At this site technical articles published at the YOKOGAWA technical report are introduced.
Contribution of Yokogawa’s System Business to Achieving the SDGs
The SDGs Question the Meaning of Companies’ Existence
- Shigeyoshi Uehara*1
*1 Vice President, Head of IA Systems & Service Business Headquarters
How to Visualize the Contribution to the SDGs and How to Use It as a Business Opportunity
- Yasuyuki Fujii*1
*1 Systems Business Center, IA Systems & Service Business Headquarters
The SDGs were adopted by the U.N. in 2015, and are mainly being tackled by private companies, which have competed to make promises. Now that the “pledge race” has settled down, companies feel a pressing need to produce tangible actions and results. Similar to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment, how much a company contributes to the achievement of the SDGs is increasingly recognized as a measure of its social value. To assess and improve the degree of such contribution, it is useful to visualize the relation between business activities and the SDGs.
Yokogawa’s IA Systems and Service Business Headquarters has been developing a framework that stratifies and analyzes customer value and its components. This framework helps visualize how much each component contributes to customer value and the SDGs. In addition, it can identify inadequate factors for business strategies as well as promising ones for the SDGs. This paper outlines this initiative and explains how Yokogawa’s system business has been strengthening its business strategies from the perspective of achieving the SDGs.
- Tatenobu Seki*1
- Takahiro Kanbe*1
*1 Business Product Planning Department, Systems Business Center, IA Systems & Service Business Headquarters
Design data are created in multiple systems because their purpose and specialty are different. Yokogawa has been developing a plant data transformation platform that checks the consistency among data distributed across various systems and enables the interoperability of the data by applying ontology technology to database operation and management. This platform will make it possible to quickly and reliably resolve data gaps and inconsistencies between the plant design and instrumentation systems, ensure their reliability, and provide high-quality engineering services. This paper describes through the value architecture analysis how this platform technology will also help solve social issues related to the SDGs and explains its core technologies and application examples.
How Yokogawa’s DCS Hardware Satisfies the SDGs
- Yasuhiro Oowaki*1
*1 Systems Hardware Technology Department, Systems Development Center, IA Systems & Service Business Headquarters
Yokogawa’s distributed control systems (DCS) have long been valued by customers for their long-term operability and high reliability. In particular, reliability is crucial throughout the plant lifecycle, from installation, startup, and engineering, to maintenance and scrapping. High reliability also helps satisfy the SDGs, which were introduced in 2015 and require sustainable development in the three fields of the economy, society, and the environment.
This paper introduces the features and hardware of Yokogawa’s DCS and shows how the company is working on achieving the SDGs.
Contribution of Asset Excellence to Sustainable Plant Operations
- Stephen Weng*1
*1 Singapore Development Centre (SGDC) R&D1, Yokogawa Engineering Asia Pte. Ltd.
Smart field instruments have been used in process plants for more than 40 years. The pace of implementation accelerated in the early 21st century when full-scale smart field instruments became essential for the construction of new large-scale process plants. However, the various tools used in the past to manage smart field instruments could not take full advantage of their potential. A new category of automation system, called plant automation management system or asset management system, became the de facto basic component of process automation systems. Yokogawa Electric Corporation’s answer to this market demand was Plant Resource Manager (PRM), which was released in 2001. Subsequently, a suite of products and services was developed, and Yokogawa launched the Asset Excellence initiative in 2006 to help users realize operational excellence. Today, PRM is one of the core solutions offered by Yokogawa’s new OpreX Transformation brand for asset management and integrity. This paper explains the three main product features of PRM from the perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): (1) centralized asset management; (2) device lifecycle management; and (3) diagnostics for predictive maintenance. This paper is intended for readers with a background in industrial automation but who may not be familiar with PRM. The paper will give readers a good understanding of the product features of PRM and their relation to the relevant SDGs.
Yokogawa’s Commitment to Developing Secure Products That Contribute to Achieving the SDGs
- Hiroshi Hoshino*1
- Hirotaka Tsuji*1
*1 Cybersecurity Management Department, Lifecycle Service Business Division, IA Systems & Service Business Headquarters
Plants and critical infrastructure are the foundation of society, and their longterm, stable operation must be ensured to maximize the availability of facilities and to keep providing products and services to customers. For this purpose, it is necessary to introduce secure products and equipment to protect the facilities against cyberattacks. This commitment also helps achieve a resilient social infrastructure defined in the SDGs (SDGs 9).
Addressing vulnerabilities is the basis of developing secure products. However, the priority of doing so is often lowered in the development process because it does not directly improve development efficiency and product functions (usability).
These problems cannot be solved by a single business unit. As a company responsible for social infrastructure, Yokogawa has been tackling this challenge by adopting a company-wide approach to governance, development, and a system to support them. This paper describes Yokogawa’s commitment to the development of secure products. Specifically, these are the company’s policy, organizational structure, process of developing secure system products (Secure Development Life Cycle: SDLC), and acquired international certifications.
Effectiveness of “Remote Engineering and FAT” on Project Execution and Contribution to Society
- Takeshi Ozawa*1
- Naoya Takeda*1
- Hideki Kubota*1
*1 Engineering Production Technology Department, Global Project Delivery Business Division, IA Systems & Service Business Headquarters
Yokogawa has a solid track record in integrated control and safety system (ICSS) projects. Recently, the company has been focusing on developing an environment that enables remote engineering and factory acceptance tests (FAT) and has successfully developed applications and conducted tests. This environment is based on the simulation and virtual I/O functions of the CENTUM VP integrated production control system and the ProSafe-RS safety instrumented system, and network technology. With this feature, anyone involved in a project can access this environment at any time and from anywhere. In addition, the feature is attracting attention today with the strong need for social distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
This environment helps achieve the SDGs, specifically fight against communicable diseases (No. 3.3) and reduce energy for alleviating climate change (Nos. 7.3 and 13.3). By providing a means to achieve a new lifestyle in terms of production, it is also expected to improve sustainability (Nos. 9.4 and 12.6).
This paper describes the configuration and achievements of this environment, and discusses how to execute projects more efficiently and the challenges to be solved.
How the OmegaLand Integrated Environment for Dynamic Simulation Helps Achieve the SDGs
- Gentaro Fukano*1
*1 Package Department, Omega Simulation Inc.
Omega Simulation Co., Ltd. was established in 1997 as a joint venture between Yokogawa Electric Corporation and Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. Its mission is to serve customers with various products and services and improve customers’ plant operation through advanced technology that integrates Yokogawa’s instrumentation and control technologies with Mitsui Chemicals’ modeling and simulation technologies. OmegaLand and Visual Modeler, an integrated dynamic simulation environment and its core plant simulator technology, are software packages developed by Omega Simulation. This paper describes how OmegaLand will help achieve the SDGs related to education, energy, and the environment, and shows application examples and future plans for the software.
- Hironori Kurihara*1
- Hideaki Yamashita*1
*1 Engineering Department III, Technology Development Division, Yokogawa Test & Measurement Corporation
Yokogawa’s MT series digital manometers equipped with a silicon resonant sensor have excellent long-term stability and are widely used in various industries for manufacturing, research and development, and calibration. An MT series digital manometer was selected by national metrology institutes as a transfer standard for the international comparison of national pressure standards. However, there is still room for improving linearity. Yokogawa thus developed a new adjustment method through collaborative research with the National Metrology Institute of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (NMIJ/AIST) and incorporated it into the new MT300 digital manometer. This paper describes this adjustment method, evaluation results obtained from NMIJ/AIST, and a synchronous measurement technology used in this method.