Big companies became very complex and highly efficient structures compared to those hundred or even thirty years ago. They maintain transparency of org structure and financial indicators through many little functions and processes. The complexity of these processes is sometimes inconceivable to most employees, but that’s not required anymore.
Every part of organization is working as a small group, getting inputs from others and generating response. Splitting the big picture into small pieces is considered a good idea for almost everything we do today. It’s easy to understand, troubleshoot, re-work, repair and replace if required. Eat elephant one bite at a time.
Similarly, technological processes are nowadays constructed like a Lego structure. Those who read P&I diagrams of big technological processes remember large or small boxes with a single label “supplied by vendor” and no internal details. Dryers, absorbers, compressors, turbines, pumps, mills, quench boxes, expanders and many other devices come with their own control systems that are often proprietary to the vendor.
No one really cares how they work as long as the vendor is providing startup services and warranty. It’s convenient indeed to shift the responsibility and say: “They make it, they know better how to control it”.
In Emerson Automation Solutions we see this situation often because Emerson supplies control automation for whole plants and take main automation contractor (MAC) responsibility to deliver the result. Over the years, we became a supplier of many of these pieces to provide a more integrated solution.
Transmitters, valves, control systems and all engineering and lifecycle services – we can supply many things from our own factories, but not everything. Some are still highly specialized “black box” systems that have inputs and outputs and some descriptions of what to expect. In many cases, not very detailed descriptions, but again – the responsibility is on the vendor.
When big project is started, it usually works great. All involved parties spend hours to set up communication, test protocols and tune up the control loops. Then they celebrate another successful project and go back home – to North America, South America, Europe, India etc. Modern projects are very cosmopolitan events.
Procedures are generated, staff is trained, and day-to-day operation becomes routine. Years pass, equipment becomes older, likewise the people. Those who started the plant change position or retire, and newcomers are taking responsibility of the maintenance. They start dealing with the fact that something isn’t working exactly as it was designed.
Plants change over time, like almost everything in our life. They expand capacity, sometimes get divided into separate entities and become different companies. They start making their own raw materials instead of buying them or change the quality of supply. So, they have to change technological process and tune control systems accordingly.
Their vendors also change over time. They start making new modern electronics and forget how the old one works. Sometimes they go out of business or get consumed by more successful competitors. They go through restructuring, lose key developers and the technologies become abandoned. Many things are changing.
When there’s need for the end-user to tune some loop or add some signal, they often find out that the company on the datasheet header doesn’t exist anymore. There is literally nobody in the world that they can call. Or the vendor is offering to send someone over in a month or two. And the person coming over can only suggest replacing the whole thing because it’s “obsolete”. That is the moment when the user is realizing that the “black box” control system is a major risk even though it can be working fine for years. But nothing lasts forever.
There was time when highly specialized systems were faster and therefore more applicable for some processes, especially when dealing with high-speed rotating machinery: turbines, compressors, expanders etc. Big distributed control systems dealing with thousands of signals were slower and designed to be better with multi-operator, multi-node applications.
Last twenty years of amazing increase in computational power and decrease in processor power consumption changed everything. Not only smartphones and laptops advanced, everything advanced. Modern DCSs are very high-speed, very robust and versatile networks of controllers, computers and networking devices. They can do things they couldn’t before. And it’s changing the game.
Being an Emerson compressor control expert, I see a rapid increase in very simple yet very strong and urgent demand from my customers: come around and tell me what it’ll take us to put all functionality of my highly specialized compressor control system into the Emerson DCS. Eliminate the black box. Give me transparency, give me flexibility, give me freedom to tune it, give me ease of use. Remove that headache of answering the question: if it fails, what are we going to do? Give me the ownership of what’s working there on my site. Ownership I didn’t have before.
Instead of closed-out code with only a description available let’s make a control logic that can be investigated to the very basic function blocks. And I mean, visible online. Trace the whole chain of calculations and transformation from input to output and back to input. Instead of ActiveX graphical objects that nobody can change let’s make it in the same graphical environment with the rest of the thousand control loops working around. I can’t say that the logic is simple. Compressor controls isn’t simple – it’s a highly sophisticated set of algorithms, but it doesn’t have be a black box.
Why not teach user’s engineers instead of inviting an outside person every time to tune or troubleshoot something? Why not teach a local business partner to provide support in like one hour instead of several weeks? It doesn’t have to be some mysterious people that have sacred knowledge. Very few questions really require asking highly experienced expert consultancy. And those questions don’t usually require quick answer or visit – those are long-planned events.
We live in modern world where the level of transparency has increased dramatically and keep increasing. Automation world is just moving the same direction, and nothing can stop it.
Learn more about eliminating black boxes and making accessible compressor controls on the SmartProcess Compressor page on Emerson.com. We know how to make it transparent and easy to use while keeping or even increasing the quality of control.