At the beginning of a DCS migration project, an important choice that has to made is whether the approach will be a cold cutover or a hot cutover. There are two choices that needs to be considered: a Cold Cutover or a Hot cutover.
- Cold cutover
- Hot cutover
Hot cutover meaning
A hot cutover means a cutover while the plant is in operation. The new DCS is cutover loop by loop and point by point. The biggest win compared to a cold cutover is that the plant can keep making profit. As you know, every second a plant is down costs a lot of money.
Process issues are eliminated
With this approach you can cutover loop by loop. Therefore, if any error occurs, it is quite easy to locate the problem.
Operators
With a step by step cutover, operators and maintenance personnel can also be introduced with the new DCS step by step. This will result in a smooth cutover and gives operators the time to learn and use the new DCS.
Cold cutover
A cold cutover is the approach to replace the obsolete DCS (distributed control system) to the new DCS while the process is not running, also explained as “cold”. This way of approach is possible during a periodic outage/shutdown/turnaround. Read more about Cold cutover »
Source: http://emersonexchange365.com/solveandsupport/plandesign/f/419/t/6050
