Overcoming Automation Challenges

ARC Advisory Group's Collaborative Process Automation Systems (CPAS) vision goes beyond applying new technologies to include best practices for managing the lifecycles of process automation systems. The CPAS lifecycle management perspective starts with the early stages of the automation project through supplier selection, front-end engineering and design (FEED), installation, commissioning, startup, through the operational phase of the plant or facility.

Our newest edition of CPAS (version 3.0) includes new approaches to automation projects, for which we've included some details in this report. New technologies such as configurable and characterizable I/O can greatly reduce installed project cost and better accommodate late changes to the project, as well as providing a smaller footprint. Technologies, such as fieldbus, can provide similar advantages. Other new technologies, such as virtualization and the cloud, can reduce engineering times and provide a true path to concurrent engineering.

Technology benefits, however, must also be considered in the context of the people and work processes that make use of those technologies. Workforce demographics are changing and new work processes must be developed to accommodate new technologies. The new breed of automation systems, for example, allows users to divorce the automation system hardware from the software, providing the means to pair the software aspects of the system to the hardware at a very late stage in the project. This has the potential to eliminate traditional factory acceptance testing (FAT) approaches.

ARC has always believed that automation should be viewed with an eye toward business value, and this is certainly the case with today's automation project challenges. By applying the concepts outlined here, end users can shave months off traditional automation project times and reduce the control system hardware investment significantly. More importantly, these approaches provide a great path toward eliminating the huge cost of customization historically carried by the process industries.

Table of Contents

• Executive Overview
• The Problem with Automation Projects
• The Technology Challenge
• The Field Device and Automation Asset Challenge
• The Electrical Challenge
• The People Challenge
• The Work Process Challenge
• Recommendations

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Keywords: Process Automation, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Collaborative Process Automation Systems (CPAS), ARC Advisory Group.