Automation genome!

First to map the automation genome

PAS announces the launch of Integrity Automation Genome Software, the first product to provide a universal framework for the aggregation, contextualization, and simplification of data across an entire automation and production management system

Stephen Ballard discusses Integrity™ in detail with Chris Lyden, President of PAS. Chris Lyden

This is the world’s first software capable of analysing the assets, functionality and dataflow within and among automation and production systems. Integrity provides a universal framework for aggregating and contextualising assets while mapping dataflow. The new software product interfaces with each individual data source through a library of asset models. These models include the majority of Distributed Control Systems (DCSs), Programmable Login Controllers (PLCs), Safety Instrumented Systems (SISs), HMI/SCADA packages, historians and asset management packages. Most importantly, Integrity provides advanced knowledge capture and search facilities.

Effective management of a plant’s automation assets is essential to the safety of its personnel, the physical assets, and for regulatory compliance. Automation assets such as, instrumentation databases, and, at the control system level, a heterogeneous mix of DCSs, PLCs and SIS, but, at higher levels, an ever expanding portfolio of advanced applications and production management packages.

The installation, and implementation, and maintenance of these assets involves a human engineering investment many times greater than their original cost. As an aging workforce retires, their empirical knowledge is lost. One leading US refiner recently reported losing 2500 man-years of operator experience through retirement at a single site in one year, while a major chemical company said that it expected to lose 75% of the operating staff at one of its largest plants through retirement by the end of the decade. The effective management of automation assets and the protection of the knowledge embodied in them, is critical both to the effective day to day operation of the plant and to the retention of its critical intellectual property (IP). Integrity provides a unique solution through a comprehensive system lifecycle management capability that captures and generates accurate and reliable documentation, provides essential system configuration checks, and provides detailed change audit and reporting capabilities.

Integrity imports system database configurations, checks data consistency and automatically generates control diagrams to assist with control strategy visualization. The details of the inter-relationship of data objects are displayed together with appropriate documentation which can be, “attached” by means of a Smart Link™ Integrity also generates standard and custom queries against all automation data and can export information in a variety of standard and customized data formats.

Chris Lyden, President of PAS commented, “We have designed Integrity to take full advantage of Web 2.0 technologies in order to enable greater interaction among people and information. We believe that combining these functions with Integrity’s ability to map the genomes of the disparate systems in a plant, will preserve a great deal of plant information, and make it easily accessible to everyone who needs it.”

Perhaps the “killer” application of the new Integrity software is the Disaster Recovery module. This module provides a mechanism for automatic backup and archiving of system and database files, documenting restoration procedures and the creation of object-to-file associations in a central repository. In the event of a natural or man-made disaster, it is claimed that this disaster recovery feature would aid in system recovery, restoring corrupted files, or providing the facility to roll back to a point in time.

There is no doubt that Integrity is a powerful software package that fills a market need particularly with the increased complex automation environments. It is already widely reported that diminishing resources are adversely affecting process and power industries. Integrity provides the opportunity for companies to regain control of their automation investment by aggregating, contextualizing, and simplifying the data from their disparate systems and transforming previously isolated pieces of information into contextual knowledge.