Issues regarding the network networking of factory DCS systems
Thread Content
Hello everyone, I’m glad to have the opportunity to discuss the networking issues related to DCS with you all. The situation is as follows: Our factory is now divided into a north plant and a south plant, with each plant having its own separate DCS system that is not compatible with the others. Today, my supervisor asked me how to better integrate the DCS systems from both plants into a single control room within our factory, so that centralized monitoring can be carried out. I have no idea; please help me, experts. Thank you. Active participation: 3 rewards in wealth ； In-depth discussion rewards 9 wealth points.
The DCS of the entire plant is uploaded to a large control room in our facility for monitoring; it’s a communication issue, and once that is resolved, everything will be fine
This post was last edited by Pingdan Shi on 2015-8-13 at 14:38. However, our systems are not a single system; I would like to ask if there are any cases in this regard. @WangTianze @feng*aosa
Now, even larger factories install remote monitoring systems; as long as they can access the internal network (depending on the settings), it is possible to view all the key parameters in real time from the office. The cost is not high either. The system is independent and separate from the DCS.
Seen it. I’ve never done it. Sinopec places a PC next to each DCS dedicated to handling this task, allowing key data to be viewed in Beijing.
According to the original poster, this issue is a communication problem. What communication method should be considered? So, could you introduce your two current systems? @jinlingshihua @budaoweng123
One is the Allen-Bradley system, and the other is the Zhejiang University Zhongkong system; the systems come with either RS48 or MODBUS communication ports.
It’s possible through OPC.
In such cases, remote monitoring is required; Modbus signals need to be converted to Ethernet format in order to be transmitted to the plant control center. The HMI devices retrieve data from each DCS, and it would be ideal to have a web interface available so that those who need the information can view the real-time data using a browser on their office computers. You can ask companies like Wonderware (now part of Schneider) – they have software designed for this type of task.
The situation described by the poster can be handled using the OPC method; both Hilscher and Control Union offer support for this. With the OPC approach (as in the case of Control Union), the OPC service is enabled on the engineer station and sent to the upstream gateway computer. This gateway computer needs to have an appropriate OPC client, and a WEB server must also be set up (we used Microsoft’s Visual Studio software package for this purpose). The data transmitted via OPC can then be viewed directly through a web browser. When using OPC, it is necessary to check whether the hardware watchdog on the engineer station includes OPC licensing. When using the Internet, be mindful of network security. Using specialized software should make configuration easier
Both of these DCS manufacturers have Ethernet interfaces; it’s best to use Ethernet and build a network using fiber optics, so there will be no hardware issues! Any of the methods mentioned at the software level will work; different approaches can be used, but the result remains the same.