Grandma and the 4K UHD TV
Do you often get the feeling too that we’re confronted with solutions for which we haven’t even got a problem? Or with solutions to meet needs that don’t actually exist? Is there anyone out there who’s ever given away their expensive, full HD flat screen to their grandma to make room for a new 4K UHD television?
Desperate search
Marketing has a tendency to be a one-way street, no matter whether it’s consumer or industrial products that are being sold, namely from manufacturer to customer. It makes a nice change if it’s the other way round occasionally. When Mr. Student of Air Liquide E&C Solutions Germany asked to make an appointment with us in Ratingen in October 2015, we didn’t really have much of an inkling what he was looking for. As a global manufacturer of hydrogen plants in all shapes and sizes, Air Liquide traditionally attaches considerable importance to standardization. The purpose of AirLiquide’s visit was to find a partner who could help them achieve their ambitious goal of a “single click configuration“. It was hoped that even more rigorously standardized and modularized P&I diagrams would enable a significantly shorter plant design phase. Since P&I diagrams and the associated I/O lists form the basis for developing PCS applications, AirLiquide was desperately searching for a suitable tool to support this standardized, module based approach. This was where the Automation Design Suite, CENTUM VP’s new, integrated engineering tool, came into play.
The solution: ADSuite
ADSuite allows so-called generalized class modules to be managed in a library. The functionality of these modules goes far deeper than the functional diagram or the control logic. Test reports and design documents such as P&IDs or written descriptions can also be managed in this way, as can parameter sets. Bulk engineering is additionally integrated, enabling applications to be created from the class library at the press of a button using the I/O list.
NAMUR workshop: “Single Click Configuration”
It didn’t take long to flesh out AirLiquide’s idea at the meeting. All stakeholders were agreed that Yokogawa’s ADSuite was the ideal tool to transform the “Single Click Configuration” vision into reality.
Together with Mr. Student, I’ll be reporting at our NAMUR workshop on what has happened since, how we managed to bring the project to life and whether it all “clicked” in the end.
