Integrated Production Control System Ensures Quick and Smooth System Upgrades

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (the Netherlands) today announced the release of CENTUM VP R6.03, a new version of the company’s integrated production control system. CENTUM VP R6.03 will be available from 1st June.

Yokogawa has been continually making improvements to its flagship CENTUM VP integrated production control system as part of its VigilantPlant vision for the control business. As well as providing an enhanced product for new customers, R6.03 offers a smooth upgrade path to existing users of CENTUM CS, CENTUM CS 1000, and CENTUM CS 3000 systems.

CENTUM VP provides an optimum operation, monitoring, and engineering environment for every phase of the plant lifecycle, from initial design, engineering, installation of systems and equipment, and start-up to full operation and the ongoing performance of renovations and modifications, through to eventual withdraw a facility from service.

Over the several decades that a plant will remain in use, upgrades will need to be performed to replace ageing control systems software and hardware, hold down maintenance costs, improve production capacity, and comply with new regulations. To minimise disruptions to production operations, such system upgrades should be quick and trouble-free. CENTUM VP R6.03 was developed to ensure quick and smooth system upgrades, and therefore upgrades of integrated production control systems such as CENTUM also need to be seamless.

Masatoshi Nakahara, a Yokogawa director and executive vice president who heads the Industrial Automation Platform Business Headquarters, comments as follows on this new release: “Yokogawa has continually striven to improve its core CENTUM platform while maintaining backwards compatibility with previous system versions. In the development of CENTUM VP, the following four innovations have been emphasised: Advanced operation empowers operators to make smarter decisions; Smart engineering, a new engineering ecosystem that delivers certainty and confidence; System agility flexibility, adaptability, and extensibility for plant upgrade and expansion, changes in plant operations, and business exigencies; and sustainable plant optimum system performance throughout the entire lifecycle of the plant.

“In keeping with its VigilantPlant initiative, Yokogawa will continue to develop and bring to market new products and other types of solutions that will help our customers realise the ideal plant.”

Yokogawa’s CENTUM VP R6.03 is designed for use in process industries such as oil and natural gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, and electric power. It is used for the operation, monitoring, and automatic control of process plants.