New system capabilities for DCS

13 October 2020

Rockwell Automation has released the PlantPAx 5.0 distributed control system (DCS).

New system capabilities of PlantPAx 5.0 aim to help digitally transform operations by introducing process functionality native to the controller, improving the availability of system assets driving compliance in regulated industries, while enabling the adoption of analytics at all levels of the enterprise. Intuitive workflows and the use of industry-leading cybersecurity standards will help teams design, deploy, and support a DCS infrastructure which reduces time-to-market and helps plants realise profit at a faster rate. 

The new 5.0 release is said to innovate the modern DCS in the following areas: 

Reduced footprint: The release introduces new process controllers and extends the Logix family with processing power and capacity to reduce the complexity of PlantPAx architectures. This footprint reduction reduces total cost of ownership of the system throughout the lifecycle.

Project consistency: With native process instructions embedded in the controller firmware, project teams can adopt approaches to control strategies that drive consistency for individual projects or multi-site deployments. Consistency simplifies the lifecycle management of deployed systems as teams modernise their automation infrastructure. Consistency lowers total cost of ownership (TCO).

Streamlined workflows: PlantPAx 5.0 provides improved design and operational user experiences. Development teams will realise savings in the configuration of instrumentation, alarms and diagnostic system elements. Operators will have the extended ability to view underlying control logic in a safe and secured manner. Maintenance will have controlled view access for troubleshooting.

TÜV-certified for cybersecurity: To operate at peak performance and minimise cybersecurity threats, PlantPAx 5.0 system architectures are TÜV certified to the international standard ISA-99/IEC 62443-3-3 which provides guidance on the implementation of an electronically secured system.  

Analytics enabled: The PlantPAx 5.0 release has purpose-built frameworks that easily connect live and historical data from the DCS into reporting and analytical tools. It enables extended experiences, such as augmented reality, using workflows aligned with process strategies controlling plant operations and it allows extensible scalable analytic packages leveraging predictive and prescriptive models for process applications such as soft sensors, anomaly detection, or model predictive control. 


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