Yokogawa Electric Corporation announced today the launch of CENTUM CS3000 R3, a total production control systems lineup for medium- and large-scale process manufacturing plants. The CS3000 R3, available since January 22, 2001, is the first version of its class in the world to employ Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system and other mission critical solutions to deliver significant gains in process production performance and management.

The latest CS3000 is a major upgrade over the R2 version, designed to integrate advances in the information technology framework with the rapidly evolving needs of the modern manufacturing environment. Its Windows 2000 OS enables superior connectivity between enterprise resource planning, manufacturing execution and other management information systems for hard, real-time management control and communications. A new Input/Output system is an open-environment platform that offers an expanded range of end user options, higher cost savings and space efficiencies, thereby greatly enhancing overall systems flexibility. The R3 is also backward compatible, with older versions(R2) easily upgraded in phases or replaced with minimal investment.

Yokogawa is a leading global provider of production control hardware and solutions, delivering some 15,000 distributed control systems since it developed the world's first DCS in 1975. For the next few years, the company targets to upgrade and replace these and similar systems, with minimum cost at client site. CS3000 R3 provides sophisticated migration path for the systems.

Equally important, demand among manufacturers for open-environment process control platforms that heighten productivity gains and reduce costs in the supply chain, customer relationships and other facets of the enterprise has escalated since the 1990s. Yokogawa therefore targets sales of 240 R3 Systems to the chemical, steel, petrochemical, paper and pulp, oil and other industries by 2003.

CENTUM CS3000 R3: Salient Features