There are many reasons why a distributed control system (DCS) needs maintenance once in a while. It could be for regular maintenance, preventive maintenance, unscheduled maintenance or maybe another reason.
The worst thing that could happen is that your production has to slow down or even has to stop because of problems on the DCS. Therefore it is important to make a good planning and schedule on your DCS maintenance. One solution could be preventive maintenance on your DCS.
Preventive Maintenance on your DCS
With preventive maintenance on a DCS, we mean that the equipment in use is being reviewed. Based on the type of equipment, the manufacture’s recommendation and local environmental conditions, service companies can provide a preventive maintenance plan to their clients. Companies like Honeywell, ABB, Siemens, Yokogawa are providing these type of services.
“The better the preventive maintenance of a DCS is controlled, the better the main system will perform.”
Why you should care about unplanned maintenance
If you are an engineer and your main responsibility is keeping the system running, you know that focusing on reactive activities instead of preventive and proactive activities, this can has a big impact. By not focusing enough on preventive activities, the chance of dangerous incidents, lower efficiency and higher maintenance costs can be the result.
This works the same for a DCS. Therefore it is important to make sure that you have a good maintenance plan.
About maintenance services
During these services, the providing companies will check every detail of every piece of equipment that is used in the application. Companies like Honeywell also provide sensor calibration and carry out system software backups and provide software maintenance services.
So in short: preventive maintenance on a DCS helps avoid downtime and losses due to costly equipment failure. Because of this, the chance of unplanned downtime is significantly decreased.
