The vast majority of field devices in use today have the capability to communicate the diagnostic information on their health and general condition. Unfortunately, it is estimated that 85 – 90% of this data is not being used as part of an integrated maintenance strategy. In many cases the communications capabilities of the device are used by the maintenance team with local communicators but the information goes no further than that. One reason this happens is because of a lack of standards defining how to access that data, how to design and implement a system to use the data, and then how to integrate the resulting information with the remainder of the facility maintenance planning tools.
With this in mind, Herman Storey approached me a while back about creating a standard to help make the process “easier” or at least better defined. As a result we held a meeting at the ARC Forum earlier this month to develop a Scope & Purpose and gauge interest in such a standard. We also posted this intent to a number of LinkedIn forums –where many End Users expressed interest in helping but were unable to attend the meeting. (Good news is that it is now possible to do LOTS of standards work using web based tools.) With the help of Paul Sereiko as our scribe we developed the following Scope & Purpose.
SCOPE: With an emphasis on automations systems performance and reliability including instrumentation, control systems, and enterprise asset management systems, ISAxxx will create standards and practices for asset management globally for industrial and building automation.
PURPOSE: Provide a vocabulary, process set, best practice guidelines, and infrastructure definition for the management of automation system assets from the field device level to enterprise asset management systems. Create work products that enhance the probability that intelligent instrumentation diagnostics are used to enhance performance and reliability of the process.
If you have any comments on the above or are interested in participating further please let me know and I will add your name to the list for when we submit this to the ISA Standards & Practices Board (& maybe even mention it at the IEC TC65 meeting in May.)
