The ISA 106 standard will impact continuous process industry procedures in the future. Below is an update that answers some of the questions you might have on the standard and links to the technical report you may find interesting.
Formed in 2010, the committee is focused on recommending best practices to automating procedures in continuous process industries. The team is diverse including representatives from Oil & Gas, Refining, Chemical, and Nuclear operating companies along with the usual suspects of control system vendors and a number of consultants and system integrators. The first technical report documents the “Models and Terminology” section of the proposed in now available for review.
The general premise is that continuous operations while “continuous” in nature operate in various process states, and that the transition between these states often require the operators carry out complex procedures (or a series of steps to achieve the transition). Examples include the startup and shutdown of equipment, grade changes, decoking, and switchovers. While some of these activities are performed on a daily basis many are infrequently performed increasing the chance of introducing human error and costly mistakes that impact production quality, safety, and efficiency. The goal of the proposed standard is to automate as many of these steps and procedures as possible to ensure repeatability and “smooth” transitions between the various plant process operational states.
The committee is integrating Dow’s expertise in a methodology called UBC (Unit Based Control) which originated with the development of their proprietary MOD control system. Unit or State Based Control is one of many potential implementations or approaches to automating procedures in a DCS, but Dow contributed many of their lessons learned over the years to the committee and continue to be a key contributor to the effort.
DeltaV has many capabilities that facilitate designing a continuous plant in a “state” aware manner including the advanced function blocks (State-Transition Diagram, Sequencer, Cause & Effect Matrix, and Analog & Discrete Voters). This technology originated with DeltaV SIS, but was ported to the BPCS in DeltaV version 10. DeltaV also has native support for Command and State Driven equipment and control modules that can be efficiency used to implement state based control. In addition to these tools for design, the simple SFC (Sequential Function Chart) in DeltaV contains many features applicable to automating procedures and transitions.
The ISA 106 committee is now in the early stages of working on its second technical report that addresses work processes for automating procedures so it’s a great time to get involved!
Look for future updates as we progress the standard, and don't hesitate to contact me directly with any questions on the commitee or how you can contribute.