There are lots of reasons why aging, legacy automation systems can be barriers to effective digital transformation. The most obvious reason is that legacy systems are typically complex to connect to new analytics systems, as those systems are rarely designed for seamless integration with technology that may be decades old. As Aaron Crews explains in a recent interview with Automation world, connecting the systems can be accomplished, but it often requires a complex web of custom engineered solutions that are difficult to create and even more frustrating to maintain.
“With disparate systems connecting in many ways and requiring many types of data that may or may not be available, it doesn’t take long to wind up with a complex web of interconnected systems strung together by a very fragile framework.”
In addition, legacy systems are often engineered in a way that specifically prevents connection to the outside world. For decades, keeping automation technology isolated from the outside world was best practice, but today it simply means those systems can’t get data where it needs to go.
Getting past these barricades is not impossible. Modernization can help organizations perform an end run around the issues standing in the way of their digital transformations. However, modernization is daunting. Traditional modernizations require a team of expert technicians to rip and replace all the existing legacy I/O in the plant to enable the organization to move to a new, more robust system. To make that happen, somebody is going to have to spend a lot of time doing prep work before the plant will see any ROI from a modernization investment.
Or will they?
New control, legacy I/O
Instead of implementing traditional modernization products, many of today’s forward-thinking teams are instead opting for a faster method leveraging I/O-agnostic interfaces like those in Emerson’s DeltaV™ IO.Connect. With DeltaV IO.Connect’s I/O-agnostic interface, Aaron explains,
“Users can leave the existing I/O from one control system in place, remove the controller and use the interface to connect a new control system from a different manufacturer to existing infrastructure.”
Essentially, the modernization team pulls the controller off the legacy I/O, connects an I/O-agnostic controller, and then connects its new control system to that. And the most exciting part? The original I/O can even be from a different manufacturer than the new control system, freeing the plants that have been “locked-in” to a single automation supplier for years or decades.
The results speak for themselves,
“It lets digital transformation teams reallocate up to 40% of the capital for the project—what they would have otherwise spent on transitioning I/O.”
More help from AI
Leaving legacy I/O in place can save a lot of time and money, but teams often still need expert personnel to help transition legacy code to a new control system as part of a migration. Fortunately, Aaron has an answer for that as well. New modernization tools like DeltaV Revamp cloud software take advantage of the power of artificial intelligence to automatically transform control logic into fully tested and documented modern logic for a new DeltaV control system. Aaron explains,
“The artificial intelligence identifies what’s happening inside the systems and standardizes it, simplifying the task of data contextualization at the enterprise level. Along the way, this shortens the process of converting control logic, again contributing to a faster return on investment.”
With all the new tools available for smoother transition to new technology, there really has never been a better time to begin a modernization project. Ultimately, organizations have more freedom than ever before to select the best control system for their operations and make the change in a way that delivers fast return on investment and less effort, making it possible to take advantage of the new technologies driving competitive advantage in the modern marketplace.
