THE CHALLENGE OF STANDARDS FOR PLANT COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This chapter discusses the challenge of standards for plant communication. A distributed computer control system offers two important features for a user organization. The features include small, modular control units, which allow partitioning of a process into separate local areas, each with a dedicated local unit control system, and the multimaster communication systems used within local areas can also provide connection to other plant areas. The result is a complete plant wide integrated control structure. Some benefits from the small modular approach includes low initial cost to try out the control structure, faster payback when plants are commissioned in stages, paying for each stage when it is built, gives better cash flow. The benefits from multimaster communication across the complete plant includes a common message structure throughout the plant simplifies fault monitoring and reduces maintenance costs. All stations can readily obtain data from other stations. The system supports great control flexibility.