Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation (Advanced Process Control)

Advanced Process Control brings benefits by reducing energy consumption and improving the yields.
The platform for Advanced Control and Estimation brings multi-variable control, quality estimation, complex calculation, user interface definition all in one application dramatically reducing deployment time and simplifying maintenance for robust performance.

Click here to learn about Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation (Advanced Process Control)

Key areas for Operational Excellence Transformation

Asset Operations and Optimization

Operational Excellence Transformation is Yokogawa and KBC’s co-innovated portfolio of solutions and services. We provide comprehensive solutions for business automation in all four areas using consulting and digital technology.

Asset Operations and Optimization

Asset Operation and Optimization deals with realizing the potential of physical assets by pushing throughput and maximizing the production of the highest-value products, while minimizing variable costs, such as energy. It ensures small and large capital expenditure projects are delivered on time and on budget, to achieve growth and meet environmental requirements. Through these competencies, it will be possible for companies to take full advantage of their physical assets. Yokogawa’s Asset Operation and Optimization solution leverage industry-leading technology to generate precise operating information to increase operator insight, ultimately leading to improved performance and profitability.

Key Operational Competencies in Asset Operations and Optimization

Asset Strategy: Define the requirements of plant capacity, operability and production to align with corporate strategy.
Asset Improvement: Improve plant profitability by expanding plant operating window and/or adding/modifying plants
Asset Optimization: Optimize the plant by enabling shift teams to execute activities as per plan and within operating window boundaries
Asset Operations and Process Control: Operate the plant by enabling shift teams to implement plans effectively and manage abnormal situations
Capital Projects Delivery: Screen options, engineer and delivers capital projects that are cost-effective, timely and fit for purpose

With our track record of providing project execution and thorough lifecycle services and KBC consulting, our customers can obtain practical and deep insights on maximizing their physical assets. Together, we aim to contribute and actualize improvements not only for profitability but also for overall safety, operability and reliability.

·Supply Chain Optimization
- Optimize management of supply, whether oil in the ground or feedstocks for a refinery or chemical asset, in light of product market demands. This provides operators with the agility to take full advantage of market conditions.
·Operational Risk Management
- Reliably control safety, health and environmental risk at a personal and process level. This assures the robustness required to avoid catastrophic losses.
·Asset Management and Integrity
- Confidently ensure asset reliability and availability, whilst controlling maintenance costs. This assures the asset always meets expectations and is always available to capitalize on short term market opportunities.

Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation (Advanced Process Control)

Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation

For nearly 20 years, Yokogawa has provided hundreds of APC licenses and consulting & engineering services for a variety of process units. Yokogawa understands that tight, yet flexible integration with APC and DCS results in more profitable operations, and that regulatory control stabilization is important as a baseline for a control hierarchy.

Our all inclusive Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation brings multi-variable control, quality estimation, complex custom calculations, and operator user interface design all into one application; in doing so, dramatically reducing deployment time and simplifying maintenance for robust performance.

Through a short feasibility study, the financial and operability benefits are estimated utilizing our past experience implementing control improvements, based on the historical operating data analysis.

Stable Base-Layer Control with Advanced Regulatory Controls

Stable base-layer control is the first step towards stable operation. Our standard Advance Regulatory Control modules can be deployed rapidly to achieve stable control prior to introduction of Advanced Process Control.

Dramatically Reduce Modeling Time with Integrated Dynamic Modeling Tools and Automatic Step-Tests

Automatic Step Testing is designed to excite the plant for full dynamic response while continuing process control and economic optimization. The powerful identification and modeling tools allow engineers to quickly extract the dynamic model from the plant responses.

This integrated tool can reduce the step-testing and modeling efforts by half, as compared with traditional manual step testing

Holistic Advanced Process Control Application

Advanced Process Control applications usually need to work with other applications such as Quality Estimators, User Calculations and base Layer Control Blocks.

Having sequenced multiple processors (controller, estimator, etc.) and all the supporting functions into the same environment (including customization of the user interface to the control application), our platform empowers control engineers to rapidly develop APC applications. This holistic environment platform drastically reduces the application development time.

Achieve High Control Performance in Less Commissioning Time with State-of-the-Art On-line Commissioning Tool

The capability to run a "staged" (read only) version in parallel with the "Live" (read and write) version allows the Control Engineer to validate the modification before going live, checking the controller response with different tuning parameters, changes in Controlled Variable and Manipulated Variable etc., and swap "Live" version for the "Staged" version, with no down time.

The commissioning tool comes with powerful Trending functions that help the engineer to quickly identify model mismatches.

This on-line commissioning environment reduces commissioning efforts and time half.

System Integration by Industry Standard OPC Interface (OPC DA and OPC UA)

OPC Interface allows APC Applications to connect with other systems such as DCS and PIMS including Integrated Production Control System "CENTUM". In addition to existing OPC interface (OPC DA), OPC UA* is newly supported from R5.03. OPC UA allows APC applications to connect with other systems which support OPC UA. It makes communication more secure and easy to configure.

* OPC Unified Architecture (UA): OPC is the interoperability standard for the secure and reliable exchange of data in the industrial automation space and in other industries. OPC UA is a hardware and OS independent communication standard with high security and extensibility that provides a base for Industry 4.0.

Sustained Performance with Advanced Monitoring & Diagnostics Tool

Control performance deteriorates over time due to changes in feed qualities, plant dynamics, new control objectives, new operating modes, and many other factors.

The Advanced Monitoring and Diagnostics Tool constantly monitors the control applications performance, model errors and other metrics. Dynamic tuning of an On-line Controller can be carried-out as well. There is also an interactive performance analysis tool that can help engineers to identify the bad actors.

Once the bad actors are found, they are fixed to sustain good control performance, securing the APC generated benefits.

Multivariable Control & Quality Estimation

Yokogawa's APC platform has been co-developed with Shell: one of the world leading pioneers in development and application of Advanced Control Technologies in the energy industry.

Our latest Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation is a best in class suite; Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation is meant to rapidly deploy and sustain Advanced Control Applications that generate benefits throughout the plant lifecycle.

Design Time

Design Time provides a single workspace for the following: process data management, process dynamics modeling, processor and sequence design, and scenario-based simulation - all of which are based on best practices in Advanced Process Control deployment.

Seamless sharing of information between Design Time and Run Time empowers control engineers to develop complex applications rapidly.

Preliminary Controller Design

A defined preliminary control matrix which consists of Controlled Variables (CV) and Manipulated Variables (MV) is used for the automatic plant-step response test under Run Time.

Robust Model Identification

The plant step response data is imported to Design Time. The data is then cleaned using various tools, such as bad slicing, data clamping and rule-based cleaning, for model identification.

Multiple Linear Dynamic Models can be identified over a wide operating range using the model statistics with traffic light indication of the model's robustness. Multiple model elements for a single Input/output pair, and non-linear gain formulas, are supported.

Complex Application Development

A Complex plant-wide application can be developed within the same Workspace with multiple types of processors - such as plant-wide Controller with multiple sub-systems, estimator, real-time optimization interface, and custom processors.

Control model transfer functions are changeable online. Multiple model elements can be switched to handle processes with non-linear dynamics as well.

Furthermore, a custom processor provides a versatile capability to build a custom calculation and/or logic using VB or C#.

Run Time

Run Time environment supports two RUN modes; Staged (Read Only) and Live (Read and Write). Running the two modes in parallel allows the Control Engineer to validate modifications in a Staged version before swapping with the Live version.

The Human-Machine interface panel is organized hierarchically for easy visualization of process conditions and status of the control system. Operators and engineers can access relevant information quickly and easily by clicking the icons, navigation tree and breadcrumbs.

Auto Step Testing

Auto Step testing initiates automatic plant step response tests with the Preliminary Controller Design. The Plant step response data is stored in the embedded historian.

Tiled trends give support to validate process responses for dynamic model identification.

New Human-Machine Interface with Key Performance Indicator Faceplate

The human-machine Interface adopts a new key performance indicator Faceplate with a health status, improving interactions with operators and control engineers.

The human-machine Interface panel is defined using variable-sets, meant to strategically organize the variables into relevant groups. it comes with an integrated powerful trending tool and Dynamic Relationship panel to support operations and application maintenance - especially for very large applications.

Online Tuning

Online tuning supports the control engineer in the validation of integrated Estimator Model and Controller Tuningusing real process data in real-time, before putting the application in Live active control.

Flexible controller tuning combined with comprehensive simulation allows for engineers to test the entire runtime application under different situations, in parallel.

Introducing the new concept of Best Performance Value (BPV): Defined as the most desired point CV operation in the case of infeasibility, the controller optimizes MV move plans to slow the movement of CVs from their BPVs - yielding a superior transient dynamic performance of the controller.

About OpreX

OpreX is the comprehensive brand for Yokogawa’s industrial automation (IA) and control business. The OpreX name stands for excellence in the technologies and solutions that Yokogawa cultivates through the co-creation of value with its customers, and encompasses the entire range of Yokogawa’s IA products, services, and solutions. This brand comprises the following five categories: OpreX Transformation, OpreX Control, OpreX Measurement, OpreX Execution, and OpreX Lifecycle. Platform for Advanced Control and Estimation, an OpreX Asset Operations and Optimization family solution in the OpreX Transformation category, delivers operational excellence throughout an enterprise’s activities, from production through to supply chain optimization and risk and business management.

With this brand, Yokogawa will deliver integrated solutions that address specific needs and support its customers in their efforts to transform and grow their businesses.

Advanced Regulatory Controls

Advanced Regulatory Controls are field-proven, user-friendly and off-the-shelf standard function libraries designed to stabilize base layer control and can be used in conjunction with Multivariable Optimizing Control and Robust Quality Estimation to achieve desired control and operating objectives.

The Shell Surge Volume Control (SSVC)

SSVC is designed to take full advantage of the Surge Capacity available in the plant to achieve a more stable operation. The SSVC module managers the surge vessel's level within specified limits while minimizing flow fluctuation entering or leaving the surge vessel. The algorithm is designed to work not only for one surge volume but also for cascading surge volume such as cascading Distillation Columns. The algorithm will take advantage of periods when there are no large disturbances to bring the level to ideal set-point, to make capacity to absorb the next large distubances.

Furnace Pass Balancing (BALANCE)

BALANCE is designed to evenely distribute the heat energy absorbed by each pass in a multi-pass heating furnace. The BALANCE module improves Furnace Efficiency by passing more flow through those passes with higher heat recovery, balancing the outlet temperature of each pass. Each BALANCE module can manage up to two furnaces with up to two cells/chambers. Each cell can have up to 16 passes (coils) and each pass can have up to a maximum of 5 skin temperatures reading. The BALANCE module also manages the total Flow through the Furnaces, which is a very valuable tool for the management of Heating Furnace.

Measurment Validation and Comparison (MVC)

MVC algorithm is designed to validate two field measurements of the same process output variable for comparison. Deviations between two field measurements of the same process output variable for comparison. Deviations between two field measurements above a reference value are continuosly accumulated, and when the accumulated value exceeds a certain limit, an alarm results.

Advanced Monitoring and Diagnosis

Advanced Monitoring and Diagnosis is designed to sustain and improve the performance of Advanced Process Control Applications and base layer control loops.

Hierarchial Performance Monitoring

In Hierarchal Performance Monitoring the web viewer provides a browser-based monitoring and reporting interface to the on-line database.
The monitoring view summarizes information and data by date, control performance and operator interventions for the chosen asset type and the customization asset level hierarchy.
Web property pages can be used to navigate from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom, and vice versa. Web property pages also provide property information about all data items from the location configuration, down to a single tag.

Reporting

The real-time reporting tool uses current data to highlight the bad actors at the base layer or advanced control loops that require operator action immediately.
The executive report summarizes performances for the entire location using assets from the preferred hierarchy level.
Escalation reports per monitoring type are customizable.
The reports can be emailed, printed, or exported as a file for use in Excel.

Interactive Performance Analysis

The off-line diagnosis tools use statistical methods to extract the essential control performance information and provide interactive analysis screens to find the root causes of control problems.