Posts tagged ‘SCADA’
Invensys Simplifies SCADA with Wonderware System Platform 4.0
Invensys Operations Management announced the release of its Wonderware® System Platform 4.0 software, which delivers new information services, new device connectivity functions, tiered historian capabilities and improved Web visualization. These enhancements enable plant operators to manage and control equipment and processes more effectively. In addition, information systems personnel can more easily integrate and make use of real-time manufacturing information, and users can be updated continuously on the company’s overall operations performance.
Wonderware System Platform’s new tiered historian capabilities simplify data time-stamping, information aggregation, retrieval and reporting, and improve information security and disaster recovery across distributed operations. The platform historian is also available as a standalone offering, Wonderware Historian 10.0.
The Information Server 4.0 component of the platform now provides the rich experience and performance of real-time ArchestrA graphics for Web visualization for more functional and effective KPI reports and HMI graphics. Using the company’s open platform, customers’ graphical configuration efforts can be reused easily and managed across their manufacturing enterprises, both as Wonderware InTouch® HMI graphics and inside their Web applications.
“The Wonderware System Platform 4.0 software provides a single, scalable and open platform for SCADA, HMI, MES and EMI software, addressing the business and functional needs of industrial automation, operations and information personnel,” said Steve Garbrecht, director of product marketing at Invensys Operations Management. “Its plant model-based, integrated configuration environment provides a logical representation of the physical processes being controlled and supervised, enabling rapid configuration and deployment of component object-based industrial applications. This software platform solution allows our engineering teams, along with our ecosystem partners and customers, to accelerate flexible innovations that are aimed at achieving operations excellence.”
ENGlobal Expands Upstream Services with CDI Acquisition
ENGlobal Corp. announced that ENGlobal’s Automation segment has acquired selected assets of Control Dynamics International LP (CDI), a privately held automation firm based in Houston. CDI designs and manufactures industrial automation control systems primarily for the upstream energy industry and has annual revenues of approximately $5 million.
Under terms of the agreement, ENGlobal will not assume any CDI debt, nor will it be required to issue any stock as consideration for the acquired assets. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive. Certain key members of CDI’s management team have entered into employment agreements with ENGlobal. Further terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The acquisition gives ENGlobal a strategic entry into the upstream energy sector. CDI offers certain proprietary products, such as the Dolphin™ Universal Master Control Station (MCS), which can be quickly configured to most subsea control projects. CDI also has expertise in blowout preventer control systems, supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA), and Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) turret override protection systems. For efficiencies, ENGlobal plans to relocate its Automation personnel from its North Houston headquarters to CDI’s 24,000-sq-ft facility nearby.
“Much of our current project work is in the upstream sector, which makes CDI a natural fit with ENGlobal’s suite of services,” said Anthony George, CEO of CDI. “ENGlobal’s financial resources should provide us with larger projects and cross-selling opportunities, thus spurring our growth. We strongly believe that our clients will greatly benefit from our combined capabilities.”
Shelly Leedy, President of ENGlobal Automation Group, added: “This transaction presents tremendous synergies to both companies and expands ENGlobal’s market presence into the upstream vertical. Our combined operations offer a portfolio of high-value engineering and related project services to a very broad spectrum of the energy industry. I look forward to integrating CDI into our existing operations and, on behalf of TEAM ENGlobal, we welcome CDI’s dedicated employees to our family.”
Software Toolbox Integrated with AFCON Pulse SCADA/HMI
Software Toolbox announced that its Symbol Factory.NET and Industrial Gadgets.NET graphics technologies have been integrated with a new Pulse SCADA/HMI software application from AFCON Software and Electronics Ltd., enabling engineers to select animated images from a library of more than 3,600 industrial and manufacturing objects to create custom control panels.
“Because Pulse is based on the Microsoft .NET framework, Industrial Gadgets.NET and Symbol Factory.NET from Software Toolbox are natural complements to Pulse,” said Orly Inbar, marketing director at AFCON. “AFCON customers have confirmed that the availability of Industrial Gadgets.NET objects significantly reduces engineering time, while providing strikingly realistic and state-of-the-art visualizations of real-life equipment. Engineers from Software Toolbox worked closely with the AFCON development team in making a smooth integration of their tools with Pulse.”
With AFCON’s Pulse software, application engineers can work within a unified SCADA/HMI environment that now combines the powerful .NET graphics tools from Software Toolbox. Symbol Factory.NET allows engineers to use the built-in object browser to pick from a wide range of animated objects to create custom screens that address their specific operations responsibilities. The addition of the Industrial Gadgets.NET application enables users to select from analog and digital controls to create realistic industrial control user interfaces to view input and data controls.
“The Software Toolbox object-oriented graphics components will enable engineers to rapidly build solutions for specific manufacturing and infrastructure requirements,” said John Weber, president of Software Toolbox. “Symbol Factory.NET and Industrial Gadgets.NET capabilities will enhance an operator’s ability to customize each process screen. Engineers can now spend less time creating and modifying HMI applications.”
OleumTech Supplies Products to Haynesville Shale JV
EnCana has selected OleumTech’s wireless products to be used in the EnCana-Shell joint venture in the Haynesville Shale fields. EnCana and Shell will implement OleumTech’s patented WIO System for wireless tank level monitoring, wellhead monitoring and artificial lift applications.
The selection of OleumTech offers tighter integration across EnCana and Shell in an effort to operate multiple well sites that have traditionally been supported with multiple products from different vendors. Leveraging the WIO System as the single system for the “last mile” connectivity will allow EnCana and Shell to increase productivity and improve efficiency in the hydrocarbon extraction process. The WIO System simplifies the process of remote field data collection and integration to SCADA systems.
“We are excited to add Shell to our growing roster of customers,” said Vrej Isa, Chief Operating Officer at OleumTech. “This is a testimony to our continued focus to provide solutions that meet the needs of the industrial wireless sensors market and affirms our value proposition.”
EnCana has been an OleumTech customer for more than three years. The recent EnCana-Shell selection extends OleumTech’s footprint to north Louisiana and presents significant growth opportunities in this major natural gas play.
Skymira Delivers New Monitoring Solution for Field Technicians
Skymira, provider of satellite and cellular solutions for remote operations management, has enhanced its TailorFitTM Solutions by combining its popular Electronic Forms and Telemetry/SCADA services. This latest solution provides technicians with real-time operating status of remotely located equipment under their care while operating in rough terrain.
Skymira provides remote field solutions for Work Order Automation using its Electronic Forms service and its Telemetry/SCADA service, with each service typically using separate satellite networks. For this new solution, Skymira combined the services and separate satellite network data into a single powerful application. Field technicians are now equipped to keep a watchful eye on remote units to detect early warning signs of failure and avoid downtime.
“When data from multiple remote information solutions is combined, it produces exponential benefits for our clients,” said Robert Landsfield, CEO of Skymira. “Technicians driving in trucks are able to check the status of equipment operating hundreds of miles away. This is the first solution of its kind to address a significant unmet need.”
Skymira employs a comprehensive approach to understanding each client’s needs and details of how they operate so they can have a complete view of all areas where access to remote information will drive increased returns. While most companies will initially implement one or two high-return applications, Skymira has observed that companies continuing beyond this initial set of applications realize exponential benefits. Driven by the increased reporting made available, new combinations of data can be used to solve increasingly complex challenges, unlocking value often hidden within a company’s existing processes.
GE Fanuc Launches Advanced Analytics Software for Facilities
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, a unit of GE Enterprise Solutions, announced advanced analytics solutions for its software portfolio that are designed to maximize the information that already exists in production operations, extract knowledge from that information and identify the opportunities to solve potential production issues before they impact the process. The introductions of Proficy® Troubleshooter and Proficy Cause+, the updated release of Proficy Historian version 3.5, and the market leadership position of Proficy’s HMI/SCADA products combine to provide companies with unprecedented intelligence they can use to enhance process performance.
This powerful combination of solutions enables:
- Better understanding of the causes of variation and problems in the process as well as the real-time impact of the process on production assets;
- Learning the relationships between disconnected data, extracting knowledge and building business cases with benefit estimations;
- Preventing unnecessary conventional “alarm bursts” with more intelligent alarms that work in multivariate space, indicating causes of problems and providing corrective actions; and
- Expert knowledge capture for making modeling and expert system technology available to all users.
“Everyone not only needs some method for archiving plant data and a system for supervisory control and data acquisition, but also an effective way of doing rapid process troubleshooting and other continuous improvement initiatives utilizing its real-time plant data,” said John Leppiaho, Product General Manager for GE Fanuc’s Operations Management Software. “GE Fanuc’s Proficy Historian is already proven in industries all over the world for collecting, storing and retrieving mission-critical data. The addition of Proficy Troubleshooter and Proficy Cause+ gives users advanced analytics and control of their processes to drive operational excellence.”
These solutions provide essentially a three-step process for advanced analysis starting with Proficy Historian 3.5, which collects, archives and distributes tremendous volumes of real-time process information at extremely high speeds. Built specifically for production and process data acquisition and presentation, Proficy Historian enables users to leverage increased process visibility for better and faster decisions, increased productivity and reduced costs. Proficy Historian is built to store and retrieve production/process data in the way companies need it. This capability enables better responsiveness by quickly providing the granularity of data needed to analyze and solve intense process applications.
The second component of the advanced analytics process is the new Proficy Troubleshooter product, an off-line, value-add product to Proficy Historian that analyzes process variation. It is used to identify causes for production problems and identify opportunities for preventing them in the future. Proficy Troubleshooter acts as a bridge between Proficy Historian and Proficy HMI/SCADA obtaining relationships between process variables and preparing benefit estimations for real-time deployment.
Proficy Troubleshooter has powerful multivariate modeling and data-mining techniques, but it does not require a background in advanced statistics or modeling. It also provides a clear path to real-time solutions for the user – deploying insights as a real-time intelligent monitoring and advisory solution in Proficy Cause+, with outputs displayed in Proficy HMI/SCADA and Web-based reporting.
The components of Proficy Troubleshooter are:
- Proficy Continuous Wizard – For troubleshooting time-based and/or continuous process data;
- Proficy Discrete & Batch Wizard – For troubleshooting generic index-based, discrete and/or batch process data; and
- Proficy Architect – For data preparation, simulation and solution development.
“In the past, we have had reporting tools that gave us an information baseline,” said Leppiaho. “Now we can apply analytics to that data and do ‘what-if’ scenarios to model the process for a solution more effective in driving real process improvement.”
After Proficy Troubleshooter models the solution, the next logical step is to put the process into production. Proficy Cause+ wires in the real-time data and introduces alarms based on causal relationships within the process. It extracts more value from real-time data, in the form of likely causes of process- or asset-related problems and variation in real time, with pre-configured corrective actions to the operator if alarm conditions are triggered.
Proficy Cause+ is a value-added decision-support solution to the Proficy HMI/SCADA iFIX and CIMPLICITY products that also provides reporting on causes over specified periods of time for production management and process engineers. It enables real-time causes of process problems (e.g. bad batches), real-time corrective actions to address process problems, wizard-based and custom development and simulation of a real-time solution before deploying it within Proficy HMI/SCADA, model- and rules-based cause identification, Web-based reporting of causes over user-defined periods, intelligent alarming and capturing of expert knowledge for real-time expert system use.
Proficy Cause+ enables production engineers and process specialists to generate real-time causes for production process deviations. During such real-time Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) deviation, in-depth process knowledge is delivered to an operator to provide specific, actionable message guidance for correction. It is a real-time application by which production process variation is identified and whereby root causes for such variation is visualized. Proficy Cause+ is a value-added component deployed directly in existing HMI SCADA/DCS systems. Proficy Cause+ is therefore mostly used by plant operators.
“Progressive companies are achieving even greater benefits by extracting and applying knowledge from historical and real-time data with advanced analytics,” said Tom Fiske, Senior Analyst, ARC Advisory Group. “Traditionally, the use of advanced analytics required high domain expertise to apply effectively. This is no longer the case. Solutions such as those offered by GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms bring the power of real-time visibility and advanced analytics to the masses.”
Skymira to Provide Monitoring Solution for Compressco
Skymira announced that Compressco has commissioned the firm to provide a monitoring solution utilizing over 4,000 Skywave DMR 800D terminals. Skywave is the industry’s premier technology solution for remote equipment monitoring in the oil and gas industry.
Compressco, purveyor of production enhancement solutions for marginal and low-pressure oil and gas wells, selected Skymira to streamline its information management processes originating from North American locations of its GasJack™ compressor installed base. The DMR800 works seamlessly with SCADA / Telemetry on compressors, enabling companies like Compressco to retrieve remote information in one common data stream from oil and gas well worksites around the globe, in real time.
“Customer success stories from the oil and gas industry demonstrate that field operations can be successfully streamlined to achieve a rapid increase in productivity levels and ultimately greater overall profits,” said Robert Landsfield, CEO, Skymira LLC. “The agility of the Skywave DMR 800D product enables it to work with numerous industry applications, including telemetry monitoring and SCADA control systems, guaranteeing valuable, real-time and efficient oversight of remote operations at global worksites.”
“The implementation of Skymira’s Skywave 800D solution allows us to monitor compressor performance remotely, decreasing response time for repairs and significantly increasing the level of service we provide to our customers,” said Chris Anderson, technology manager, Compressco. “Of the sources we looked at, only Skymira’s TailorFit™ solution was capable of addressing the specific back-end data format Compressco required, making the award to Skymira an easy decision.”
The Skywave DMR 800D solution provides global wireless or satellite coverage of communications with field workers and real-time monitoring of equipment and pipelines with the tightest information security precautions in place. Featuring coverage in over five ocean regions around the world, Skywave’s low power consumption is ideal for applications requiring long battery life. The solution complements remote, fixed or mobile applications on land or sea, and it is tailored specifically for optimal asset tracking of fleet management. Harnessing drive messaging for real-time delivery coordination, the device enables remote communication from hazardous applications and unmanned sources such as intermodal containers, trailers or marine buoys. It seamlessly integrates with telemetry monitoring and SCADA applications, and is tailored for long periods of autonomous operation and compatibility with most data loggers and sensors.
CygNet Partners with ESRI to Link SCADA with GIS
CygNet Software is partnering with ESRI through the ESRI Developer Program to integrate geographic information systems (GIS) capabilities and data into CygNet’s next-generation SCADA offering.
“GIS software clearly has much to offer to the location-dependent complex workflows of the oil and gas industry,” said Geoff Wade, petroleum industry manager at ESRI. “CygNet has demonstrated both thought and technical leadership in the evolution of its enterprise operations platform, and we are thrilled about the combined value enhancement we will be able to deliver, particularly to the production and pipeline operations space through this innovative integration. We very much look forward to working with CygNet to further develop appropriate solutions for our respective and joint client base.”
CygNet was featured during the plenary session of the 2009 ESRI Petroleum User Group (PUG) Conference, held Feb. 23–25 in Houston. There, the company jointly demonstrated with ESRI an integrated workflow involving both GIS and SCADA.
The CygNet enterprise operations platform is currently used by more than 100 companies across oil and gas exploration, production and gas transportation to improve operational efficiency. Based on a revolutionary network architecture, users across every business function can prioritize and analyze massive amounts of real-time and historical information to support daily operations, strategic decision making and regulatory reporting requirements.
The ESRI Developer Program is designed for companies developing commercial, off-the-shelf solutions that tap ESRI’s ArcGIS software, the world’s leading GIS technology. Program members gain access to exclusive partner and marketing resources, and the opportunity to exhibit at the ESRI International User Conference and the ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference.
“‘Location, location, location’ is just as important to oil and gas companies as it is to home buyers,” said Steve Robb, VP business development, CygNet. “The integration of ESRI’s GIS capabilities will enable us to provide our customers with a completely new layer of information that will help them manage their distributed assets more efficiently and effectively.”
PetroComputing 