Now, with these control systems being more than 30+ years old, most of these legacy systems have been placed in to end of life or retired lifecycle status which means no further factory support is available. I caught up with Emerson’s Scott Ross about the choices that must be considered moving forward.
Manufacturers and producers face options whether to modernize to a newer family of distributed control systems (DCSs) and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) or move the PLC I/O and logic to a DCS, such as the DeltaV DCS. For many users with PLCs and DCSs, the ongoing challenge has been to maintain two databases, keep expertise and skills to manage the systems, and source & stock sets of spares for each system.
Emerson’s FlexConnect solutions simplifies the hardware conversion and enables design & installation cost-savings which can be between 30 – 50% of the overall cost of a migration project. The FlexConnect solution:
- Saves time and money with quicker cutover (600 I/O points in an 8-hour shift)
- Enables faster device commissioning with HART passthrough technology
- Avoids moving and re-terminating field wiring
- In many cases avoids I/O cabinet documentation changes
- Enables pre-wiring and testing DeltaV I/O before the legacy DCS/PLC is migrated to the DeltaV system
Emerson’s DeltaV Modernization and Migration team has developed a series of quick switchover solutions for the following platforms:
- Emerson Installed Base—PROVOX 10 and 20-Series I/O and RS3 FIC and FIM I/O
- ABB Bailey INFI 90, CONTRONIC-P and DCI System 6 I/O
- Honeywell IPC 620, TDC 2000 and 3000 I/O
- NovaTech GSE D/3 16000/32000 Series I/O
- Rockwell Automation, Allen Bradley, PLC-5 / 1771 I/O
- Schneider Foxboro I/A Series 100 and 200 I/O
-
Schneider Modicon Quantum TSX 140 PLC I/O
- Siemens-Moore APACS+ / QUADLOG I/O
- Siemens SIMATIC S5 115/135 PLC I/O
- Valmet-Metso Damatic XD I/O
FlexConnect Solutions are comprised of one or more of the following components; flying-lead cable, interface panel, replacement termination panel and/or adaptor card.
These modernization paths also mean a single DeltaV database to maintain by migrating the legacy DCS and PLC ladder logic to a system-wide function block language. Scott noted that the Modernization team has numerous documentation and analysis tools available.
Contact your local sales office or Emerson Impact Partner for more on the capabilities and delivery times on these modernization solutions or visit the Modernization & Migration section on Emerson.com. You can also connect and interact with other modernization and DeltaV experts in the Services group and DeltaV forum in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.
