Topic: Advanced Control

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The Maintenance Key to Improved Performance
Getting the Inside Scoop from a Control Engineer on How to Integrate O&M Knowledge and Relationships to Provide Long-Term Highly Successful Solutions

Plant-Wide Control Approach
Herding Cats: Successfully Manage All Those Process Variables With a Systematic Approach to Plant-Wide Control

PID World Tour--The Final Performance
Read the Conclusion of McMillan, Weiner and Congiundi's Tour of PID World

PCs Don't Always Feel the Love
Whether Deserved or Not, PCs Have a Reputation for Being Less Robust and More Prone to Crashes Than Purpose-Built Controllers

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White Papers: In Depth Research

Understanding the Concepts Behind Short Circuit Current Ratings (SCCR)
Author: Yaskawa Electric America
Posted: 05/17/2010
The date of January 1, 2005 sits vividly in the minds of manufacturers within the industrial control panel field. That's because that's the day when the National Fire Protection Association's (NFPA) National Electrical Code (NEC) 2005 Article 409 officially went into effect. The code required that short circuit current rating be clearly marked on the industrial control panels in order to be inspected and approved. The markings made it easier to verify proper over-current protection against hazards such as fires and shocks on components or equipment, whether it be for initial installation or relocation. It was the beginning of an era when things would become a little more complicated, but for all the right reasons of ensuring more safety within the industrial world.

The main vision of the NFPA is to reduce or limit the burden of fire and other hazards on the quality of life by providing and advocating scientifically based consensus codes and standards, research, training and education. These codes and standards were established to minimize the possibility of and effects of fire and other risks. Due to misinterpretations, inconsistencies and advancements in technology over the years, they have had to update their codes with consistency in order to comply with existing standards.

Therefore, the focus of this paper will look at the changes that occurred due to Article 409, the impacts that it had, who was affected by the code and how to comply with the code. Precautions like this article had been enforced in the past, but they were too vague, so people found ways to get around them.

The biggest change that took place within the article was the new requirements adopted for industrial machinery electrical panels, industrial control panels, some HVAC equipment, meter disconnect switches and various motor controllers. For the purpose of this paper, we will be concentrating on industrial control panels which are specified as assemblies rated for 600V or less and intended for general use. All in all, it states that the above products must feature a safe design and be clearly marked with specific information concerning Short Circuit Current Rating (SCCR) in efforts of aiding with the designing, building, installation and inspection of the control panels. This way, the above users can both reference and apply all the needed requirements for all new products and installations as well as for modifying existing ones.

Process Control Domain - Security Requirements for Vendors
Author: WIB
Posted: 04/07/2010
This document specifies requirements and gives recommendations for IT security to be fulfilled by vendors of process control and automation systems to be used in Process Control Domains (PCDs).

This covers both:
- Policy; addressing the vendor's organization, IT security processes, technological solutions and governance of IT security.
- Commissioning and maintenance

When a vendor's solution complies with this set of requirements, the solution is considered by the WIB to be PCD Security Compatible.

Download this paper to learn more.

Convergence and the Programmable Automation Controller
Author: Rockwell Automation
Posted: 03/23/2010
Ensuring your PAC-based control system is an integrated, robust and flexible information producer helps improve business performance, lower costs and uncover unique opportunities for competitiveness.

All companies seek ways to make their businesses grow for the long-term. Ask any manufacturer today what he/she needs in an increasingly challenging economy. It's likely to include cutting costs, improving yield, increasing functionality and becoming more competitive in the global marketplace.

Manufacturing convergence helps companies meet these business drivers - globalization, innovation, productivity and sustainability - by more closely aligning manufacturing technologies and production system operations with the rest of the enterprise. This convergence is enabled throughout the manufacturing environment with the technologies of convergence - control, power, information and communication.

Plant Modeling: A First Step to Early Verification of Control Systems
Author: Arkadiy Turevskiy, Technical Marketing Manager, The MathWorks
Posted: 03/02/2010
Today's control system engineers face competing design demands: increase embedded system performance and functionality, without sacrificing quality or breaking the budget. It is difficult to meet these challenges using traditional design and verification approaches.

Without simulation it is impossible to verify a control design until late in the development process when hardware prototypes become available. This is not an insurmountable problem for simpler designs with predictable system behavior, because there are fewer sources of error in simpler control algorithms--and those errors can often be resolved by tuning the controller on the hardware prototype.

Today's multidomain designs combine mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, control, and embedded software components. For these systems, it is no longer practical to delay verification until late in the development process. As system complexity grows, the potential for errors and suboptimal designs increase. These problems are easiest to address when they are identified early in the development process. When design problems are discovered late, they are often expensive to correct and require time-consuming hardware fixes. In some cases the hardware simply cannot be changed late in the development process, resulting in a product that fails to meet its original specifications.

Traditional verification methods are also inadequate for testing all corner cases in a design. For some control applications, it is impractical or unsafe to test the full operating envelope of the system on hardware.

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