Plant Resource Manager Software Undergoes Significant Upgrade

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (the Netherlands) today announced the release of its Plant Resource Manager (PRM) software tool version R3.30. Available from February 29th, version 3.30 represents a major upgrade of Yokogawa’s system for the centralised management of large amounts of data from plant monitoring and control devices and manufacturing equipment.

PRM R3.30 upgrades include an improved management function for HART and enhancements to the navigation function.  HART is a field network communications protocol developed by the HART Communication Foundation. The latest version of this protocol is HART7, but PRM R3.30 will also support HART5 and HART6 which are still in wide use.

Manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to improve maintenance efficiency by using software tools like PRM that can centrally manage large amounts of maintenance and other types of data from plant monitoring and control devices and manufacturing equipment. Maintenance personnel use such data to reduce plant downtime and enhance safety by proactively spotting and responding to device failures.

To optimise plant operations, it is essential not only to keep devices in good working order but also to have up-to-date information on device status, and to keep records on all maintenance work that is performed. Such information is most useful if operators of control and safety instrumented systems can view it on screen at their human interface stations (HIS).

PRM R3.30 has new features to facilitate the collection of information from field devices for use in decision support activities that help optimise device maintenance and plant operations.