reliability vs. Safety

WilliAm l. mostiA, Jr., pE
Fellow, SIS-TECH Solutions

wlmostia@msn.com
oted and well-respected safety guru and

author of Engineering a Safer World,
Nancy Leveson, once stated in a presentation on The Path to More Cost-Effective
System Safety that reliability does not equal
safety: Reliability Safety. This is based on the
observation that many accidents occur without
any component or equipment hardware or software failure, leading to the conclusion that systems of highly reliable components or equipment alone are not necessarily safe. She also
said that complexity compounds this issue.
So how does this statement relate to the process industries? Reliability and safety are many
times treated differently, as if theyre dissimilar
concepts or philosophies. It seems certain that
we want a reliable and safe plant, but how do
these concepts interact in a process plant?
how Do You Define reliability?
You will probably

not find a reliability
engineer on the
PSM staff nor a
PSM engineer on
the maintenance
department staff.
18
Reliability as a plant function depends somewhat on ones perspective and goals. Reliability
from the perspective of the maintenance department may not be the same as reliability in
the process safety management (PSM) or engineering departments.
Reliability can be defined as the probability
that an item will perform a required function
under given conditions for a given time interval. Reliability is commonly associated with
process equipment (pumps, compressors, vessels, pipes, etc.). It resides in the maintenance
department, whose goal is to reduce cost of
maintenance and improve process uptime to
increase the companys bottom line.
Computerized maintenance management
systems (CMMS) are used to record, manage
and communicate day-to-day operations and
implement various reliability-based maintenance models. One common maintenance
management system is reliability-centered
maintenance (RCM). Some of the other maintenance management strategies that incorporate reliability are asset integrity management
(AIM), reliability-based inspection (RBI) and

reliability, availability and maintainability
(RAM). The British standard PAS 55 (http://
pas55.net/), soon to be ISO 55000, provides a
benchmark for these types of systems.
While safety is a consideration, risk-based
maintenance management system goals typically identify critical equipment, and allocate
maintenance resources to improve their reliability, while allowing other, less critical systems to operate until failure, in effect doing the
safe minimum maintenance to preserve the
functions and integrity of physical assets. This
way, reliability may be used as a cost-minimization process, allocating resources based on risk.
The connection of these systems with PSM
may be somewhat tenuous, as they typically reside in different departmental silos, but there
seems to be a growing awareness that process
safety should be more intimately connected to
asset reliability management and vice versa.
Reliability from the PSM perspective consists of meeting required reliability of the safety
instrumented systems (SISs), such as using
safety integrity levels (SILs) and more recently
emphasizing the reliability of non-SIS independent protection layers (IPLs). Some people
also view safety as a cost-minimization process
based on risk. So if they do the minimum necessary to achieve what was determined in their
layer of protection analysis (LOPA) or equivalent risk evaluation methodology, and the minimum they can do to meet the safety standards,
then they have achieved safety.
The problem is that safety is not a minimization process. Would you do a minimum repair job on the brakes of your family car? Doing
the minimum to achieve an acceptable level of
safety implies perfect knowledge of the risks
and systems involved. It is hubris to claim or
even imagine that we can do this. This philosophy can also lead to a lack of system robustness and resilience, resulting in a fragile system
prone to safety incidents.
www.controlglobal.com A p r i l / 2 0 1 4
CT1404_18_20_Voices.indd 18
3/25/14 3:38 PM
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3/25/14 12:42 PM
Other VOices
Capital projects, however, often are driven by cost and

schedules and less by lifecycle considerations, such as reliability. Reliability from a project engineering perspective involves
implementing SIS to meet SIS-reliability targets, providing
adequate equipment by sparing and purchasing equipment
per a company-approved vendor list. While maintenance department reliability engineers may participate in projects, it is
less common to have a reliability function as part of the project engineering team. This is more commonly left to the individual design engineers.
Reliability has different measures to indicate properties of
interest, such as availability, unavailability, probability, failure
rates, etc. Reliability in a plant is typically tied to availability,
for example, percent uptime for equipment and unavailability
for safety systems. Availability can be defined as the probability that the equipment is operational at any moment in time.
Unavailability is the conversethe probability that a system
will not successfully carry out its function when required.
reliability and the i&c engineer

Instrument and control systems reliability has lagged behind
their mechanical brethren, perhaps due to complexity and the
daunting number of instruments in typical facilities. With the
introduction of digital communications, which allow instruments to transmit health and remote access to instruments, asset management systems (AMS) have become more practical
and popular. In 2012, the Instrument Reliability Network (on
LinkedIn at Instrument Reliability NetworkPublic Forum)
was formed at the Mary Kay OConner Safety Center at Texas
A&M University to address instrument reliability issues and
collection of instrument failure rate data.
This is a consortium of companies coming together with a
vision to benchmark current performance of instrumentation
and controls in process industry applications, define a common failure taxonomy to support consistent collection of quality data from maintenance and proof-test activities, and share
lessons learned in improving instrumentation.
Control system availability is related to equipment and
functional reliability. While higher-level control equipment
can contribute to downtime, control system availability is a
function of the cumulative availability of the individual loops
in the system, which depends in part on the reliability of the
loop equipment hardware. Its also a function of the unavailability of the loop functionality, such as the time in manual,
in bypass, bad tuning and systematic errors that lead to loss or
degradation of loop functionality, etc. If youre running control valves with their bypasses open, have out-of-tune loops,
are not keeping up with your instrument maintenance due
to poor management, lack resources due to budget cuts, you
might also be suffering from a lack of availability. Human beings are often expected to fill gaps in control systems lacking
availability, but they can have varying degrees of success.
20
Free from Danger, risk or injury

Safety can be defined as the condition of being free from danger, risk or injury. Process safety management can be defined
as the control of recognized hazards to achieve an acceptable
level of risk to people.
One of OSHA 1910.119 PSM regulations 14 elements is
mechanical integrityto ensure that critical process equipment is designed and installed correctly and operates properly.
This sounds like reliability is probably in there somewhere,
but you will probably not find a reliability engineer on the
PSM staff nor a PSM engineer on the maintenance staff, and
maybe not even cross-pollenization of duties. Hopefully, there
will be some direct coordination between these functionalities to assure that safety-critical equipment is reliable and is
maintained appropriately.
How else are safety and reliability related? Is it possible to
have safe systems that arent considered reliable? Due to redundancy designs to achieve high safety reliability (e.g., 1oo2),
the reliability equation has minimization of the potential unavailability of the safety system as a primary consideration,
with process availability secondary. Safety systems will not be
considered reliable if they trip often and cause process outages, but this is many times a function of poor design rather
than any inherent limitation of safety in regards to reliability.
Safety in a process plant is generally divided into worker
safety (e.g., reduction in lost-time accidents and recordables)
and process safety (e.g., reducing the risk of a loss-of-containment (LoC) event). People safety is improved by reliable
equipment by reducing the man-machinery interaction. With
the introduction of LOPA in the late 1990s, emphasis has been
placed on independent protection layers (IPLs), which can include instrumented and non-instrumented systems. Emphasis
has been largely on safety instrumented systems to reduce the
risk of an LoC event.
The importance of other non-SIS IPLs has come to the
forefront recently, along with the realization that reducing the
frequency of initiating causes (i.e., reliability) provides a practical reduction in risk (i.e., fewer demands on the safety systems equals fewer potential incidents). The Center for Chemical Process Safety (www.aiche.org/ccps) has published a book
on the subject, Guidelines for Independent Protection Layers
and Initiating Events. In addition, the S84 committee has recognized that instrumented protective systems other than SIS
play an important part in process safety and has moved to address them in the ANSI/ISA-84.91.01-2012 standard, Identification and Mechanical Integrity of Safety Controls, Alarms
and Interlocks in the Process Industry.
It seems fairly obvious that safety systems should be reliable,
or at least tolerate faults or failures. From the design perspective, improving reliability can be considered an inherent safe
design principle. Essentially, the more reliable a facility is, the
safer it is.
CT1404_18_20_Voices.indd 20
3/25/14 3:38 PM
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3/25/14 12:43 PM
ON THE BUS
unhand Me, Handheld!
heres the HART communicator? A little

crisis ensued when a multiplexer channel became finicky about detecting a new
HART transmitter; we needed to configure the
proper range, signal conditioning and tag number. Weve grown accustomed to interacting with
smart devicesboth fieldbus and HART 4-20
mAfrom the comfort of the engineering or asset management interface. Our head technician
stopped sending in our old 275 HART communicators for updates years ago. As with many of the
tools of yore, not only do we forget how to operate
them, but we also forget where we put them. I
hope the batteries arent dead, I thought.
Eventually, the 275 turned up, and we even
remembered how to store the configuration
from one of its triple-redundant siblings and
blast it into the new device. Whew! I guess we
better take care of those old 275s.
Then a valve came back from vendors shop
with a brand-new, fieldbus-capable DVC6000
positioner on it. Now, every one of the hundreds of devices weve connected to our DCS
has dutifully appeared in the engineering interface before, but this positioner didnt. Could
there have been a mix-up? Was it actually a
HART device? No, physical inspection confirmed it was Foundation fieldbus (FF).
The vendor suggested we might want to
check the address. Since our DCS couldnt
see the device, we didnt know how to do
that. We neededa handheld. Since our 275s
dont speak FF, we had to borrow a 375 from a
neighbor. Sure enough, the address had been
set at the vendors shop to 123, which happens
to be an address where the DCS interface card
(the H1 link master) doesnt knock. The 375 allowed us to set a compatible address, and commissioning resumed without issue.
More recently, we wanted to add a new WirelessHART transmitter to our existing WiHART
network. Wed set up the original dozens of devices in the comfort of the shop, powering up
each device individually and configuring it
john Rez abek
when it appeared in the browser interface. But

now the new transmitter didnt want to join its
siblings on the original network. The new device needed to be configured with a compatible network ID and a join key before it could
be seen through our gateway. Drat! I believe I
need a handheld! This time we had to find a
neighbor with a 475, the latest incarnation of
Emersons smart communicators. Lucky I have
nice neighbors.
The other routine function for which handhelds prove hard to beat is in-place calibration.
Its a challenge to drag a dead-weight tester
around in the field, so if you dont want to bring
every device into the shop for calibration, youll
likely need a handheld. Calibrators from Fluke,
Meriam and GE (Druck) have innate HART
capability, and Beamex also includes connectivity for fieldbus.
Theres also a cadre of communicators that
enable BYOD. If you have Windows notebooks or tablets that can be safely used in your
operating areas, adapters for HART and FF are
available, as well as custom software and more
standardized FDT-DTM applications. I have
a feeling iOS and Android apps for interacting
with smart devices are in the not-distant future.
Handhelds: whats not to love? For one thing,
theyre an agent of database entropy, increasing
fragmentation, randomness and undetected/
undocumented configuration changes and errors. Without a centrally maintained database,
a team of technicians can cause your management-of-change some stress. Conceivably, any
organization can develop the procedures and
discipline to track instrument changes, but
youd like a method that relies less on the multiple keystrokes of a random instrument specialist on a HART communicator. If only handhelds
connected directly to a single host database.
Even with their disadvantages, I cant seem
to shake loose of handhelds. It looks like
theyll have a hand in my budget for many
years to come.
contributing Editor
Jrezabek@ashland.com
I have a feeling that

iOS and Android
apps for interacting
with smart devices
are in the notdistant future.
a p R i l / 2 0 1 4 www.controlglobal.com
CT1404_23_OTB.indd 23
23
3/25/14 11:29 AM
Without Wires
standards are Just the Beginning

iAn verhAppen
Director,
inDustrial automation ne t works
iverhappen@industrialautomationnetworks.com
The guiding
principle is the
digital factory
concept
developing
standards containing
information on all
automation assets in
a common format.
24
hen we finally get smart instruments

communicating effectively, what will we
do with them?
The basis for smart instrumentation is the
intelligent devices on which they rely. The definition of an intelligent device in the ISA108
standard is, a device that in addition to its basic measurement or control purpose also has
digital communication capabilities and supplementary functions such as diagnostics and the
ability to share this information with other devices on the network.
As a result of the many discussions on wireless and other forms of digital communication
between these intelligent devices, and the need
for smoother integration, there is a significant
amount of work presently underway in IEC
standards development. Under the auspices of
TC65, Industrial-Process Measurement, Control and Automation, we have subcommittees
working on SC65A, System Aspects; SC65B,
Measurement and Control Devices; C65C, Industrial Networks; and SC 65E, Devices and
Integration in Enterprise Systems.
The guiding principle for all this work is the
digital factory concept as the basis for developing a series of standards containing information
on all automation assets in a common format,
including traceable asset properties throughout
the plant lifecycle from design through retirement/replacement.
Doing this requires the following five views of
information: Construction (C)constructional
properties (e.g. type of connectors); Function
(F)functional aspects supported by the automation asset (e.g., application functions, operating functions, tasks); Performance (P)characteristics of the functional aspects (e.g., rated
values, cycle time or start times, threshold levels, energy consumption); Location (L)indicates the position of the automation asset in the
plant (e.g., relative location, absolute location,
global position coordinate, location identification for specific domains); and Business (B)
reflecting the commercial aspect properties of

the automation asset (e.g., price, delivery time
or quantity in a package unit).
In addition to providing stewardship of the
digital factory concept, the outputs from the
joint SC65E subcommittee working with ISO
184/SC5, Interoperability, Integration and Architectures for Enterprise Systems and Automation Applications, are two documents: Technical Report IEC/TR 62794, Industrial-Process
Measurement, Control and AutomationReference Model for Representation of Production
Facilities (Digital Factory), and IEC 62832,
Digital Factory, which defines a comprehensive network of digital models, methods and
tools that are integrated by a comprehensive
data management system to represent the basic
elements and automation assets, as well as the
behavior and relationships between these elements/assets.
IEC committees deal more with the system
aspects of industrial automation, such as how
its set up and the equipment installed, while
ISO concentrates more on how automation is
applied, for example, in managing production
unit resources and the planning and archiving
aspects of industry. Therefore development of
the digital factory standards must cover both
perspectives of system- and application-related
intelligent devices. Hence, the need for coordination between these two groups on not just
this standard, but many others as well.
Theres a lot of activity underway within
the global standards organizations to help you
build, define, deploy and manage the data from
smart instrumentation. However, the standards
only provide the tools to make it possible to
have and integrate the devices into a system.
The challenge that remains and, more importantly, is the justification or reason for using
smart instruments in the first place, is how to
most effectively use the intelligence in smart
instruments, which is something well be sure
to cover in the future.
CT1404_24_Wireless.indd 24
3/25/14 12:09 PM
3/25/14 12:43 PM
In Process
Dow Chemical is 2013 HArT plant of the Year

HART Communication improves plant operation and enables transition from reactive to
proactive maintenance.
TOp 10 InvenTIOns
In a new survey, published by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE, www.
icheme.org), chemical engineers voted for
what they consider to be the most important
chemically engineered inventions and solutions of the modern era. From a short list of
more than 40 inventions, they voted for the
most important chemically engineered solutions over the past century. The 10 inventions considered to have made the biggest
impact on society were:
1. Drinking or potable water
2. Gasoline (and other fuels including diesel)
3. Antibiotics
4. Electricity generation (from fossil fuels)
5. Vaccines
6. Plastics
7. Fertilizer
8. Sanitation
9. Electricity generation (from non-fossil
fuels)
10. Dosed medications (such as tablets,
pills and capsules).
26
The HART Communication Foundation
he Dow Chemical Co.s specialty

chemicals plant located in Deer
Park, Texas, is the recipient of the
2013 HART Plant of the Year award.
The award showcases end users who
have demonstrated ingenuity in the application of HART Communication for
real-time operational improvements.
Dow Chemical engineers are using
HART technology as part of a reliability improvement program to monitor
critical control valves connected to asset management software for diagnostics, failure analysis and preventative/
predictive, condition-based maintenance. Using the intelligent device
information significantly reduced
costs and improved plant operations
as it enabled the transition from reactive to proactive maintenance. HART
harT planT Of The year

Ted Masters, HART Communication Foundation (www.hartcomm.org) president and
CEO (3rd from right), presents the 2013 HART Plant of the Year Award to the Dow
Chemical Co.s Deer Park Acrylates Trip Reduction and Site Leadership teams.
technology has helped reduce production downtime related to control

valve failures. Through our reliability
program, the plant realized a 66% improvement in downtime reduction over
a three-year period, says Shadrach
Stephens, Dow Chemical I/E Maintenance Group leader. Along with
performing valve overhauls, we use
the HART signal to monitor real-time
valve conditions, which helped with
identifying problems before they could
cause unplanned events. Combined
with several improvement initiatives,
this reliability effort has yielded significant financial savings including millions of dollars in EBIT [earnings before income and taxes].
According to Stephens, HART communications helped Dow Chemical
realize benefits and savings throughout its plant operations:
Plant culture change with regard
to valve maintenance, diagnostics and
troubleshooting;
Identifying root causes of problems and developing short-term
solutions and long-term strategies to

prevent them from happening again;
Recognition of the need for an
equipment maintenance strategy and
work processes, so work can continue
automatically based on established and
new practices; and
Adopting two approaches for condition-based managementAMS and the
data historianinstituted corrective action based on real-time data to prioritize
and optimize maintenance resources.
The Deer Park facility has identified the future benefits of adding instruments to the AMS to monitor these
critical instruments including transmitters, flowmeters and other highmaintenance devices.
Global I/O Modules

Market Weak in 2012
The world market for I/O modules fell
1.4% to $7.2 billion in 2012 as global
economies struggled, states IHS Technology (https://technology.ihs.com).
CT1404_26_34_InPro.indd 26
3/26/14 9:46 AM
AD41401
2014-03-624 YCA Corp CONTROL AD41401_REV 4_outlines.indd 1
3/25/14 4:29 PM
3/25/14 4:04 PM
In Process
With Europes economy still recovering in 2012 from the recession, and
Asias economies slowing down, 2012
was a weak year for industrial control
markets. As a result, the market for I/O
modules, with strong ties to industrial
control, also retreated, according to
the report, The World Market for I/O

Modules2014 Edition, recently published by IHS.
Compared to its 2012 performance,
the global I/O market delivered better
results in 2011, growing 12.3% from
2010.
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Programmable logic controllers

(PLCs) and distributed control systems
(DCSs), the two main control system
types using I/O modules, have a strong
effect on their market. As the PLC market shrank in 2012, the market for I/O
modules used in PLC systems dipped
likewise, though the fall was slight at
less than 5%. This was the main reason
for the deceleration in the I/O market,
as PLC I/Os represented most of the activity. In particular, weak demand for
machinery in major regional domestic
and export markets, especially in Europe, China and Japan, accounted for
the slowdown in PLC systems.
For its part, the DCS market was less
affected by the weak global economic
situation and grew slightly. The market is aligned more with process industries, which have long investment
cycles and bear more immunity to economic fluctuations. Because of this,
the market for DCS I/Os also grew in
2012, even if expansion was at less than
2%. Growth was especially strong in
the Americas and Asia-Pacific.
PC-based I/Os took only a small proportion of the total I/O market, rising
by about 5% in 2012. The reasons for
growth were that PC-based I/Os are
mainly used in market applications
such as building automation, utilities
and transportation, and the market is
growing from a relatively small revenue base.
American I/o Market a Bright spot

Some bright spots remained despite
the fall of the I/O market in 2012. The
American regional I/O market led in
all areas with growth of nearly 5%.
A recovering economy helped, as
the U.S. market accounts for most of
the I/O trade for the Americas. Demand was especially strong for automation systems in process industries,
and good growth occurred in various
sectors, including oil and gas, food and
beverage, packaging, and water and
power, which were driven by strong domestic demand in their areas.
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3/25/14 12:44 PM
In Process
Process News Briefs
The Red Carpet: ABB has been named
by Fortune magazine as the most admired
company in its sector. The company moved
up from sixth place in last years survey
in the Industrial Machinery category. For
the sixth time, the Ethisphere Institute has
named Rockwell Automation as one of the
Worlds Most Ethical Companies, a recognition that honors organizations that continue to raise the bar on ethical leadership
and corporate behavior.
On the Move: Asahi/America Inc. will
move its corporate headquarters to Lawrence, Mass., in October 2014. The 200,000
sq-ft facility will house all of Asahi/Americas
current operations, including office space
and a manufacturing and warehouse floor.
Bonomi North America, Inc. has relocated
its corporate office from Rock Hill, S.C., to
Charlotte, N.C. Bonomi North America provides valves and actuators to customers in
the United States and Canada.
The Asia-Pacific market grew

slightly during this same period, but
growth was disappointing given the
major economic slowdown in China
and India for 2012. Moreover, many
export partners, such as Europe and
Latin America, were not doing well,
contributing to Asia-Pacifics woes.
Meanwhile, China was searching for
new ways to sustain its growth, which
required time to cope with challenges.
Likewise, the Japanese market
which has the greatest dependence on
machinery exportswas the most seriously affected in 2012. Japanese I/O
vendors were more susceptible to the
slowdown in Asia, especially in the
case of PLC I/Os, as Asia-Pacific has
been the primary export market for
machinery by the Japanese.
In the Europe-Middle East-Africa
(EMEA) market, there were signs of
recovery, but the regions general performance hasnt reached its pre-recession levels. No strong growth drivers
were present following the areas weak
domestic demand and export business. However, the recovery was getting increasingly obvious towards the
end of 2013.
Asia-Pacific still has the potential
to regain rapid growth, which will
take place just as soon as economies
rebound. The recovery in Asia-Pacific will benefit EMEA, while strong
growth in the American I/O module
market will be sustained by robust domestic demand as well as improving
external markets.
Demand for I/O modules in the major regions will recover after 2012 to
drive both domestic consumption as
well as exports with annual growth to
average 6% from 2013 to 2017.
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3/25/14 12:45 PM
In Process
Wago Sponsors FIRST

Robotics Competition
Wago Corp. is a gold supplier of the
FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC)
and will participate in the FIRST Championship Supplier Showcase from April
24-26, 2014, at the Edward Jones Dome

in St. Louis, Mo. The FIRST Championship Conference will feature a series
of workshops for FRC teams, coaches,
mentors, students and prospective leaders focusing on inspiration and recognition of science and technology.
We Have
You Covered...
Combining the excitement of sport

with the rigors of science and technology, FRC challenges students to build
and program robots to perform tasks and
compete with their peers. High school
students have the opportunity to learn
from professional engineers, build their
own robots, learn sophisticated software
and hardware, participate in alliances
and tournaments, and qualify for more
than $18 million in college scholarships.
Teams of students have six weeks
to design and build robots with the
help of engineers and mentors. The
competitionsshort games played
by the robots and controlled by the
studentstake place in March and
April, followed by regional events taking place over three days. The FIRST
championship event ends the season.
This year, 68,000 students from 17
countries will participate in the games.
Teams are awarded for robot design,
technology, sportsmanship and commitment to FIRST.
For more information, visit FIRST
at www.usfirst.org.
Ohio U. Picked for

NSF Electrochemical
Research Center
www.mustangeng.com/automation
The Center for Electrochemical Engineering at Ohio Universitys Russ College of Engineering and Technology
has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) award to establish a new
industry/university cooperative research
center in Athens, Ohio, with partner
site Washington University-St. Louis.
Led by Russ Professor of Chemical
Engineering and Center for Electrochemical Engineering Director Gerri
Botte, research at the new Center for
Electrochemical Processes and Technology (CEProTECH) will focus on electrochemical alternatives to conventional
chemical and biological processes, with
the goal of enhancing advanced production capabilities via a consortium model.
3/26/14 9:47 AM
whats your roadmap?
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Get the unswerving performance you depend on, while maintaining

the safe and reliable systems you need. With Honeywells continuous
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advanced functionality with minimal disruption to operations. No matter
what automation system you are running, by modernizing to Honeywells
technology, you can accelerate production capabilities and extend your
automation investment into the future.
Your roadmap to the future.
www.honeywellprocess.com
2013 Honeywell International, Inc. All rights reserved.
3/25/14 12:49 PM
In Process
Consortium members will have

access to pre-competitive, industrydriven research results and a dedicated
20,000-sq-ft facility, in Athens, Ohio,
with more than $7 million in equipment and infrastructure.
With this Industry/University
Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC)

Collaborative Award to Ohio University
and Washington University, CEProTECH joins the more than 60 NSF centers across the nation that partner with
industry to fund students in the conduct
of use-inspired fundamental research,
Upgrade your Remote I/O

System to EtherNet/IP
said Lawrence Hornak, program director of NSFs directorate for engineering

in the division of industrial innovation
and partnerships.
CEProTECHs research will be
founded on traditional electrochemical
processes, which are used to produce
chlorine, hydrogen and aluminum and
in products such as batteries and fuel
cells. It will also explore processes that
typically wouldnt use electrochemical
methods, such as water remediation, and
advanced synthesis for making specialty
gases, chemicals, materials such as graphene and products such as fertilizers.
Ohio University teams will work on
experimental techniques, process design and prototyping, while Washington University will focus on modeling.
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registration services in the U.S. to
firms looking to export products to the
European Union (EU). Manufacturers
of chemicals, plastics, petroleum, cosmetics, food, electrical, mechanical,
optics, engines and production systems
must comply with REACH.
REACH is a European Community
safety and environmental regulation that
deals with registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals.
It requires manufacturers and exporters
to register all substances produced in
and/or imported into the EU in quantities 1 ton per year with the European
Chemicals Agency (ECHA).
Besides chemicals, This law applies
to plastics and metal products as well as
articles imported into the EU, says Scott
Sagamang, business development manager for REACH services, TV Rheinland of North America. In other words,
whatever product is exported to the EU,
it must be compliant with the REACH
regulations.
3/26/14 9:47 AM
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RESOURCES
Analyze These: Process Analyzer Sites for You

Controls Monthly Resource Guide
CATCH THE RIGHT BUS
Primary Fast Loop

To Analyzer
Slow Loop
Secondary
Fast Loop
To Sample Return
ANALYZER SAMPLE SYSTEM BASICS

Heres how to know your process conditions by calculating dead spaces, system lag time and pressure drop, and
by simplifying a planned system and
picking the right equipment. This article by process system expert and ISA
fellow Ian Verhappen begins with the
simple acronym KISS for Know your
process conditions; Involve the right
people; Simplify the system; and Select
the right equipment. Read it at http://
bit.ly/1kN71xK.
conTrolglobAl.com
www,controlglobal.com
VAPORIZATION IN ANALYTICAL SYSTEMS

If the analyzer in your analytical system requires gas, but your sample
is liquid, the only option is to convert the liquid to gas. This process
is called vaporization or f lash vaporization. The objective is to convert a
sample of all liquid to all vapor instantlywithout changing the composition. It is not easy to vaporize a
sample, nor is it always possible, so
make sure its really necessary and
possible before you try. You should
always analyze a liquid in a liquid
phase unless there are strong reasons for analyzing in a vapor phase.
For more on this tricky process, go to
http://bit.ly/1gfRkzX.
SwAgelok
www.swagelok.com
Choosing the right bus for your process

analyzing system is not a simple matter. When you have hundreds of different data acquisition (DAQ) devices
to choose from on a wide variety of
buses, it can be difficult to select the
right bus for your application needs.
Each bus has different advantages and
is optimized for throughput, latency,
portability or distance from a host.
This white paper examines the most
common PC bus options and outlines
the technical considerations to keep
in mind when choosing the right bus
for your measurement application. Its
free, but registration is required. The
direct link is at http://bit.ly/1gfRkzX
nATionAl inSTrumenTS
www.ni.com
SEVEN DEADLY PROCESS ANALYZER SINS

This white paper discusses challenges
of online process gas analyzer implementations. It offers examples as well
as quantitative information based on
historical experience of analyzer engineering and sample-handling details.
The discussion includes front-end engineering design, detailed design for
EPCs, system integration, selection of
technique and vendor, factory acceptance testing, start-up, handover and
lifecycle support strategies. For process
analyzer system salvation, go to http://
bit.ly/NyhRLR.
Ame Tek
www.ametek.com
CHEMWIKI
This wiki on mass spectroscopy is from
the University of California at Davis.
Topics covered include quadrupole
mass analyzers, time-of-flight mass
analyzers, magnetic sector mass analyzers, quadropole ion trap mass analyzers, and ion cyclotron resonance.
References are included. The direct
link is at http://bit.ly/1j9gD8V.
univerSiT Y of cAliforniA AT DAviS
ht tp://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu
REFINED ANALYSIS
The purpose of this report is to provide ideas for application of process
analyzers in petroleum refineries. The
information is arranged by refining
process. Included in this synopsis are
applications which the authors believe
will be economically feasible in many
refineries. Some of the processes for
which specific analyzers are suggested
include crude distillation, catalytic reforming, fluid catalytic cracking, alkylation, catalytic polymerization, visbreaking, coking, hydrotreating and
blending operations. The direct link to
the PDF is at http://bit.ly/1pgt3Jx.
e xPoTechuSA
www.e xpoTechuSA.com
DEEP DIVE
This website from Industrial Automation and Mechatronics contains a
wealth of basic engineering material,
tutorials, tables and glossaries. It covers everthing from basic equations to
sections on control elements, PLCs,
flow, pressure, temperature and level
measurement, and an entire section
on analytical measurement, including
ionization, pH measurement, chromatography, optical analysis, safety
gas analysis, vibration and more. The
direct link is at http://iamechatronics.
com/notes/lessons-in-instrumentation.
iAm mechATronicS
ht tp://iamechatronics.com
If you know of any tools and resources we didnt include, send them to ControlMagazine@Putman.net with
Resource in the subject line, and well add them to the website.
36
CT1404_36_Resources.indd 36
3/25/14 4:00 PM
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Far
Out
in the Field
DEVELOPING ECONOMIES
tart packing. In remote locations and extreme environments, it can be harder to get what you need to run
your process control applications. Supply lines can be
stretched thin, if they exist at all, and your usual system integration services arent just around the corner either. Staffing
is likely to be a challenge, too. You must bring in know-how
from much further away and provide more extensive education and training to local personnel.
These challenges can seem insurmountable at first. However, if you stop and look at them closely, theyre more difficult in degree, but not different in kind from the plans,
specifications and punch lists of any other process control
project. Certainly, there can be many tricky curveballs to
deal with, but many engineering procurement contractors
(EPCs) and other experts can help. And almost all the recent advances in process controls and their supporting networks can also enable users to build and operate applications in less developed regions, fulfill local requirements
and even help Third World markets and consumers secure
more advanced capabilities and benefits.
For instance, Vale Nouvelle Caldonie (www.vale.nc) on
the island of New Caledonia, a French island territory in the
southwest Pacific about 750 miles east of Australia, has been
working with ABB (www.abb.com) to install new controls
and help upgrade its plant for processing minerals from the
open-pit Goro deposit, which is one of the worlds richest un-
38
developed laterite bodies with an estimated 55 million tons

of measured and indicated nickel ore reserves (Figure 1).
Besides implementing one of the worlds largest System
800xA automation applications without incurring downtime,
Vale and ABB also had to develop and submit all project documents and drawings in French as well as English to comply
with local regulations. The 800xA system includes 48 operator workstations, 10 engineering workstations, 8,000 HARTcapable instruments, two OPC clients, 33,000 history logs,
23,000 redundant 800xA tags, 50 AC800M redundant PM
864 controllers and many other components. This 800xA application also has a burner management system (BMS) with
three AC 800M HI controllers for three new coal-fired boilers
producing electricity and steam for the plant.
In addition, ABB delivered a safety instrumented system
(SIS) with its TV-certified Functional Safety Management
System (FSMS), which uses five more AC 800M HI controllers for processing LPG during ship unloading and port
handling. Finally, ABB provided Vales ore-processing plant
with purpose-defined software libraries, which enabled a
framework for standardized alarms and events, and allowed
English-to-French translation functions by the plants operator terminals.
Overall good planning and preparation are what resulted
in a successful execution of this upgrade, says Ghislain Belmonte, Vales technical services manager.
www.controlglobal.com A P R I L / 2 0 1 4
CT1404_38_47_CoverStory.indd 38
3/25/14 4:44 PM
Establishing process automation

projects in developing economies
and other remote locations requires
better preparation, stronger supply
chains, more accessible expertise,
simpler controls and added
training. Heres how veteran
players make it happen.
by Jim Montague
Stephen C. Herner
Simpler Plans, Lighter Luggage

Similarly, Perenco (www.perenco.com) recently undertook
the largest surface redevelopment project of its onshore and
offshore production operations in Gabon on the central west
coast of Africa, which required it to build new infrastructures, and reorganize and coordinate numerous platforms,
control facilities and industrial networks. Perenco began
production operations in Gabon in 1992 with the acquisition from Total and Marathon of developed, offshore fields
near Port-Gentil, says Laurent Mollard, Perencos senior
automation and control systems engineer. Twenty years
later, our yearly average production reached 62,500 barrels
of oil equivalents per day (BOEPD) in 2012. This growth
was sustained by continuous development of mature fields,
an aggressive acquisition strategy and successful exploration, but we really needed to streamline all these production
operations and overhaul our infrastructure.
Based in Paris, Perenco is an independent oil and gas
company with onshore and offshore operations in 16
countries in northern Europe, Africa, South America and
Southeast Asia. In Gabon, Perenco runs 27 oil production
sites, including 12 offshore and 15 onshore. Each offshore
site can include three to six platforms. The production sites
cover an area thats about 400-kilometers long, running
north to south off Gabons coast, and theyre networked via
a combination of fiber-optic cabling, radios and satellite
communications. The company also operates a 450-kilometer, mostly underwater, natural gas pipeline, which covers two production fields, one gas treatment plant and two
distribution sites. It also operates two floating storage and
offloading (FSO) units to store and export crude oil, and
supplies natural gas to the local power plants at Libreville
and Port-Gentil (see sidebar).
To optimize operating expenditures in our crude oil production areas, we required scalable automation solutions
that could handle both process control and safety control on
our production facilities, which produce hundreds to thousands of barrels of oil per day, explains Mollard. We needed
to reduce operator presence on small production plants by
fully instrumenting offshore platforms and onshore sites, interconnecting all the automation systems and remotely operating several production facilities from one main control
room. We also needed to rationalize our maintenance efforts by reducing local electrical production units and centralizing electricity production; managing our power plant
operations, load shedding and electrical network monitoring; and remotely accessing diagnostic information to prevent unsuccessful trips.
Besides coordinating and streamlining existing operations, Perenco also needed new infrastructure to development its nearby Olende and MPolunie fields; construct
two 14-megawatt power plants with high-voltage electrical
39
3/25/14 4:45 PM
developing economies
distribution; install a distribution network linking Libreville and Port-Gentil to gas reserves; and implement a dualproduct, 2-million-barrel offshore terminal. Our project
objectives were to centralize operations in two main control rooms to minimize local presence and reduce logistics
costs, such as helicopters and boats, adds Mollard. We also
sought to electrify all of our production facilities by installing the two main power plants to reduce local electricity
generation and maintenance costs. We also wanted to further optimize production by acquiring production well information that could be analyzed by the geophysical department in its main office and remotely. To accomplish
its diverse goals and simplify its operations, Mollard reports
that Perenco was going to need some outside assistance.
Technical Tour guides

Of course, whenever you journey to an unfamiliar place, its
good to go with someone who knows the terrain, and its
even more important if youre going to do business and build
manufacturing facilities there.
Weve been implementing automation and process,
building and combustion controls in Brazil and other
parts of Latin America for more than 50 years, and even
installed some of the first DCSs in Chiles copper mines
and Venezuelas oil fields in the 1980s, says Gustavo
Galambos, mega-projects director for Latin America at
Honeywell Process Solutions (www.honeywellprocess.
com). Weve seen that one of the best ways to develop
and support far-away process applications is to have a government in that region that provides incentives to develop
local resources. For example, Brazil built many of its oil
and gas refineries in the 1970s, but it also encouraged its
universities to create the electronics and controls curriculum that could be used in its process applications, and
now its a leader in the deep-water oil and gas industry.
Likewise, Garalambos adds that Honeywells history and
foundation in many developing economies helps its users
gain efficiencies as well. For example, Alcoa (www.alcoa.
com) has worked with Honeywell for several years on their
joint Quality Automation Solutions for Alumina Refineries
(QUASAR) program, which has standardized process controls and infrastructures and reduced emissions at multiple
Alcoa refineries in five countries, including three in Australia and one each in Jamaica, Suriname, Brazil and Spain.
QUASAR began by collecting and combining best practices
from each plant, and setting up a centralized monitoring
system that allows experts to analyze and rectify controls
performance. Next it established a co-sourced support center available 24/7 to provide integrated support and maintenance to help reduce downtime, and organized a dedicated implementation team for rapid QUASAR deployment
at each location to reduce costs, improve quality and minimized plant interruption.
To accomplish this never-before attempted feat, we
needed to partner with someone that had the process control products and solutions expertise, but also understood the
cross-cultural challenges affecting seven different sites, multiple countries and cultures, and four different languages, says
Dennis Mason, process systems manager for global refining
at Alcoa. Working with Honeywell under the QUASAR program, we expected to see improved alumina production rates,
reductions in our raw materials consumption and costs, and
increased technology transfers between our refineries. Weve
consistently exceeded expectations in those areas. What took
Travel Bag of Tricks

Constructing and operating process applications in undeveloped and remote locations is no picnic, but they do
have the same overall goals as regular projectsproduce oil and gas, mine metals and other materials, generate power, provide clean water, etc. They just need more
preparation and have longer to-do lists. Here are some
likely high points:
Planning and design must include comprehensive research about physical sites, exploitable resources,
production goals, facility and application designs, local regulations, cultural issues and environmental impacts.
Partnerships with local distributors, system integrators, contractors, governing bodies, educators and
other groups can help secure equipment and supply
streams, regulatory compliance, potential staff and
other vital people and components.
40
Sourcing and supply mainly requires adding time to

find required equipment and raw materials, arrange
transportation and delivery schedules for new equipment, and coordinate on-site setup, configuration and
testing.
Training consists of evaluating skills needed to run applications, arranging to bring in experts to instruct new
employees, scheduling online courses if available,
working with local schools and colleges to help recruit
staff as needed, and implementing as much handson and continuous training as possible to keep everyones skills updated.
Post-production involves arranging transport and distribution for end products, coordinating maintenance
and repairs for equipment and facilities throughout
their lifecycles, and reexamining applications to add
useful innovations and upgrades.
3/25/14 4:45 PM
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our combined team just five to six years to accomplish would

have taken us more than 20 years internally.
Experience Extends Innovation

While its crucial to know what developing and remote applications need, in many cases, only recent technical innovations such as wireless networking can solve their challenges.
Galambos adds, Large projects in developing areas require a lot of research and generate a lot of best practices
over the years. So because weve learned a lot from earlier
projects, we can better assess requirements and infrastructures on new projects and make sure they get the communications and lifecycle support theyll need.
Similarly, worlds largest copper producer Codelco (www.
codelco.com) also maintains a common support center in
Santiago, Chile, for foursoon to be fiveof its remote
mines. This center also runs 24/7 and provides real-time
support, video conferencing, intranet and other services.
Recently, the companys Norte mine in the Atacama Desert
needed to optimize the water recovery process in its thickener pools (Figure 2). The Norte facility consists of three
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open-pit mines producing approximately 896,000 tons of

electro-refined and electro-winned cathodes per year.
Water used in mineral processing is recovered for reuse,
so the thickeners need accurate level gauging and reliable
communications from the field to the central control room.
Without this data, the remote mines multivariate predictive
application based on Honeywells Profit Controller software
couldnt optimize water recovery. As a result, Codelco installed Honeywells ISA100-compliant OneWireless network
with Modbus to reach the remote Siemens S7 300 PLCs that
manage equipment and instruments at each pool. Seven
OneWireless multi-nodes cover the pools, and one gateway
sends Modbus data from PLCs to Honeywells existing TPS
control system. This allows Nortes control room operators
to call up information from the PLCs using TPS, and this
data can be fed into Honywells Profit Controller software to
optimize process control at the pools.
The former inability of gauging online and the high cost
of maintaining the wired traditional network, which was frequently broken by heavy trucks and machinery, caused very
low availability of measurement, explains Guillermo Corts,
concentrator automation leader at Codelco. OneWireless offered the most dependable solution for both our complex operation and advanced controls because it supports real-time
gauging and instrumentation. Our desert zone has many
challenges including topography, long distances between the
thickeners and control room, and the extreme environment
conditions of radiation, wind and temperatures. OneWireless
allows us to gauge multiple variables and transmit them in
real time with high availability until we gain consequent improvement in our water recovery process. We can now gauge
and manage the thickeners levels and flows, and the efficiency of the whole process has greatly improved.
Galambos adds, Operating these mines is a lot like running an offshore oil rig because everything has to be tested
first before it can go out their remote sites. They also need
extremely reliable communications, DCS support and
backup, and advanced process controls (APCs) with remote
training. Wireless instruments and networking are especially helpful because users dont need to bring so much
cabling and connectors to remote and undeveloped areas.
They can reduce labor while theyre in the field, and its simpler to get the data they need for routine operations, analysis,
multivariable control and future simulations.
Jason Nicholl, business development manager for I/O and
networks at Phoenix Contact (www.phoenixcontact.com),
confirms the long distances and mountains between Chiles
mines can stretch vendor supply lines and system integration services very thin. Consequently, we have to gear up
our subsidiaries to be technical experts with Power Points,
and especially with hands-on demonstrations. So we go on
the road with them to visit their partners and help them
3/25/14 4:45 PM
Codelco and Honeywell
PACIFIC ISLAND NICKEL MINING

Figure 1. Vale Nouvelle Caldonie implemented one of ABBs largest 800xA automation systems to improve nickel ore processing
at the huge, open-pit Goro laterite mine.
train their distributors, system integrators and end users.

Touching base a lot helps because it can prevent a lot of
unplanned downtime and eleventh-hour crises. It also helps
to plan ahead, keep on seeking potential new partners and
remember to bring your steel-toed boots. Developing economies are all about developing relationships and trust first,
then providing basic technical training and only pitching a
C E L E B RAT I N G 1 0 0 Y E A RS
Industrys most constant and

accurate Control Systems.
solution at the end. Outside the U.S., its even more important to be patient, listen well and be willing to adapt to local
cultures and traditions.
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renovating process applications in remote or developing regions. As a result,

many suppliers and other support organizations simply set up local service
and knowledge centers that can fasttrack equipment and provide onsite or
online training as soon as needed.
The biggest problem automation

engineers in developing countries
face is lack of knowledge, says Carl
Henning, deputy director of PI North
America (http://us.profinet.com). PI
helps by providing local PI Competence Centers (PICCs). There are over
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50 now. Naturally, theres a concentration in Europe and North America,

but South America, Asia, Australia and
Africa are well-represented, too. Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, India, Chile, Brazil and other countries have PICCs,
which are certified by PI and audited
every two years to ensure theyre providing a high level of advice to users,
system integrators and manufacturers.
The international language of engineers is English, and thats PIs standard language, but regional PI associations (RPAs) often translate the
specifications, white papers and newsletters into local languages, so when
these folks need help with Profinet
or Profibus, they can find it locally in
their own language.
Likewise, when it finds that a major customer needs support in a new
or less-developed region, Emerson
Process Management (www.emersonprocess.com) reports it will open
a service and support center right
there. Over the past couple of years,
weve been making a big effort worldwide to talk to end users and expand
our service locations to where theyre
especially needed, says Erik Lapre,
vice president for lifecycle services
at Emerson Europe. In addition to
field service and repairs, these centers have quick shipping capabilities
and offer ongoing training. For instance, to support its expanding oil
and gas applications, Lapre says Emerson recently opened several service
centers in Central Asia, specifically
in Atyrau, Kazakhstan, and in Baku,
Azerbaijan.
However, because many users cant
get to a particular center, but still
have Internet access, Emerson also
offers virtual training programs that
can instruct attendees in a variety of
job roles and technologies. We send
curriculum materials and a PC-based
headset for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), so they can ask questions,
says Mark Dimmitt, educational services consultant at Emerson. We
3/25/14 4:46 PM
Developing Communities, proteCting environments

Beyond its regular extractive operations, Perenco reports
its implemented many projects to support Gabons residents and their communities. Although most of our work is
devoted to exploiting oil and gas deposits, were also very
much aware of our social responsibility with regard to the
communities that are directly affected by our operations,
says Christian Moullard, Perenco Gabons general manager.
For example, working with Gabons Socit dEnergie
et dEau du Gabon (SEEG), Perenco has supplied natural gas to local power plants at Libreville and Port-Gentil
since 2007, allowing them to switch from fuel oil and reduce
carbon emissions. The 400-kilometer pipeline transporting
gas to Libreville and Port-Gentil runs mainly underwater,
doesnt cross fishing zones, maritime corridors or anchorage zones, and skirts the coasts at minimal distance between Batanga and Port-Gentil.
In 2008, Perenco laid underground electrical cables to
electrify 80 homes in Batanga, which is an isolated village
about 160 kilometers southeast of Libreville. Perenco also
built a health center in the village. The community borders
the onshore Batanga oilfield, and its electricity comes from

the nearby oilfields generators.
To be ready for any potential spills or other emergencies,
Perenco maintains and regularly trains on a variety of spillresponse equipment at its Victor Response Base, which is
also centrally located onshore in Batanga. Offshore devices
include a 1,000-meter-long floating and rigid boom, a transportable dam or boom bag that can be towed at 15 knots
for rapid deployment, five skimmers for collecting oil and a
dedicated towing vessel. Onshore equipment includes absorbents, collection pumps and temporary effluent storage
facilities. Protected command posts and helicopters are
available for both offshore and onshore incidents.
Gabon possesses extraordinary natural wealth, and
Im personally committed to ensuring that our operations
respect its environment, adds Moullard. My dearest wish
is to leave more wealthy, more independent communities
behind us when our operations are finished, with no visible
mark of our former presence. In this way, Perenco will continue as a trustworthy partner of Gabon.
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offer 20 different classes just on DeltaV, and students can take them anywhere theres high-speed Internet.
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standardization streamlines support

Back at Perencos project in Gabon,
Mollard and his colleagues turned
to longtime partner Rockwell Automation
(www.rockwellautomation.com), which has been assisting
Perenco since it started working in
Gabon. We used a global standard

approach with PlantPAx redundant
servers for main production facilities
and combined them in multi-server
applications. We implemented ControlLogix process controllers, SIL 2
safety controllers and power distribution controllers. Next we installed
rack-based I/O for our main plants,
and Flex I/O and Point I/O for remote installations. We also used
Ethernet for Level 2 and peer-topeer communications, and adopted
ControlNet for our I/O components.
Again, we also used fiber-optic, wireless, satellite or GSM networking,
depending on an individual sites
needs.
Mollard added that all these updated components give its offshore
platforms and onshore operations
multi-server capabilities, which allow the Gabon facility to easily
centralize operations in its central control room. ControlLogixs
multi-discipline capability lets us
apply a global standard over every
site, explains Mollard. Likewise,
smooth integration to the IT environment enables us to secure remote
access via satellite from any location,
while PlantPAxs scalability allows
us to carry out projects in a phased
approach. Rockwell Automations
information-oriented solutions also
give us easy access to production
data for analysis, which helps optimize our financial investments.
Because Perencos redevelopment
project meant it was often dealing
with developed fields and managing
existing equipment, many of its new
projects didnt involve building complete platforms or plants, but instead
required it to add new components
to older facilities. It could be difficult to remember where all the existing equipment was, so it helped that
we could make all our fire and gas
(F&G) connections directly to our
PLC too, reports Mollard. We can
also manage our power generation
3/25/14 4:46 PM
ABB and Vale
Chilean Desert Water Data

Figure 2. Codelco uses Honeywells OneWireless components
to optimize water recovery in the huge thickener pools at its
Norte mine in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
with a PLC for power management. All these interconnections let us monitor everything from one central control area.
Mollard adds that Perenco has also been standardizing its safety instrumented systems (SISs), emergency
shutdown systems (ESDs) and F&G systems on the same
PLCs from Rockwell Automation, and monitoring them
together on PlantPAx. In addition, its also standardizing
its HMIs and SCADA programs, which will allow staff to
work on uniform displays and simplify training for them.
The real value of this simplification and standardization is that common platforms can reduce the cost of
spare parts. However, were also getting uniform well analytics and production dashboards that are allowing us
to follow operations trends in Gabon from our offices in
Paris, and then react and make better decisions in real
time, adds Mollard. These standard solutions from
Rockwell Automation are going to be deployed further
in Gabon and also in Congo, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Tunisia, Peru and Cameroon. Theyll be easy to
remotely support, and theyll help our site maintenance
and project engineers optimize operations and improve
production turnover in any of these locations.
Jim Montague is Controls executive editor
3/25/14 4:46 PM
SuperviSory Control
Real WoRld ReseaRch lab

Figure 1: Distillation columns at Oklahoma
State University in Stillwater are used by
Fractionation Research Inc. to test and
study distillation on behalf of member
companies.
Modular Procedural Automation

Improves Operations
Using a standard automation methodology also prevents
incidents by allowing operators to share best practices.
by A.N. Vennavelli, A.Y. Ogundeji and M. R. Resetarits
ractionation Research Inc. (FRI,

www.fri.org) has been studying
distillation and distillation equipment for almost 60 years on behalf of
its 70 members, each of whom pay an
annual subscription fee for services.
FRIs two industrial-size distillation
columns (Figure 1) are located on the
Oklahoma State University campus
48
in Stillwater. Three binary separation

tests are typically run within those two
columns:
1. p- and o-xylenes from 75 mm Hga to
atmospheric pressure;
2. Cyclohexane and n-heptane near
atmospheric pressure; and
3. Isobutane and n-butane from 100
psia to 500 psia.
During test runs, the trays and

packings within the columns are subjected to a very wide range of liquid/
vapor and mass transfer regimes. All
of the runs are logged at steady-state
conditions, but steady state is maintained only long enough to collect
the relevant data. The process conditions are then modified for the next
test. Tests conducted include start-up,
transitions within and between various modes of operations, flooding,
un-flooding, setpoint changes and
shutdowns.
Unsteady-state procedures at the
FRI distillation units are now implemented semi-automatically using a
solution called modular procedural
automation (MPA). MPA was first pioneered by Yokogawa (www.yokogawa.
com), and it initially was based on
ISA88 principles. Its now being deployed using the guidelines under
consideration by the ISA106 working
group. MPA is a methodology that can
be implemented with virtually any
modern automation system, and its
effective across a wide range of processes and industries.
As implemented by FRI using Yokogawa hardware and software, MPA
provides specific, on-screen instructions and information for our control
room operators and technicians in areas listed in the On-Screen Operator
Guidance sidebar (p. 51).
By having our operators follow these
instructions and use the supplied information, MPA has produced safer operations at our test facility. Based on our
experience, we believe that an MPA or
similar solution might have prevented
some of the largest chemical plant accidents of the past decade.
CT1404_48_51_Feature2.indd 48
3/25/14 12:12 PM
SuperviSory Control
ExaPILOT
procedure
builder
MPA
server and
historian
E-NET
MpA Software runs in the DCS

During 2011, the FRI control room was augmented with a
data historian and MPA supervisory software supplied by
Yokogawa. These tools were loaded onto the existing Yokogawa DCS, which has been in place for several years. Figure 2 depicts our control system architecture.
The historian, which collects data every second and
stores it in a database, has allowed FRI to analyze unsteady data and data from operating modes other than total reflux. FRI engineers, with assistance from Yokogawa,
have used the MPA software to build and execute electronic, semi-automated procedures for start-ups, transitions and shutdowns.
Semi-automated procedures based on operational experience were initially implemented using MPA, but none
of the procedure algorithms were completely satisfactory
when first tested in the control room. Some of the algorithms required additional process checks, some a faster
or slower rate of execution, and some others needed increased flexibility.
To improve these procedures, the MPA software was run
in parallel with actual operations, but in an offline mode.
The procedures were then adjusted to closely mimic operators actions. This step allowed the system to pass validation
tests and, at the same time, increased operator understanding and trust.
FRIs best board operators were in the control room during these trial runs, and their experience was used to modify and improve the initial MPA instructions. Our aim was
to use MPA to capture the knowledge of our best operators,
so this knowledge could be used by other operators to reproduce our best practices, time after time.
Specifically, our best operating procedures were
captured and disseminated to other operators via various software screens. For example, Figure 3 (p. 50) is a
screen that the FRI board operators now see during startups. The left pane of the screen shows the macro start-up
steps. The lower right portion shows the current micro
step. The upper-right pane shows the steps that were already completed. The software allows the operator/engineer to override certain steps in the procedure if such a
need should arise.
FRIs board operators are well-trained, but we find that
different operators can start, change and shut down operations in various ways. All of our operators are encouraged to
fully understand the units and their operation, and to think
on their own. But with MPA, there is now a uniformity of
starts, changes and stops. This yields improved operations,
while still allowing operators to act independently if unforeseen conditions should arise.
HIS A
HIS B
Exa OPC
server
HIS C
Integrated
operator
display
V net
FCS02
FCS01
MPA Lives in the DCs

Figure 2: In 2011, data historian and MPA supervisory software were
loaded onto the existing Yokogawa DCS, which has been in place for
several years.
Goal is to Assist, not eliminate operators

As implemented at FRI, manpower reduction is not one of
the goals of the MPA methodology. In too many global control rooms, manpower reductions have already occurred,
and many senior technicians have retired over the past 10
years. We believe that experienced operators are a valuable
asset, so we use MPA to assist, not eliminate, our operators.
This assistance is provided by using MPA to share best practices among our operators, allowing the present generation
of technicians to learn from our best operators even after
theyve retired.
We find that our operators appreciate the assistance provided by our MPA software. It helps them corroborate their
judgments and decisions regarding next steps. Our operators say that using MPA is like having our best operator
alongside them in the control room all of the time.
We feel that the MPA methodology might prevent future
accidents at FRI and elsewhere. To verify this contention,
we examined how MPA might have been used to prevent
past accidents.
Could MpA Have Averted these Accidents?

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (www.csb.gov) was formed
in 1998 to study major accidents, write reports and produce
instructional videos. For several years, FRI has used those
videos as focal points for our safety meetings.
At these meetings, one or two CSB videos are typically
shown, and the attending engineers and technicians then
determine relevance to the FRI operations. After discussion, a list of FRI-related action items is created, with documentation and follow-up to assure that lessons learned are
correctly applied.
There were three CSB videos where we concluded that
the MPA methodology might have prevented accidents: T2
Laboratories, BP Texas City and Sterigenics.
49
3/25/14 12:12 PM
SuperviSory Control
particularly as temperature excursions had occurred with

the reactor before. The previous excursions could have been
studied using a historian, and the lessons learned could have
been implemented within MPA and made available to the
operator.
Bp texas City isomerization unit
Semi-AutomAted StArt-up procedure

Figure 3: This screen shot shows the macro start-up steps (left pane), current micro step (lower right) and completed steps (upper right). Should
the need arise, the operator/engineer can override certain steps.
t2 laboratories
T2 Laboratories was located in Jacksonville, Fla. T2 produced MCMT, a gasoline additive. The primary production
step was an exothermic reaction in a 2,500-gallon reactor
that included a water jacket. In 2007, the water supply failed
and a runaway reaction resulted. At some point, the pressure
build-up caused the relief valve to blow, but the relief system
was too undersized, and the reactor exploded.
Details regarding the accident can be found in a CSB
video (Reference 1) or the associated report (Reference 2).
The video describes a lone board operator, who did not
know what to do when the water jackets water supply failed.
He called off-site engineers for help, and they rushed to the
plant, but reached it too late.
If the T2 control room had used an MPA solution, the following would have been possible:
1. Prompts could have been provided to the board operator regarding the backup water supply;
2. Corrective action steps for this type of condition could
have been programmed as screen prompts or as automated
flowrate and valve changes; and
3. The software could have set off evacuation alarms.
The knowledge of the plants most-experienced people
could have been provided to the board operator via MPA,
Details regarding this accident can be found in a CSB video

(Reference 3) or the associated report (Reference 4). This
accident was similar to the T2 Laboratories incident in that
a very large burden seemed to fall upon a single operator.
Regarding BP Texas City, the report stated, Restructuring
following the merger resulted in a significant loss of people,
expertise and experience. In retrospect, some of that experience could have been captured using MPA and then made
available to the operator.
The BP accident occurred in 2005 in an isomerization
unit. When the lone operator came on shift, he had just a
single line of input in the log book from the previous operator:
Starting up the Isom Unit. Unfortunately, the supervisor of
the newly arrived operator had been called out of the control
room for an extended period to attend to a family emergency.
The newly arrived operator needed to continue to start
the isomerization unit and control two other units, all with
virtually no input and assistance. Due to a malfunctioning
liquid-level alarm, he had no idea whether he was starting
with six feet or 175 feet of liquid in the bottom of the raffinate splitter tower. The truth proved to be closer to the latter, and the tower overflowed into the blow-down drum, and
the hot gasoline then overflowed and ignited.
If the BP control room had used MPA, the following
would have been possible:
1. The newly arrived operator would have had on-screen
information regarding all of the steps that the previous shifts
had taken, including the exact times of those steps;
2. A safety warning could have been provided on-screen
regarding the overflowing of the raffinate splitter tower,
which had already happened a few times in the past;
3. Out-of-date procedures would have been updated for
the sake of the programming of the new software; and
4. The MPA software could have shut the unit down in
time to avoid the explosion.
references
1. Explosion at T2 Laboratories, Disc 2, #4, U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Safety Videos
2005-2010.
2. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Investigation Report (http://1.usa.gov/1hjMVs8).
3. Anatomy of a Disaster, Disc 1, #5, U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Safety Videos 2005-2010.
4. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Investigation Report (http://1.usa.gov/1fFZ6lh).
5. Ethylene Oxide Explosion at Sterigenics, Disc 1, #12, U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board,
Safety videos 2005-2010.
6. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Investigation Report (http://1.usa.gov/1kRHDcX).
50
3/25/14 12:12 PM
SuperviSory Control
If MPA had been correctly implemented, the lone operator of the three units would not have been alone.
Sterigenics oxidizer Accident

This accident was described in a CSB video (Reference 5) and
in the associated report (Reference 6). This accident did not
occur because an operator was alone, but because a standardized procedure was not obeyed, and the operators did not understand the ramifications of diverting from that procedure.
The Sterigenics plant was located in Ontario, Calif. This
facility sterilized medical equipment in large chambers using ethylene oxide gas. Subsequent to sterilization, according to procedure, the ethylene oxide gas was purged from
the chambers using a three-step process. On the day of the
accident, one of those steps was purposely skipped. As a result, a concentrated ethylene oxide gas stream was sent to
the oxidizer, and the chamber exploded.
If the Sterigenics control room had used MPA, the software could have provided a message to the operators along
these lines: If Step 2 is skipped, a concentrated ethylene
oxide gas stream will flow to the oxidizer, and an explosion
might result. Upon seeing this message, the operators may
very well have taken corrective action.
ON-ScReeN OpeRAtOR GuIdANce

The modular procedural analysis (MPA) package gives the
operator instructions and information including:
1. Step-by-step listing of the procedure;
2. Prompting regarding next steps;
3. Warnings regarding next steps, if applicable;
4. Actual opening and closing of valves, changes in controller setpoints and other important events;
5. History of completed steps; and
6. Status monitoring of process changes.
With MpA, operators Are never Alone

Regardless of the reasons, the control rooms of the western world do not seem to be as well-manned as those of
20 or 40 years ago. To address this situation, MPA can be
used to transfer the knowledge and experience of the best
remaining operators, engineers and technicians to new
operators. This makes new operators more effective and
efficient. When MPA is correctly implemented, no operator needs to start, run or stop an operating unit alone.
A.N. Vennavelli and A.Y. Ogundeji are associate engineers; M. R. Resetarits is a
technical director with Fractionation Research Inc.
Learn. Share. Understand.

Attend the MCAA Industry Forum
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Explore how the IECEx Scheme will affect products in the US
http://measure.org/meetings/industr y-forum.html
3/25/14 12:12 PM
25 YEARS OF CONTROL
Smart Devices Fail

to Fulfill Destiny
For 25 Years, Intelligent Instrumentations Major Problem Has Been Being Heard.
by Paul Studebaker
wrote editor Brian Wolske in November 1989. The

ooking back on Controls first 25 years
push for digital field communications was undercoverage of intelligent instrumentation
way. Promising to be one of the prominent topics
reveals one of most important examples
of the 1990s, digital communication is poised to
of process control technology held hostage
1989 2014
replace traditional analog electronic signals as the
to human nature. The problems with delivertransmission medium for field instruments.
ing on the tremendous promise began before
Communications standards and distributed inControl was so much as a gleam in publisher
Nick Cappellettis eye with the birth of the smart transmit- telligence were among Whats Still Missing in Process
ter in the early 1980s. Self-diagnostics, remote calibration Control in January 1990. The problem was summed up
and improved measurement accuracy were its key features,
Continued on page 55
TIMELINE
OCTOBER1988
Control Is Launched at ISA/88 in Houston
Smart transmitters began to appear about three or

four years ago, wrote William Bowden, marketing
manager, Rosemount Inc. They drew their name from a
microprocessor in the transmitter which is used to improve
performance and provide two-way communication with
some kind of communication device.
MARCH1990
18 Firms Join HART Users Group
The Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART)

Users Group consists of instrumentation manufacturers
that use the Rosemount-developed, digitally enhanced
analog protocol for smart field instruments.
NOVEMBER1991
Signal Conditioners Survive
Changing Control Strategies
Discrete signal conditioners

continued to appeal because of
their simplicity and their ability to
offload smarter instruments and
computers computational tasks.
NOVEMBER1989
Smart Transmitters
Invade New Domain
Accutechs Cliff Lewis explained

the principles of operation
of microprocessor-based
programmable transmitters and
their advantages over analog
transmission, including stability,
versatility and ease of configuration.
DECEMBER1991
The Future Will Be Digital
Annualized growth of 23.4% through 1995 is predicted for boards

that incorporate analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion
functions, according to study by Venture Development Corp.
SEPTEMBER1992
Manufacturing Technology Centers Grow by Two
The U.S. Dept. of Commerce approves two additional centers in

Minnesota and California, bringing the total to seven. The centers
are designed to help small to mid-sized manufacturers adopt new
technology.
52
3/25/14 4:50 PM
25 YEARS OF CONTROL
DECEMBER1992
Industry Cautiously Upbeat
About ClintonExcept for Oil
Most steel and some chemical

manufacturers were optimistic
about the election of President Bill
Clinton, while oil executives feared
more troubles for their industry.
JANUARY1993
Utility Names First Woman Plant Manager
It was remarkable enough to print as news when Pacific Gas

& Electric named Annette Hope plant manager of the utilitys
Contra Costa Power Plant in Antioch, Calif.
FEBRUARY1994
A New Standard for Analog I/O
Analog Devices new analog-to-digital converter chip

provides 16-bit accuracy at a 30% cost savings over the
individual components required for only 12-bit accuracy,
observed executive editor Keith Larson.
DECEMBER1994
Theres a Place in the World for Signal Conditioners
Despite the development of fieldbus-based systems, It

appears that end users and manufacturers will continue
to ignore the premature obituaries assigning signal
conditioners to oblivion, wrote field editor George Ritz.
OCTOBER1995
Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Fired

from Engineering Job at Pacific Bell
APRIL1996
Smart Transmitter Market Share to Rise

from 52% in 1994 to 76% by 2000
JUNE1998
NIST Refines Clock Synchronization

with Global Positioning Satellites
MAY2000
EtherNet/IP Standard Solves Problems,

Opens Doors to Flood of Devices
OCTOBER2000
Everymans GPS
TrueTimes new GPS-TFM

Synchronized Time and Frequency
Module knows the time within 40
nanoseconds and its own position
within 10 meters anywhere in the
world, and measures only 4x6 in.
JUNE1995
EU Introduces CE Mark
The formation of an economic

European Union (EU) is leading
to standardization of control
components and systems across
the Continent, says technical editor
Paul Studebaker. In July 1996, we
print, CE: Global Standard or Trade
Barrier?
JUNE1997
Nuclear Plants Frozen in Analog Era
The problem is regulatory arthritis, says Terrence

McMahon. With this chronic condition, even the slightest
movement from the well-worn path causes excruciating pain.
OCTOBER1998
IVI Foundation to
Define Instrumentation
Programming Standards
The Interchangeable Virtual

Instrumentation (IVI) Foundation
will build on VXI plug-andplay driver standards, allowing
instruments to be interchanged
without software modification
APRIL2001
Taiwanese Manufacturers Go Directly to

U.S. Market at National Manufacturing Week
SEPTEMBER2001
Give Them Liberty
With modern distributed intelligence, fieldbuses and networking,

single-loop control is poised to come backbut it cant replace
the centralized power of a distributed control system.
53
3/25/14 4:50 PM
25 YEARS OF CONTROL
AUGUST2002
Meet Greg and Stan
SEPTEMBER2002
Smart & Smarter
Vendors all claim their intelligent

field devices will improve your
operations, says senior technical
editor Rich Merritt. Make sure they
can deliver what you need.
Along with decidedly unintelligent instrumentation,

Greg McMillan and Stan Weiners first ControlTalk
column talks about Woodstock, inane management
and Bahama Mamas.
MARCH2003
Control at Warp Speed
Software developers get ready to unleash the

unprecedented power of 64-bit processors.
APRIL2003
On the Horizon
Along with more process data, better plant information

and critical decision-making capabilities everywhere,
this years top technology trends predict that control will
return to the field.
SEPTEMBER2005
Distributed Intelligence
Stands Alone
Why not rely on field devices for

control? asks John Rezabek,
control engineer at ISP Lima BDO
Manufacturing in Lima, Ohio. Were
relying on them anyhow. Our site has
logged five years with 80% of PID
being solved in valve positioners.
AUGUST2009
WIB Compares Smart Device

Integration Technologies
The International Instrument Users Association (WIB)

finds that using Foundation fieldbus with FDT and EDDL
are not quite equal in functionality for managing data flow
from intelligent devices.
NOVEMBER2013
FDI Cooperation Eases
Smart Implementations
Release of the Field Device

Integration (FDI) specification
and developer toolkits provides a
common package for suppliers to
develop products and host systems,
so end users can easily integrate
intelligent devices.
54
JULY2003
TEDS Excellent Adventure
We predict that the IEEE P1451.4 Transducer Electronic

Datasheet Standard (TEDS) will fundamentally change
sensor production and use.
FEBRUARY2006
Is FDT good for Fieldbus and Device Networks?
Controls Ian Verhappen, chairman of the Fieldbus

Foundation User Group, looks at the latest battleground
in the Fieldbus Wars. Is this Fieldbus Wars II or can FDT/
DTM and EDDL work together?
JANUARY2008
Ready for Control in the Field?
Contributing editor John Rezabek says exploiting control in

field devices is, at minimum, a no increased risk choice,
and an even lower-risk choice than control in the host.
MARCH2010
Surprise! Field-Based Control Beats DCS
Contributing editor John Rezebek draws on 10 years of

experience in his plant, and says its evident that devicebased control provides better reliability and performance
than DCS-based control.
OCTOBER2010
Emerson Announces Retirement of the

Rosemount 1151 Pressure Transmitter
SEPTEMBER2012
ISA Charters New Standards Committee on

Intelligent Device Management
The ISA108 committee will define standard templates

of best practices and work processes for design,
development, installation and use of information provided
by intelligent field devices.
3/25/14 4:51 PM
25 years of control
Continued from page 52

succinctly by Thomas Swift, a senior engineer at Bethlehem Steel, who said, The next transmitter I purchase, I
want to be able to specify conformity to an ISA standard.
It was to be many years before he might get his wish.
As shown in the accompanying timeline, the 1990s saw
steady improvements in microprocessors and digital signal conditioning, but communications problems persisted.
Certainly, there are some amazing capabilities built into
todays field devices, wrote senior technical editor Rich
Merritt in September 2002, But these capabilities come
with bewildering complexity and a steep learning curve.
Smart field devices also come with several networks, as the
vendors try to figure out which are the best to install from
a marketing point of view: HART, fieldbus, device buses,
Ethernet or proprietary buses? And just when you thought
you knew all the instrument bus options, along comes FDT
from Germany, promising to organize everything in the bus
world. Virtually every instrument maker puts a highway
addressable remote transducer (HART) interface into its
field devices, but thats not enough, Merritt wrote. Smart
instrumentation desperately needs some standardization
Perhaps its time for an ISA committee to step in.
Through 2000s, developments in HART, electronic

device description language (EDDL), Field Device Tool/
Device Type Manager (FDT/DTM) and object linking
and embedding (OLE) for process control (OPC) made
it possible, if not always practical, to get information
from intelligent instruments into control systems.
In September 2011, the five major automation foundationsthe FDT Group, Fieldbus Foundation, HART
Communication Foundation, Profibus and Profinet International and the OPC Foundationfounded FDI Cooperation LLC to further development of a single, common
solution for field device integration (FDI). FDI technology
is to provide a common solution for managing information of intelligent field devices for the various tasks associated with all phases of their lifecycle from configuration,
commissioning and diagnostics to calibration. In November 2013, FDI Cooperation released a Field Device Integration (FDI) specification and a demo of FDI developer
toolkits, both designed to allow automation suppliers to
develop products and host systems compatible with FDI.
Perhaps the next 25 years of intelligent instrumentation will be more about intelligence and less about
communication.
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Foremost Farms doubles production
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exceptions and improve operations.
By Jim Montague
rowth means changeso its not easy for people, organizations or even, I suspect, for hardworking microorganisms turning juice into wine or milk into cheese.
Similarly, food and beverage manufacturers have always
been serious about process control and automation, but they
usually havent had to be quite as obsessive as their counterparts in the oil, gas and chemical fields. This is likely because
food and beverage applications dont traditionally operate at
temperatures, pressures and product volumes as high as those
in traditionally bigger-ticket oil, gas and chemical processes,
so theres typically less potential for accidents and injuries.
Well, times are changing, and food and beverage production for many manufacturers is way up, so theyre adopting
more sophisticated and affordable sensing and control technologies as their applications expand, though this can mean
overcoming some initial growing pains too.
For example, Foremost Farms USA (www.foremostfarms.
com), in Baraboo, Wis., recently doubled the size of its cheesemaking operations at its production plant in Appleton, Wis. It
increased production from processing 1 million to more than
2.2 million pounds of milk per day, and from producing 65
million to 130 million pounds of cheese per year by adding
a second production line, and increasing its packaging lines
from two to four. But this expansion also required more data
gathering, handling and analysis to keep all its processes running optimally (Figure 1). Either Foremost Farms engineers
had to install and maintain more of the paper chart recorders

and loggers theyd been using, or they had to find another way
manage all their critical signals and operating information.
Cooperative Venture
Foremost Farms is a farmer-owned milk-processing and
marketing cooperative, and its 1,700 member/owners produce more than 5 billion pounds of milk per year, which its
12 plants use to manufacture cheese, butter, specialty whey
ingredients, bulk fluid milk and other products for markets
and applications worldwide (Figure 2). The cooperative is
the seventh-largest U.S dairy cooperative, and it has annual
sales of $1.7 billion, which places it 24th in annual sales
among the top 100 U.S. dairy processors. Its whey products
include pharmaceutical-grade lactose, which is dried and
crystallized to different sizes, so it can be used to convey
timed-release medicines.
To collect, organize and interpret all its extra cheese production dataand make useful decisions based on itForemost
Farms decided skip the usual chart recorders and loggers, and
expand its data acquisition (DAQ) and historian capabilities
within its existing HMI/SCADA software and interfaces. As
a result, the Appleton plant also expanded its use of GE Intelligent Platforms (www.ge-ip.com) Proficy Historian DAQ
functions with its existing Proficy iFix SCADA/HMI software
to collect and help analyze data, find exceptions and improve
57
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recorders, wed have an operating signal that a tank had been washed, but it
wouldnt indicate the tracking number.
Keeping tabs with daq

Tuzinkewich reports that, Using the
DAQ functions in Proficy Historian
really helped our processes because it
showed any failures we needed to know
about. We secure daily exception reports that highlight process areas that
may need adjustment or maintenance
attention. We receive tank monitoring,
intake silo and clean-in-place exceptions through data comparison. Proficy software then allows supervisors to
make online sign-offs on each exception. Electronic data acquisition and
trending also means we can respond
quicker and simply punch in a recipe
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Tuzinkewich adds the team that
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Foremost Farms has been using Proficy iFix for about 16 years, but just for
process control. About 10 years ago, we
began using iFix and Proficy Historian
to gather trends electronically via existing Cisco routers and Ethernet networking. Thats when we began to stop
putting in new recorders and loggers,
and its what encouraged us to use Proficy Historian for the plant expansion,
says Sheri Tuzinkewich, dairy industry
consultant and Foremost Farms former
process integration manager. Wed also
been lacking some accurate data from
our loggers. We werent getting enough
information after production. And we
couldnt drill down into our former system to the data we wanted. Foremost
Farms is one of the first companies that
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to six hours, especially on new applications or plants, so we really needed better information. We also needed more
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Figure 2: Located in seven states, Foremost Farms is a farmer-owned cooperative
whose 1,700 members produce more than 5 billion pounds of milk per year. Its 12
plants manufacture cheese, butter, specialty whey ingredients and bulk fluid milk.
assurance and safety departments, as

well as its system integrator. They all reviewed the concept, plans and steps for
making the transition. The team then
enlisted help from the plants supervisors
and gradually gained their support too.
Overall, using Proficy Historian instead of chart recorders saved about
$250,000, but there were other benefits as well. These savings helped the
expansions budget, but it also helped
that we could secure our production
data more easily. Once people saw it,
they began to ask, Can it do this, too?
says Tuzinkewich. So we not only had
happy auditors, but we also had production supervisors who could greatly
reduce the number of values they had
to chase on Fridays for reports on Mondays. For example, the plant can now
correlate downtime or pump failures
with increases or reductions in alkalinity, observe how changes in product quality may be related to changes
in motor and equipment performance,
and make the necessary adjustments to
make sure quality is maintained.
Tuzinkewich reports that other keys
to Foremost Farms operational success
at its 12 plants include: developing and
publishing standard operating procedures, especially for newer technologies such as robotics; building bridges
by forming alliances and teams focused
on topics such as manufacturing, engineering, quality, safety and production;
and always keeping up the search for
new ideas. We challenged the norms
and tried to rule nothing out in looking
for new ways to improve production at
the plants, says Tuzinkewich. As a result, we had to prepare for dealing with
fears of change from those who didnt
want their jobs to be different, but we
also needed to be ready for those who
were on board and excited so our efforts would go smoothly. In this situation, its extremely important to keep
up momentum and stay energized. So
we always kept up communications because you can never over-communicate on a project like this.
Thanks to the success of the new
system in helping the Appleton plant
double its production, Tuzinkewich
reports that seven of Foremost Farms
other plants could use the same data
gathering, organization and analysis.
Jim Montague is Controls executive editor.
It
!
s
p
m
u
P
3/26/14 9:50 AM
ask the experts
Ziegler-Nichols Controller Tuning
This column is moderated

by Bla Liptk
(http://belaliptakpe.com/),
automation and safety
consultant and editor
of the Instrument and
Automation Engineers
Handbook (IAEH). If you
have an automationrelated question for
this column, write to
liptakbela@aol.com.
Thank you for your contributions to our

industry. I have learned much from reading your articles and columns. I have a
simple question to which I have not found a
definite answer.
In general, using the Ziegler-Nichols (ZN) equations, we can calculate a starting set
of tuning constants. My question is, are the
calculations based on interacting controllers?
Can they be used for non-interacting controllers? If theyve been developed on non-interacting controllers, can they be converted for
tuning interacting ones?
Some references and textbooks state that the
Z-N equations are for non-interacting controllers, but Ive read that the interactive controller was used, and that you can use conversion
tools. What do I tell students? Im tending to
say that Z-N was developed using an interactive controller, and they would need to convert
to a non-interacting form.
Don lovell
don.lovell@gmail.com
Controlled
process
variable
Controller
output
(load)
Reaction
curve
R
Td
Step change
Time
All A ProgrAmmer Presumes To KNow

Figure 1. The dynamic response of a self-regulating process to an upset (a step
change in load or setpoint) can be described by its reaction curve, where A is the size
of a step change in setpoint (load); B is the steady-state full response of the controlled
variable to A; B/A is the process gain; R is the reaction rate (speed of response); and
Td is the dead timethe time it takes before the process starts to respond.
60
Your question concerning the Z-N controller is fully answered by the excellent
comments given below by my expert colleagues. Therefore, I will not focus on this narrow topic, but will say a few words about tuning itself and about what has changed since we
entered the digital age.
Tuning a controller is like teaching a pilot
how to keep his/her vehicle on course. This requires that the personality of the controlled
process (the vehicle) be fully understood by the
pilot (the controller). The dynamic response
of a self-regulating process to an upset (a step
change in load or setpoint) can be described
by its reaction curve (Figure 1). When a programmer at a DCS supplier of, say, Foundation
fieldbus, or at a PLC supplier is preparing a tuning algorithm, he or she assumes that all that
is needed is the data I show in Figure 1 (A/B,
Td and R) to calculate the required settings for
the controllers gain (P, which responds to the
present error), for integral (I, which considers the error accumulated in the past), and for
derivative (D, which predicts what the error
would be in the future if not corrected). When
done, programmers think that the job is done.
In a way, theyre correct, because thats all that a
programmer is qualified to do.
This is the point where the role of the process control engineer starts. Why? Because
most processes are not that simple. When
were controlling a nuclear reactor or a fracking process, etc., the values of B/A, Td and R
are not constants, but variables for many reasons: because PID loops interact and each has
its own safety limit; because some of these
loops are not self-regulating; because the continuous measurements of B/A, Td and R are
difficult (if not impossible) to obtain; because
noise prevents accurate measurements, etc.,
etc. Therefore, the duty of our profession is to
understand this. If automatic control does not
work, the system will be switched to manual,
and will not only operate at low efficiency and
produce low-quality products, but in critical
processes, safety will be lost.
Consequently, we must understand that the
process must be fully understood before it can
CT1404_66_68_ATE.indd 60
3/25/14 12:15 PM
ask the experts
be controlled (and a programmer is not qualified to do that),

and that the respect for and recognition of our profession
will not grow, unless we, the process control engineers, take
on the responsibility to check and modify the programmers
algorithms as needed.
Bl A liptk
liptakbela@aol.com
The Z-N tuning rules were developed on a Taylor Fulscope controller, which was interacting with parallel
feedback of the output to the integral (I) and derivative
(D) restrictors. This compares to the Foxboro Model 40 controller, which had a serial feedback connection through the
two restrictors. (Foxboro patented the serial configuration.)
For both controllers, the effective value of integral time was
the sum of the two time constants: D + I, and the effective
value of the derivative time was 1/(1/D + 1/I). For the Foxboro
controller, the effective proportional gain was K(1 + D/I), but
for the Fulscope controller it was K(1 + D/I)/(1 - D/I).
The last term had a powerful effect as D approached I, and
if D > I, the controller would work backwards. Hence, Z-N
settings fixed the D/I ratio at 1/4, but a ratio more like 1/2.5
was optimum with a Foxboro controller. The M-40 had a mechanical stop that prevented D from exceeding I.
This is covered in some detail on pages 71-73 of my book,
Feedback Controllers for the Process Industries, McGrawHill, 1994, under the heading of Single-Stage Interacting
Controllers.
GreG ShinSke y
shinskey@metrocast.net
Ziegler-Nichols tuning was developed for pneumatic

controllers in the 1930s. Those controllers were entirely
mechanicala set of links, levers and bellows designed
to provide proportional control with reset and anticipatory
control when needed. I use these terms because pneumatic
controllers did not solve an equation. In fact, the earliest digital control on computer-based direct digital controls made
special attempts to derive their PID equation by digitally simulating the behavior of pneumatic controllers. When they did
this, the form of the equation that resulted looked like this:
m = Kp {1/Ki e dt + Kdde/dt}
They called this the non-interactive form of the equation,
but clearly, since Kp is a multiplier of both the integral and derivative terms, it is highly interactive. Nevertheless, this is the
form of the equation used for all digital control: DCS, digital
single-loop, computer control and Foundation fieldbus.
The other form of the PID equation with three clearly
independent terms is actually non-interactive, but is used by
motion control, machining and rocket thrust vector control.
Its implemented on all PLCs and variable-frequency drives.
Its used for process control with about the same results as
for the non-interactive equation, but as you can tell, the
results are slightly different. Z-N tuning is used for both
equations and gives an excellent starting point. Please do
not regard Z-N tuning constants as theoretical optimums.
They are not. They are just a good starting point for loop
tuning.
Dick cAro
RCaro@CMC.us
Most assume that it was based on the interactive form,

since it represented the implemented form of the PID
algorithm in the pneumatic Taylor controller. However, the tuning works better for the non-interacting form.
But we really dont know for sure, and most references dont
identify the equation form. See Basic and Advanced Regulatory Control, 2nd ed. (ISA) by Harold Wade, page 132.
However, fairly recent work (Hellem, 2001, referenced by
Skogestad) concluded it was likely based on the non-interacting form, the reason being that the ideal form was likely
used in the numerical simulations performed in an electronic computer.
Of course, for PI control, it makes no difference.
MArk DArBy
darbymark@sbcglobal.net
The integral and derivative actions for pneumatic controllers were interactive because of mechanical constraints in the design (i.e., capacitance bellows and
restrictors). When Ziegler and Nichols came up with their
formulae, pneumatic controllers, PID or otherwise did not
exist. Hence, I dont believe they had interacting PID in
mind at all!
The only possible reason to convert to interacting is when
youre upgrading pneumatic controllers to modern digital
control. You could then start with the existing PID tuning
settings. Modern controllers have the interacting option just
for these historical reasons.
However the integral and derivative settings were so inaccurate on the old pneumatic controllers that I did not even
bother with those settings. Hence, I used the non-interacting version right from the start and retuned the controllers
from scratch when upgrading pneumatic controllers. The
proportional/gain settings were reasonably close. In other
words, there is better value in retuning than wasting time
with the interacting PID controller.
I would only discuss interacting PID in a historical context. I dont see any value in implementing interacting PID
control.
SiMon lucchini
Simon.Lucchini@Fluor.com
CT1404_66_68_ATE.indd 61
61
3/25/14 12:15 PM
ask the experts
I believe the Z-N rules were developed for the interacting controller. Some textbook authors realized that
and explain it. Some do not realize it and propagate a
tuning error.
The conversion rules to the non-interacting form are standard in many texts, and are in my chapter in the Instrument
Engineers Handbook, Vol. 2, Process Control and Analysis,
Rhinehart, R. R., H. L. Wade and F. G. Shinskey, 4th edition, B. Liptk, editor, Section 2.3, Control ModesPID
Variations, pages 124-129, Taylor and Francis, CRC Press,
Boca Raton, Fla., 2005.
I dont like the common labels interactive or non-interactive. The interactive controller is also called the ratebefore-reset (when you look at the Laplace block diagram),
or physically realizable controller. In the pneumatic days of
bellows and levers, it was a physically realizable construction of P, I and D modes. The physical limitation is not
needed in todays electronic or digital world.
There is a standard form of the PID controller, which is
variously termed non-interactive or parallel (when looking at
the Laplace block diagram), in which the derivative time multiplies the derivative term only, and the integral time divides
the integral term only. In the rate-before-reset (interactive version), the integral time and derivative time act on both terms
and the overall controller gain. The interaction is a consternation, a confusion and, in my opinion, not a good thing.
For control, it seems that interaction is something good,
and non-interacting would be undesirable. But in my
opinion, the interacting is undesirable, and the separation
of function in the standard controller is what is desirable. I
wonder if the labels were devised by those who wanted the
rest of the world to hold onto the physically realizable legacy! So I dont like to use the labels interacting and noninteracting.
Further, I dont like the Z-N rules. For my preference, the
quarter-amplitude damped (QAD) target for a CV to follow
a step in a setpoint is not a good measure of controller goodness in the process industry. Its more aggressive than makes
me comfortable. It also doesnt de-tune a controller so that it
remains temperate when the process gain increases.
Further, the Z-N ultimate method is wholly not permissible, in my opinion, in the process industry. Who would let
someone upset a process like that? And the primitive methods to get first order plus dead time (FOPDT) models for
the Z-N open loop method are time-consuming, require too
many mathematical procedures to not make errors and are
inaccurate. Whether Cohn and Coon or whatever, I discourage such methods.
I think the ultimate method has the positive outcome, as
it is a basis for the auto-tune variation (ATV) method.
But my preference for tuning is heuristic approaches that
62
get good enough in a quick time with minimal upsets.

Unfortunately, most college professors dont like books that
teach heuristics and require judgment. They want texts that
have black-and-white mathematics for convenient testing of
the students.
r. russell rhinehArt
rrr@okstate.edu
Google led me to a web site that covers the ground very

well: http://blog.opticontrols.com/archives/287.
Bill hAwkins
bill@iaxs.net
Ziegler and Nichols developed their tuning rules and

methods for a PID interacting controller, but this is only
part of the story. The rules were calculated to accomplish good load rejectionand not setpoint tracking. The
process model used in all the testing was lag-time-dominant,
i.e., the process time constant is much larger than the process
time delay. If you apply the rules to a time-delay-dominated
process, the response is going to be really sluggish.
Ziegler and Nichols chose QAD as a performance metric
(for reasons that arent known, to me at least). QAD is a tuning that will give very narrow robustness margins, so the tuning, as calculated, is not likely to survive for a long time in an
industrial environment.
As for the formulas to convert from interacting to noninteracting tuning parameters, theyre really difficult to find
once you know what the PID algorithm youre using is. You
may find it to be impossible to find some of the tuning equivalents if D > I/4.
The algorithm of the PID used by Ziegler and Nichols is
u(s) = Kc*(1 + 1/sI)(1+sD/(1+a.sD), where
Kc = Controller gain, dimensionless or %/% if you prefer;
I = Integral time, time units;
D = Derivative time, time units;
a = the inverse of the D maximum gain, typically 0.1.
There are some other tuning rules out there. Most people compare their methods against the Z-N method without
even knowing what they published in their 1942 hallmark
paper. Even if the QAD is not a good tuning criterion, the
concepts that they presented have withstood the test of time.
I just hope that your students will eventually be able to distinguish the good from the bad tuning criteria.
sigifredo nino
snino@SummaControlSolutions.com
For more expert answers go to www.controlglobal.com/1304nichols-controller-tuning.
CT1404_66_68_ATE.indd 62
3/25/14 12:15 PM
ROUNDUP
PLCs and PACs

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CT1404_63_65_Roundup.indd 63
63
3/26/14 9:56 AM
ROUNDUP
64
DO MORE FOR LESS
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www.schneider-electric.com/us
3/26/14 9:57 AM
ROUNDUP
FROM THE GROUND UP
ANALYZE THIS
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Omron Automation & Safety
www.Omron247.com
65
3/26/14 9:57 AM
Product introductions
66
cLAMP tHAt FLoW
A sWitcH in tiME
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LoW-FLoW APPLicABiLitY
MAdE to MEAsurE
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Hd For Qc
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HL receptacle extension
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CT1404_66_Products.indd 66
3/26/14 9:59 AM
C O N T R O L TA L K
How Good Is Good?

Stan: This month, we continue the thread we
started last monthsharing the experience
gained over the 38-year career of Lewis Gordon, a principal control systems engineer retired from Invensys. Last month, we focused on
tuning and loop performance monitoring software. Here, we explore how to approach estimating and proving the benefits from applying
advanced process control (APC) techniques
such as model predictive control (MPC).
Greg: In previous columns and blogs, I advocated the use of a metric to quantify improvements in process efficiency and capacity, preferably in dollars, immediately before and after
basic process control improvements such as
better field measurements and valves, control
strategies and feed-forward control.
Stan: Considering that an MPC can be

switched between automatic and manual to
show APC on and APC off performance on
demand, we asked Lew, How do you quantify
the economic benefits of an APC project?
is to expose the new and old control systems

to these random events across a series of APC-on
and APC-off periods. The list of such influences
is long. Variations in production rate, raw materials properties, fuel characteristics, operator influences, ambient conditions, product demand and
quality specifications, upstream and downstream
operations, mechanical factors such as equipment modifications, process factors such as fouling and changes in catalyst activity, and field automation system issues such as plugging, sensor
coating and valve wear will make themselves felt.
The net effect of truly random influences
will present itself as a normal distribution of
these metrics, calculated for a series of APC-on
and APC-off periods. Where the observed distribution is not normal, in the statistical sense,
there are specific reasons that need to be identified. For example, averages and medians may
be forced apart by nonlinearities as the operating point moves closer to an optimum, forcing
GreG McMill an
Stan weiner, pe
controltalk@putman.net
Greg McMillan and

Stan Weiner bring their
wits and more than
66 years of process
control experience to
bear on your questions,
comments and
problems.
Write to them at
controltalk@putman.net.
lew: The previous column listed the three

basic metrics for performance improvement
production rate and value, energy consumption
per unit of product and yield per unit of feed.
Comparing before and after values for
these metrics is the usual approach. Still, many
things can change over the course of a project
that will cloud the results. Changes in process
equipment and characteristics, product specifications and the costs of energy and/or feed will
generate changes in these metrics that are unrelated to the project implementation.
So although its more difficult, expensive and
time-consuming, the only truly fair way is to
compare averages for these metrics from APCon and APC-off periods at the end of a project.
Many random things happen in the plant every
day that affect control system performance. So
the only accurate way to get a good comparison
If there were an anti-matter version of Greg and Stan, they would probably be salesmen.
Any meeting would result in a tremendous release of energy and strange matter.
a p r i l / 2 0 1 4 www.controlglobal.com
CT1404_67_68_ControlTalk.indd 67
67
3/25/14 4:02 PM
C O N T R O L TA L K
the statistical distribution to be asymmetric. In such a case, the standard deviation on the side closest to the optimum is more important.
The rules of statistical analysis and
the characteristics of plant dynamics
and disturbances define the random
tests needed. All normal variations
can be captured by random on-off testing, with on and off times, sample interval and transition times all based on
the plant and MPC response times and
known disturbance periods.
The total on and off test time must
be long enough to include all combinations of significant variations. The
shortest individual test time should be
three times the longest settling time.
The longest individual test time should
be the longest test time plus the longest
disturbance interval. Disturbances at
known periods and times can be used
to set the on and off test boundary (test
start and end times).
Finally, data collected during the
transition between systems should not
be used for calculating performance
metrics, as this data will always bias the
results in favor of the poorer performing configuration. The minimum transition time should be greater than the
larger of the longest disturbance settling
time or the optimizer settling time.
Abnormal operation and day-tonight variations, instrument failures,
manual control and the like should be
removed from the data prior to statistical analysis.
Greg: Dennis Cima alluded to these

requirements for documenting MPC
performance in Control Talk, July
2013, The Route to Model Predictive Control Success (http://bit.
ly/1qQz0jX). Dennis emphasized the
need to screen the data and remove
outliers before benefits are reported.
What are your guidelines on sampling
for the statistical analysis of benefits?
lew: Data sampling intervals should

be less than half the shortest process
68
variable period of oscillation to avoid

aliasing. Set the sampling interval to
be less than 10% of the dominant time
constant, but not so short as to simply be
capturing noise.
Stan: How do you use results reporting to inspire people, rather than make
them perspire?
lew: Operations should be credited publicly when things go well, but
never criticized publicly when things
go wrong. You never want to make people look bad in front of their peers. Unfairly preferential praise and criticism
both create resentment. The goal is to
create team spirit and a common desire to excel.
Greg: What is needed for an APC
project to deliver benefits?
lew: First, dont be penny-wise and

pound-foolish. An advanced control
performance improvement project
of any significant size needs an APC
study to provide a solid basis for project
definition and planning, and the economic justification that will command
the necessary time and resources. A
study provides clarification of objectives, priorities and scope. This leads to
selection of the most appropriate technology and more realistic scheduling
and staffing plans.
A study also can cut project cost by
identifying work already done, defining a shorter schedule, eliminating
later scope changes, and promoting
more efficient project execution. A
process study also promotes customer
and supplier familiarity, and develops
working relationships early on.
Finally, a study increases the probability of success through a better definition
of what data and information needs to
be provided by the customer and the details of the work to be done. An extreme
example of how this can go wrong was
one APC project that was sold without a
study. When the APC team showed up to
execute the project, the customer simply

dumped a foot high stack of old Fortran
code listings on the table and said, This
is what we have now. We just need you to
optimize and implement what this does
into the new DCS. After a long struggle,
neither side was satisfied with the result,
technically or economically.
On the other hand, a process study
also can disqualify projects that dont
have sufficient potential economic
benefits to proceed, thereby avoiding
wasting time and money on both sides.
A bad project does no one any good
both sides lose.
Greg: I would think getting everyone

involved in the study and the project
into the meeting, with some understanding of the implications of statements, would be best.
Maybe there is Greg and Stan antimatter somewhere in the universe who
are salesmen. Any meeting would result in a tremendous release of energy
and strange matter. This leads us to
the Top 10 Reasons Why Hopefully
There is Only One Stan and Greg in
the Universe
10. Greg and Stan look-alike contests are more challenging.
9. Automation Top 10 Lists are a
specialty rather than a commodity.
8. Cartoonist Ted is not overwhelmed with ideas.
7. Engineers arent inspired to do
stand-up comedy routines during project meetings.
6. Young engineers dont aspire to
become just like Greg and Stan.
5. Society doesnt get confused by
smiling and laughing engineers.
4. Florida gets time to get ready for
another Stan, including evacuation
plans.
3. ISA standards committees get
time to address Greg and Stan statements.
2. Just two wild and crazy guys were
too much for management.
1. Anti-matter Greg and Stan are
salesmen.
CT1404_67_68_ControlTalk.indd 68
3/25/14 4:02 PM
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CT1404_69_Classifieds.indd 69
3/25/14 11:55 AM
CONTROL REPORT
overseas is So over
Jim montague
e xecutive editor
jmontague@putman.net
It would be best to
discard many old
assumptions or
at least take them
with a big grain
of salt and go
check out the world
as it really is.
70
hen I started researching this issues

Far Out in the Field cover story on
supporting process automation in developing economies and remote areas, I thought
there was a fairly clear division between developed areas where equipment, technical support, integration services and educated staff are
all readily available, and less developed regions
where supply lines are stretched, expertise isnt
around the corner and trained personnel are
scarce. Basically, I thought it would be North
America, Europe and the rest of the developed
world versus everywhere else, or what used to
be called the Third World.
Pretty much every phone call, inquiry and
interview after that reminded me how full of
baloney I and my assumptions were. Many
regions that I assumed were underdeveloped
were actually very developed in many ways,
and some places that I thought were developed
were actually in need of a lot of development,
support and education.
One of my first wake-up calls was when our
friends at Honeywell Process Solutions reminded me that theyve been manufacturing
process controls and other devices in South
America for more than 50 years, including avionics and other advanced components. Likewise, the remote copper mines in Chile and
the offshore and onshore oil rigs in Gabon
have both been operating for decades, and use
some of the worlds most advanced process control equipment. So, even though most of the
worlds greenfield process control projects reportedly occur in these developing regions,
there appear to be many well-established, legacy applications that are just as much in need
of renovation and technical upgrades as their
counterparts in North America and Europe.
Conversely, the recent boom in fracking for
natural gas and oil in U.S. shale deposits is creating conditions in some states that are very
similar to what we might expect to find in other
undeveloped territories. For example, drilling
sites and production wells in North Dakota,

Pennsylvania and other states are multiplying
so quickly that theres not enough infrastructure to transport the raw material to refiners
via the usual U.S. pipeline networks. So trucks
and railroads have been taking over a lot of the
logistics for moving oil from the Bakken, Marcellus and other shale regions.
Likewise, theres not enough manpower and
engineering expertise to handle North Dakotas oil boom, so workers have been coming in
from other parts of the country to help. However, this rapid influx of new people into a rural area is stressing limited local housing, lawenforcement and other municipal resources,
and many of the incoming migrant workers are
often being forced to live in temporary camps.
A good account of North Dakotas oil-related
growing pains is described in The New Oil
Landscape by Edwin Dobb in the March
2013 issue of National Geographic, which is
accessible at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.
com/2013/03/bakken-shale-oil/dobb-text.
Sounds just like conditions in a remote,
overseas, Third-World location, doesnt it?
However, this time its right on our doorstep.
My point is that, just as each process control
application has its own unique characteristics,
quirks and requirements, each geographic location and community has its own needs, advantages and potential. And, just as the trick is
to investigate and give each process application
what it needs, the same can be done wherever
it happens to be located.
I think it would be best to discard many old
assumptionsor at least take them with a big
grain of saltand go check out the world as
it really is. If you cant afford airplane tickets,
there are lots of video, social media and other
online sources of first-hand information about
supposedly developing economies, which are
actually a lot more complicated than the convenient, misleading labels placed on them.
Happy travels!
www.controlglobal.com a p r i l / 2 0 1 4
CT1404_70_ControlReport.indd 70
3/26/14 10:06 AM
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