Yokogawa Upgrades the CENTUM VP Integrated Production Control System

Yokogawa Electric Corporation announced the May 31, 2024 release of CENTUM VP R6.11.10, an enhanced version of the CENTUM VP integrated production control system that is a core product in the OpreX Control and Safety System family of solutions.
 
With this new version of CENTUM VP, plant uptime is improved through the addition of a redundancy function to a new IO card that supports communications via the PROFINET communications protocol for industrial networks. Furthermore, to reduce project costs and improve efficiency in plant operations, functional enhancements have been made to the Unified Alarms and Conditions Server (UACS) and the CCC Inside for the Yokogawa CENTUM VP compressor control solution.
 

Development background

PROFINET is one of the most widely used Ethernet-based industrial communications protocol worldwide, boasting superb real-time performance. In 2019, Yokogawa developed an IO card that supports PROFINET. While this enabled the monitoring of the operation of PROFINET-compatible devices from CENTUM VP, more needed to be done to improve reliability and uptime. To meet this need, Yokogawa has developed a new PROFINET IO card that supports a redundancy function, and by doing so, has made high reliability and high uptime a reality.
 
This new CENTUM VP release also features functional enhancements to the UACS and the CCC Inside for the Yokogawa CENTUM VP compressor control solution that will improve the efficiency of operations and engineering at plants.


 

Product features

1. PROFINET IO card redundancy support for greater reliability and increased uptime
To improve plant uptime, an S2 redundancy function has been added to the new PROFINET IO card, enabling its use in a redundant configuration. Thanks to this and enhancements that have been made to the card’s network diagnostics function, this device has been certified by a third-party agency as having all the PROFINET functions for Conformance Class B (CC-B), including the system redundancy that is so important in process control. By supporting the use of NAMUR NE107 compliant self-diagnostic information from devices that support PA Profile 4.0 and enabling the use of a motor control center that centrally controls motor power sources, remote I/O and Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (Ethernet-APL) compatible device operation monitoring are also now possible, and this expands the scope of control that is possible with a single control system.

2. Improved plant operational efficiency with alarm management that supports NAMUR NA102
When a specific alarm has been suppressed in the UACS, the suppression status can now be displayed in the Human Interface Station (HIS) graphics. By enabling the implementation of alarm management in compliance with NAMUR NA102, this can help to improve operational efficiency throughout a plant.
 
3. Seamless integration of process and compressor control systems
It is now possible to undertake integration and engineering using a single CENTUM VP project database for the process and compressor control systems. This release of CENTUM VP also enables process and compressor control systems to be connected to a Vnet/IP^*5 control network within the same domain. As such, this allows highly seamless system integration and helps to reduce project and maintenance costs.
 

About OpreX

OpreX is the comprehensive brand for Yokogawa's industrial automation (IA) and control business. The OpreX name stands for excellence in the technologies and solutions that Yokogawa cultivates through the co-creation of value with its customers, and encompasses the entire range of Yokogawa's IA products, services and solutions. This brand comprises the following five categories: OpreX Transformation, OpreX Control, OpreX Measurement, OpreX Execution and OpreX Lifecycle. One of the product groups that make up the OpreX Control category is the OpreX Control and Safety System family, which includes the CENTUM VP DCS. With its various OpreX Control solutions, Yokogawa is able to quickly effect changes for its customers that lead to a transformation in such areas as management and operations, and provides highly reliable control technology that ensures high efficiency, high quality and safe and stable plant operations.

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