Hunting the elusive snipe

Cassia felt like a victim of extortion. She was using her distributed control system (DCS) vendor’s one-time, strategic partner to develop and maintain the site’s alarm database, a painstaking process that evaluates every alarm in the system following the recommendations of ISA 18.2/IEC 62682. The operations team became accustomed to a monthly review of alarm statistics. They examined the house operators’ alarm load during normal operations and upsets, nuisance alarms and stale alarms that were meaningless. However, with the obsolescence of the Windows server and workstation operating system, and ensuing version updates of her DCS software, she learned the tools she’d been using for years were no longer supported. 

They were replaced by another, separately licensed software suite, and she faced not only a costly, zero-payback system update, but also the tedious task of learning to install, maintain and utilize a new software suite, and hopefully migrate her extensive alarm database to a new platform.

Cassia’s complaints seemed to have no impact in conversations with her vendor. While she always stood by her duties and her work, her world seemed to have passed into a new reality where suppliers’ accountability and ownership were elusive. Why did support disappear for her old alarm reporting software? Why was there no experience from her vendor for migrating the database? Was there anyone who’d stand up and be her advocate when she was left to explain this circumstance and the tortuous, costly project to her management? She knew the plant manager would be furious—he already despised the vendor.

In the meantime, her supplier was beset by circumstances beyond their control. Every vendor was effectively wed to Microsoft’s server and workstation platforms. Solutions developed 15 years ago had scarcely any funding for development and maintenance when engineers and designers moved on from legacy languages, such as Visual Basic for Application (VBA). New Windows security features to block potential hacker exploits were also blocking the underlying drivers and code. Replacement modules, boards and other hardware faced long lead times or even obsolescence as chipmakers were swamped by datacenter mega-projects. In-depth understanding of underlying programming and features was spread across several continents and time zones.

In addition, the once-reliable cadre of knowledgeable, experienced and reliable field engineers became disturbingly underpopulated. It became more challenging to find and retain technically capable individuals who weren’t inextricably attached to working from home.

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Speaking as an old, septuagenarian boomer, we used to quote the quintessential value of systems standardization, harshly expressed as “one throat to choke.” But when Cassia sought the single point of accountability we once valued, she felt like she was sent on a snipe hunt. Her boss referred to more than one supplier representative as a punching bag because his complaints yielded meager if any results, regardless of how angry he became.

While we once seized the opportunity to spend millions of dollars on ripping out pneumatic and single-loop electronic controls to install a microprocessor-based, multi-loop control system. The benefits we achieved paid out decades ago, and are continuing to bear fruit in the present. Only total obsolescence would justify changing horses, and we’d employ heroic measures, such as soldering boards in the garage, to bridge us to a solution. During a prolonged cutover of numerous loops, first‑quartile efficiency and margins might take a noticeable hit.

Cassia and her contemporaries in the process industries should be thinking about the Open Process Automation Stabdard (O-PAS). To a large degree, it grew from the same frustrations and risks, aiming to free end users from crippling, rip-and-replace cycles. It’s been criticized for having no single point of accountability. With the complex dependencies faced by legacy systems providers, is that sentiment still meaningful? Early adopters would be pioneers, but it would still be worthwhile to engage with qualified systems integrators who offer it.

Cassia would be celebrated by her reliability peers, who would see that transitioning toward Ethernet-Advanced Physical Layer (APL), or “Etherbus.” will be unhindered by legacy system architectures. If Cassia can sell this pioneering vision, she and her comrades may finally escape the endless snipe hunts by refusing to stumble through the dark woods in the first place.