Experion Migration 1

[rbear]

I am a Sr. Sys Engr. New to this facility. We have a Honeywell TDC 3000 1980's technology. Before I started hear they had decided to follow the Honeywell migration plan and now I am being asked to take this over. Honeywell is all the people here know they have no experience with any other system. Now my background is form the Contract world and I have used many vendors in the past. With the implementation of IEC1131 programming standards and the constant upgrades to both PLC and DCS systems they are now becoming one in the same. Except for a safety shutdown system. Honeywell has a migration path of replacing the HMI's first then the rest later. I am concerned about this path. Once Honeywell HMI is installed the rest has to be Honeywell and I am concerned that in the long run this will be more costly than just to replace the entire TDC with either Honeywell or another Vendor. The process is not that large and I believe that all things considered that a PLC will do just fine here. Any suggestions or experience with the Honeywell migration path? This is a pulp mill nothing fancy.

 

[controlnovice]

The migration path of installing HMI first is not that uncommon.

You company may have wanted it to help spread the cost of the migration over a few years: HMI this year, Engineering next year, Installation 3rd year.

It's possible that by staying with Honeywell, the outage time is less as they have the tools necessary to quickly replace the old with the new hardware.

Honeywell probably has an application to bring the TDC code into Experion with little to no effort (= less engineering hours), so there is a possible cost advantage of staying with Honeywell.

There is also something to be said about employee knowledge. If they know the system already, then the learning curve is not very steep. But: the difference between the TDC and Experion is huge.

I think there are better systems out there than Honeywell, but if I were working in a plant with a TDC, I would first investigate Honeywell Experion for the above reasons. Plenty of other companies have installed it successfully.

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[lacajun]

I know just enough to be dangerous about pulp and paper mill plants but I would not use a PLC. They do advanced control, which is not done in PLCs. You would have to use third party software and, in my experience, this is not inexpensive.

Honeywell is very good at writing strict contracts, which prohibit their customers from switching to Emerson, Foxboro, Seimens, Yokogawa, etc. One of my former employers migrated to Experion in one plant and had great pain in doing so, which was quite expensive. I didn't get a chance to get on the Experion so I cannot comment about its value, ease of configuration, etc. When it came out, it was still more expensive than many other systems on the market including Emerson's DeltaV.

I replaced Fisher Provox and Westinghouse WDPF with Emerson's DeltaV, which worked great. We did advanced control for much, much less money than we'd done in the past. We got great gains from all the work we did. There were just a few points on the system at which I winced because it was obvious the designers had no process control experience. But, those were not deal breakers.

 

[ScottyUK]

Off-thread a little (sorry!)

Just curious why you'd replace a WDPF system with Delta V instead of Ovation. I went the WDPF - Ovation route and it was fairly painless. Turbine / generator control application.


----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[lacajun]

There were things I didn't like about Ovation. Also, at that time, they didn't have MPC, fuzzy, and NN bundled on the system. The processes needed those algorithms to get the gains we wanted and we couldn't wait for Westinghouse/EPM to develop them on the Ovation platform. It's also based on SAMA, which is a dead standard, to my knowledge. Its foundation is more for the power industry than process and we were process. At that time, the graphics were not as good as the DeltaV's graphics. I don't know what either look like now. The configuration environment on the Ovation was not as good as the DeltaV's. DeltaV seemed much better "thought out" than Ovation, to me.

There were other reasons, too, but they escape me as that's been several years ago. My main programmer didn't think it was suitable either and was lacking compared to the DeltaV. He had almost 40 years of programming experience from OS to process control. He didn't know everything but he knew quite a bit and was a level headed thinker.

One of my former colleagues has been working with Ovation for about a year. He has over 30 years of systems experience on Provox and DeltaV. His recent opinion is that DeltaV is much better than Ovation. Ovation is OK but it is not a DeltaV. I've not had an opportunity to get specifics from him but fully intend to.

It was nothing personal it just didn't fit what I wanted and what I thought the plant needed. I went to grad school with one of the Ovation guys and know its got great people behind it. My friend is much, much more intelligent and educated than me. I trust him implicitly with all things. I've met some of the other Ovation guys, who were equally impressive.

There was a big battle between the Ovation guys and DeltaV guys back then to get my business. EPM finally mandated Ovation for power and W/WW and DeltaV for process. That significantly reduced my headaches with my own internal folks, i.e., managers, who didn't have much DCS experience thus knowledge on how to assess them. I don't know if EPM still has that edict or not but they did many years ago.

I was a corporate engineer in those days, with plants spread across North America. We had a smattering of Provox and Westinghouse systems. They were all being phased out so we, I, had to make a decision. I wanted uniformity for a host of reasons.

Systems are not a "one size fits all" game. At least, they are not in my experience. You have to know the processes and what needs to be done to realize gains with a new system. Then you need the ability to discern which system fits. That also encompasses the abilities of operations and maintenance.

 

[ScottyUK]

Thank you lacajun.

At the time I could see the limitations of Ovation in a batch type system, but generation is obviously a continuous process. Delta V isn't a common platform in the power world, but I'm likely to be getting more familiar with it when it gets installed at my current site now I'm working in oil & gas. I'll only be peripherally involved during installation because I'm firmly back on the electrical side of the business and have had to stop dabbling with control. For now.

Oh, and you either have some 'very' bright friends or you under-estimate yourself.


----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[lacajun]

ScottyUK, I installed DeltaV on a continuous process with some batch processes riding atop it.

I'm sorry to read you're firmly back on the electrical side and not controls, "for now." I look forward to your thoughts on the DeltaV, if you have a chance to tinker with it.

And, I have some very bright friends. Trust me!