Chemical Engineering March 2019 - 46

Feature Report
Part 1
Unified Operational
Environment Improves
Process Safety
A unified gateway station and related components increase availability to improve operations
and safety
Wataru
Nakagawa
and Eugene
Spiropoulos
Yokogawa Electric Corp.
IN BRIEF
UNIFIED OPERATIONS,
CRITICAL REDUNDANCY
UNIFIED ALARM
MONITORING
OPERATING AT SCALE
CONCLUDING REMARKS
I
n information technology
(IT) security circles,
the most important acronym
is CIA: confidenControl
system
HIS/ENG
Vnet/IP
Yokogawa
HIS
HIS
tiality, integrity, availability.
In industrial control security,
the corresponding acronym
is AIC: availability,
integrity, confidentiality.
Availability and uptime are
critical for process plants
and facilities, and are also
a key determinant of safety
because plants that have
poor availability are unsafe. High-availability
plants minimize the unplanned shutdowns
that can cause serious safety incidents, so
both cybersecurity and process safety are
dedicated to maximizing availability.
In process plants, and in upstream oil-andFCS
Open
network
External controller
(FCN/FCJ, OPC, PLC, etc.)
Data source
UGS
Transmit an alarm
Function block
UGS
I/O driver
Access data held in the
UGS by tag name
Data item
Acquire data and update data
items in a specified period
Immediately sent
when updated
External
controller
FIGURE 1. This diagram shows the typical position of a unified gateway station (UGS)
in a control system along with its internal configuration
gas applications, such as offshore platforms
or subsea wells, there is often a hybrid control
system, consisting of a distributed control
system (DCS), multiple programmable
logic controllers (PLCs) and a supervisory
control and data acquisition (SCADA) system
with remote controllers.
Because of this, there has been a need for a
unified operation and monitoring environment
to ensure safety, security and high availability.
Unifying these control systems is not always
as easy as it may appear, with many plants
and platforms having more than one type of
control system - such as a DCS and several
PLCs. Sometimes a wide variety of controllers
from different vendors are used, and,
depending on their own specific applications,
they are operated and monitored via their own
46
operating stations and software.
When control systems, operation and
monitoring systems (including alarm monitoring
and safety control systems) are disparate
and use different screens, programming
systems and functions, the result is an often
an inefficient set of systems that decrease
the safety of the entire installation.
There has been a need to establish a unified
operation and monitoring environment
that permits the operator to operate and
monitor the controllers on the same screen,
despite the differences between types and
brands of controllers.
Unified operations, critical redundancy
In response to this need, the concept of a unified
gateway station (UGS) has been created
for process plants and facilities needing to integrate
many subsystems into a unified system.
This concept is supported by multiple vendors,
with each configuring their systems in a different
manner, but in all cases, the required functionality
and desired operation is similar.
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Chemical Engineering March 2019

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