We all know that a DCS migration can have a big impact on the daily operation of a process plant. Months or years of preparation is needed to complete a successful migration from an obsolete DCS to a new DCS. Many choices need to be made and one very important choice is: are we doing a hot cutover or are we doing a cold cutover? In other words, does the migration need to take place during online process conditions, or are we going for a planned stop?
In March 2016, Yokogawa started the DCS migration project at Emerald Kalama Chemical. Internally, they called the project “The Great Migration Project” and covers the replacement of an obsolete non-Yokogawa Distributed Control System (DCS) to a Yokogawa Centum VP DCS.
About Emerald, Yokogawa & Istec
At the Emerald Kalama Chemical plant, which is located in the industrial area of the Port of Rotterdam (Botlek), around 165 people produce and sell benzoic acid and derivatives, used in food, products for personal care and pharmaceuticals.
Yokogawa is a well known company in the world of Distributed Control Systems. Founded in 1916, with 88 offices all around the world in 56 countries, Yokogawa is a major industrial supplier of industrial automation and control.
Istec International was involved in this project with the IST-203, a tool specially designed for online DCS Migrations. In part 2 of this case study you will read more about why this tool was so helpful during a DCS Migration.
The DCS migration approach
Many companies that are planning a migration start with the basic idea to just replace the current DCS. However, a migration project is a good moment to consider many aspects that are relevant to a DCS such as:
- Safety
- Efficiency
- Productivity increase
- Human errors
Yokogawa is using an approach which they call “value-added migration”. This means the consultants of Yokogawa will try to identify opportunities in the early stage of a project. With the Emerald project, this approach resulted in much better results then just placing a new DCS. The final project resulted in:
- A state-of-the-art Asset Management solution to ensure maximum Asset Utilization.
- Advanced Decision Support (ADS) is made available to assist operators in improving human reliability.
- Loop tuning solution for a stable plant operation and throughput maximization.
This case study is also featured on Automation.com : The ‘Great (DCS) Migration Project’ at Emerald Kalama Chemical.
