Process control and field instrumentation systems and services provider Yokogawa Electric Corporation, as part of its aim to optimise clients’ plant productivity, this month launched the Centum Vigilant Plant (VP) Release 6 version 01 (R6.01) – an enhanced version of the company’s flagship integrated production control system.

Yokogawa Middle East and Africa systems solutions executive VP Muraleedharan N tells Engineering News that the Centum VP R6.01 is the first step in the development of an all-enhanced Centum VP, which will play a central role in Yokogawa’s vigilant plant strategy for the industrial automation business.

He says the new Centum VP R6 integrates smart engineering, advanced operations, system agility and sustainability; and focuses on helping customers stay abreast of the fast-changing business and technology landscape, while delivering optimal return on assets and the lowest total cost of ownership.

“Manufacturers today need a high degree of certainty and confidence to achieve timely production processes, and flexibility to make changes to product and material specifications. Our system enables them to effectively respond to intense global competition and major market shifts,” Muraleedharan elaborates.

With the Centum VP R6, plant operators can be assured of an optimum engineering environment that lasts throughout a plant’s life cycle, from design, engineering and systems and device installation to the start-up of production, maintenance and renovation.

The Centum VP R6 has been designed to meet the most stringent industry requirements for safe and reliable plant operations and to ensure environmental protection, notes Muraleedharan.

It features an expansion of Yokogawa’s line-up of input/output (IO) devices and introduces crucial new control-system components. When used in an intuitive engineering environment, the Centum VP R6 dramatically reduces the time required to configure and install a control system.

The system comprises the Yokogawa next-generation Smart IO: Network-IO, which enables the decoupling of application development and hardware design. It also has an all-new integrated engineering environment automation design suite that allows for smart engineering and a field validation tool, the FieldMate R3, which enables flexible marshalling.

“Manufacturers realise that they need to improve the quality of their manufacturing operations for several reasons, including safety. “This is why we have ensured that our latest addition to the Centum VP series comprises world-class technologies that address these challenges,” Muraleedharan elaborates.

He explains that, when developing the Centum VP automation platform, Yokogawa identified a hyperintuitive operation feature, a total automation management feature, an intelligent plant conductor and sustainable plant operation capabilities as the key innovations that were included in the new platform based on two new technologies, the Field Digital Technology and Dynamic Process Simulation.

About Centum Technology
Muraleedharan tells Engineering News that Yokogawa views research and development (R&D) as one of the most important elements of any industry. He says the company has not only understood this, but has also practised it since its establishment 100 years ago.

“We are spending an average of 7% to 8% of our revenue on R&D activities and this is 2% to 3% higher than the standard norm in the industrial automation industry across the globe,” he elaborates.

As the first distributed control system introduced to the market in 1975, Yokogawa’s range of Centum VP systems is now in its eighth generation, with 25 500 Centum VP series systems having been delivered worldwide to date.

The systems are used across various sectors, including the oil and gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, power, pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, iron and steel, water and wastewater industries.

“Most Centum series users are from the oil and gas and petrochemicals industries and we now have purchase agreements with several major global companies to be their sole instrumentation supplier,” Muraleedharan explains.

Ongoing Projects
Yokogawa Electric Corporation in February announced that, in collaboration with information technology specialist Cisco Systems, the company would deliver about 50 SecurePlant solutions for energy and petrochemicals company Shell.

SecurePlant is a comprehensive security management solution for plant control systems, states Yokogawa. The SecurePlant solution will be implemented over the next three years.

The SecurePlant soluton is aimed at standardising security practices at Shell’s plants around the world and minimising control system vulnerability. Yokogawa and Cisco collaborated on the design of the SecurePlant service and will jointly provide deployment and operational services.

The SecurePlant solution is designed as a standard solution that consists of the delivery of operating system patches and antivirus pattern files for control systems and the provision of real time and proactive monitoring of solution delivery, as well as a help desk operation to manage this solution.