Process control system for plant lifecycle

The automa­tion of process plants has been char­ac­ter­ized by IT silos for a long time. The high lev­el of IT secu­ri­ty request­ed was achieved through strict iso­la­tion from the out­side world. How­ev­er, unlock­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties of dig­i­tal­iza­tion is thus hard­ly pos­si­ble. In addi­tion, open­ness and mobile sys­tem access are tak­en for grant­ed by today’s new gen­er­a­tion of high­ly skilled spe­cial­ists work­ing in future-proof plants.

Com­pa­nies choos­ing a new con­trol sys­tem today want to ben­e­fit from the net­work­ing of plants and knowl­edge world­wide. In fact, with their pur­chas­ing deci­sion, they set the course for decades to come – and a plant’s entire life­cy­cle. This is a com­pelling rea­son to opt for Simat­ic PCS neo – Siemens’s com­plete­ly web-based process con­trol sys­tem with state-of-the-art IT secu­ri­ty con­cepts. Via var­i­ous end device types, inno­v­a­tive web tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides con­ve­nient and secure access to all the infor­ma­tion required – world­wide and inde­pen­dent of the user’s loca­tion. This con­sid­er­ably facil­i­tates col­lab­o­ra­tion, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the engi­neer­ing phase.

The first ear­ly adopter projects start­ed after the mar­ket launch. They turned out to be of great help in devel­op­ing the sys­tem fur­ther in line with cus­tomer require­ments. In close coop­er­a­tion with the spe­cial­ists from Mer­ck and based on the MTP stan­dard, Siemens is test­ing a so-called tech­ni­cal back­bone for mod­u­lar pro­duc­tion plants. As the POL (Process Orches­tra­tion Lay­er), Simat­ic PCS neo takes on the task of orches­tra­tion. Evonik Indus­tries is also one of the first oper­a­tors: The com­pa­ny is using the process con­trol sys­tem to mod­ern­ize its 40-year-old tech­nol­o­gy cen­ter (“Tech­nikum”) at the Wolf­gang Indus­try Park in Hanau, Ger­many. The process con­trol system’s excel­lent scal­a­bil­i­ty is a key cri­te­ri­on here. Sys­tem inte­gra­tors such as AG Solu­tion have also demon­strat­ed the system’s mar­ket matu­ri­ty when installing it on behalf of a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny. AG Solu­tion has spe­cial­ly men­tioned sim­pli­fied glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion as well as object-ori­ent­ed, cen­tral­ized data management.

Loca­tion-inde­pen­dent con­trol with min­i­mal instal­la­tion effort 

The new Simat­ic PCS neo Ver­sion 4.0 address­es all the dif­fer­ent areas of the process indus­tries. It ful­ly sup­ports the Mod­ule Type Pack­age (MTP) stan­dard and fol­lows the trend toward mod­u­lar plants.  Intel­li­gent process mod­ules can thus be inte­grat­ed into the con­trol sys­tem with­out any fur­ther engi­neer­ing effort. But the plant team ben­e­fits through­out a plant’s entire life­time. No mat­ter whether small appli­ca­tions lat­er become world-scale plants with far more than 100,000 I/Os or whether new tech­nolo­gies must be inte­grat­ed into a plant with min­i­mal effort and risk: cost-effi­cient oper­a­tion is ensured with­out addi­tion­al complexity.

Thanks to the so-called “zero instal­la­tion client”, it is not nec­es­sary to install Simat­ic PCS neo com­po­nents on the oper­at­ing com­put­ers; instal­la­tion on the cen­tral serv­er is suf­fi­cient. Con­trol sys­tem admin­is­tra­tion sus­tain­ably ben­e­fits from the web-based archi­tec­ture. Soft­ware updat­ing and main­te­nance are thus reduced to a small num­ber of servers. All main­te­nance activ­i­ties (sys­tem soft­ware updates, inte­gra­tion of new PC hard­ware, man­age­ment of secu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cates, etcetera) can be per­formed cen­tral­ly via a user-friend­ly admin­is­tra­tion con­sole (AC).

Fur­ther users can be grant­ed access at any time with­out an addi­tion­al instal­la­tion step. To clar­i­fy any ques­tions in a sub-process, the plant team can send an access link to a spe­cial­ist who is not on site. Thus, the spe­cial­ist is grant­ed con­trolled, time-restrict­ed access to the cor­re­spond­ing sys­tem parts.

Simat­ic PCS neo can also be used on mobile end devices inde­pen­dent of the loca­tion. Main­te­nance and plant sup­port per­son­nel can thus access all the con­trol sys­tem func­tions, also dur­ing a deploy­ment in the field. Local oper­a­tor work­sta­tions can be imple­ment­ed by means of tablets or on-site con­trol units.

The Device Type Edi­tor is anoth­er inno­va­tion imple­ment­ed in Ver­sion 4.0. Field devices can be inte­grat­ed in no time at all – guid­ed graph­i­cal­ly and with­out sys­tem pro­gram­ming. And thanks to the sep­a­ra­tion of sys­tem, library and user appli­ca­tion lay­ers, any device type cre­at­ed even con­tin­ues to be valid in the case of mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the soft­ware sys­tem. No addi­tion­al test steps, for exam­ple for an upgrade, are required.

Inte­grat­ed secu­ri­ty in all dimensions

A holis­tic approach based on a mul­ti-state defense-in-depth strat­e­gy pro­vides for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. In addi­tion to plant secu­ri­ty, it focus­es on sys­tem integri­ty and net­work secu­ri­ty – through secure pre-con­fig­u­ra­tion (Secu­ri­ty by Default) at the time of instal­la­tion. Con­sis­tent, cer­tifi­cate-based com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­vides for the tam­per-proof con­nec­tion of all users to the Simat­ic PCS neo servers. When it comes to secu­ri­ty, the ben­e­fits of the web-based approach become par­tic­u­lar­ly appar­ent. The sym­bio­sis of IT tech­nol­o­gy and proven automa­tion func­tions pro­vides for the robust­ness and flex­i­bil­i­ty required to imple­ment con­tin­u­ous­ly chang­ing secu­ri­ty require­ments with­in a short time. Secu­ri­ty threats from the IT world are elim­i­nat­ed with the mech­a­nisms of that same IT world. For both engi­neer­ing and process con­trol, secure access to all the con­trol sys­tem func­tions is ensured at all times via mod­ern role and rights management.

Seam­less tran­si­tion from Simat­ic PCS 7 to Simat­ic PCS neo

Simat­ic PCS neo per­fect­ly suits the require­ments of almost all indus­tri­al sec­tors: the chem­i­cal, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, water & waste­water, food and bev­er­age, as well as the petro­chem­i­cal indus­tries. In the sug­ar indus­try, the ded­i­cat­ed NAHMAT automa­tion library is now mak­ing engi­neer­ing and mon­i­tor­ing more efficient.

In addi­tion to Simat­ic PCS neo, the estab­lished Simat­ic PCS 7 process con­trol sys­tem with thou­sands of instal­la­tions world­wide also offers a future-proof solu­tion. The two con­trol sys­tems reside on the same hard­ware plat­form and use a con­sis­tent con­fig­u­ra­tion archi­tec­ture. In the future, Simat­ic PCS 7 projects can thus be trans­ferred to Simat­ic PCS neo with lit­tle effort.

New con­troller gen­er­a­tion available

On the hard­ware side, new prod­ucts com­ple­ment the con­trol sys­tem port­fo­lio. Plant oper­a­tors can ben­e­fit from the new gen­er­a­tion of Simat­ic S7-4100 con­trollers. It includes a CPU specif­i­cal­ly devel­oped for Simat­ic PCS neo, the heart of the new con­trol system.

Its pre­de­ces­sor, the Simat­ic S7-400 with the CPU 410, was already con­sid­ered to be the most pow­er­ful con­troller avail­able on the mar­ket for the process indus­tries. The Simat­ic S7-4100 rep­re­sents a con­sis­tent fur­ther devel­op­ment. The chip sets for core func­tion­al­i­ties are still designed by Siemens itself. Siemens thus main­tains con­trol over the prod­ucts and basic com­po­nents. This means that the tech­nol­o­gy is opti­mal­ly adapt­ed to the require­ments – while at the same time pro­vid­ing opti­mal pro­tec­tion in terms of the secu­ri­ty-rel­e­vant hard­en­ing and avail­abil­i­ty of the chip sets. Those who rely on this new con­troller gen­er­a­tion today can rest assured that it will be kept up to date over many decades. Oper­a­tors thus also ben­e­fit from the con­ti­nu­ity and inno­va­tion of hard­ware com­po­nents over their plants’ entire lifecycle.

Like the con­troller avail­able so far, the new ver­sion also fea­tures a mod­u­lar design, but is much more com­pact. The sys­tem-inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the Simat­ic S7-4100 is based on robust, lat­est-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy. This improves com­mu­ni­ca­tion capa­bil­i­ties and enables up to five addi­tion­al Profibus/Profinet CPs (com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­ules). Pow­er con­sump­tion is 50 per­cent low­er com­pared to the pre­de­ces­sor mod­ule, with per­for­mance capa­bil­i­ty increas­ing. In addi­tion, the ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture range was extend­ed and now lies between ‑25 centi­grade and 70 centi­grade. Thanks to inter­nal­ly buffered data back­up, back­up bat­ter­ies as pro­tec­tion against pow­er fail­ure are now a thing of the past.

Scal­a­bil­i­ty could also be sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased: Simat­ic PCS neo V4.0, with the Simat­ic S7-4100 and CPU 410 con­trollers, cov­ers small- to large-scale appli­ca­tions con­sist­ing of 56 con­trollers. Since Simat­ic S7-4100 is func­tion­al­ly com­pat­i­ble with the cur­rent CPU 410, which will con­tin­ue to be avail­able for many years to come, an exist­ing appli­ca­tion can be trans­ferred with­out any problem.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion gate­way to ensure max­i­mum connectivity

Siemens is intro­duc­ing the ful­ly inte­grat­ed Simat­ic CN 4100 com­mu­ni­ca­tion gate­way par­al­lel to its Simat­ic PCS neo V4.0. It suits the require­ments of both con­trol sys­tems, sig­nif­i­cant­ly sim­pli­fy­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion via Mod­bus TCP and OPC UA (fur­ther stan­dards to fol­low soon). This enables the pow­er­ful, redun­dant inte­gra­tion of devices with­out a Profibus/Profinet inter­face, such as intel­li­gent mea­sure­ment devices, motor con­trollers, or entire pack­age units.

The gate­way relieves the work­load of the con­troller and, as an ele­ment of the defense-in-depth strat­e­gy, it pre­vents poten­tial attack paths lead­ing toward it. This is a major rea­son why Siemens has decid­ed to sep­a­rate the device com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the process automa­tion via the con­troller. In par­tic­u­lar, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion gate­way decou­ples the con­nec­tion between automa­tion sys­tems char­ac­ter­ized by long life­cy­cles and web-based sys­tems with sig­nif­i­cant­ly short­er life­cy­cles, such as OPC UA-PC sys­tems. Simat­ic CN 4100 thus sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributes to main­tain­ing the inno­v­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty of plants in oper­a­tion for many decades.

The bot­tom line: high inno­v­a­tive pow­er through­out the lifecycle

The Simat­ic PCS neo process con­trol sys­tem and the new, future-proof Simat­ic S7-4100 con­troller, as well as the Simat­ic CN 4100 com­mu­ni­ca­tion gate­way pro­vide oper­a­tors with all they need to com­mis­sion or mod­ern­ize process plants today and remain uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive through­out the plant life­cy­cle. Siemens thus cre­ates the basis for the future-proof automa­tion of process plants while main­tain­ing a company’s inno­v­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty across the usu­al­ly long life­cy­cles of its plants. In addi­tion to its remark­able per­for­mance, the new con­trol sys­tem ensures out­stand­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty and open­ness thanks to inno­v­a­tive hard­ware com­po­nents while at the same time sup­port­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanced secu­ri­ty concepts.