DISTRIBUTED CONTROL SYSTEM

A distributed control system (DCS) refers to a control system usually of a

manufacturing system, process or any kind of dynamic system, in which the

controller elements are not central in location (like the brain) but are distributed

throughout the system with each component sub-system controlled by one or more

controllers. The entire system of controllers is connected by networks for

communication and monitoring. DCS is a very broad term used in a variety of

industries, to monitor and control distributed equipment.

- Electrical power grids and electrical generation plants

- Environmental control systems

- Traffic signals

- Radio signals

- Water management systems

- Oil refining plants

- Chemical plants

- Pharmaceutical manufacturing

- Sensor networks

- Dry cargo and bulk oil carrier ships

A DCS typically uses custom designed processors as controllers and uses both

proprietary interconnections and communications protocol for communication.

Input and output modules form component parts of the DCS. The processor

receives information from input modules and sends information to output modules.

The input modules receive information from input instruments in the process

(a.k.a. field) and transmit instructions to the output instruments in the field.

Computer buses or electrical buses connect the processor and modules through

multiplexer or demultiplexers. Buses also connect the distributed controllers with

the central controller and finally to the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) or

control consoles. See Process Automation System.

Elements of a distributed control system may directly connect to physical

equipment such as switches, pumps and valves or may work through an

intermediate system such as a SCADA system.

Applications

Distributed Control Systems (DCSs) are dedicated systems used to control

manufacturing processes that are continuous or batch-oriented, such as oil refining,

petrochemicals, central station power generation, pharmaceuticals, food &

beverage manufacturing, cement production, steelmaking, and papermaking.

flow of material through the plant. The most common example is a setpoint control

loop consisting of a pressure sensor, controller, and control valve. Pressure or flow

measurements are transmitted to the controller, usually through the aid of a signal

conditioning Input/Output (I/O) device. When the measured variable reaches a

certain point, the controller instructs a valve or actuation device to open or close

until the fluidic flow process reaches the desired setpoint. Large oil refineries have

many thousands of I/O points and employ very large DCSs. Processes are not

limited to fluidic flow through pipes, however, and can also include things like

paper machines and their associated variable speed drives and motor control

centers, cement kilns, mining operations, ore processing facilities, and many

others.

A typical DCS consists of functionally and/or geographically distributed digital

controllers capable of executing from 1 to 256 or more regulatory control loops in

one control box. The input/output devices (I/O) can be integral with the controller

or located remotely via a field network. Today’s controllers have extensive

computational capabilities and, in addition to proportional, integral, and derivative

(PID) control, can generally perform logic and sequential control.

DCSs may employ one or several workstations and can be configured at the

workstation or by an off-line personal computer.

twisted pair, coaxial, or fiber optic cable. A server and/or applications processor

may be included in the system for extra computational, data collection, and

reporting capability.

History

Early minicomputers were used in the control of industrial processes since the

beginning of the 1960s. The IBM 1800, for example, was an early computer that

had input/output hardware to gather process signals in a plant for conversion from

field contact levels (for digital points) and analog signals to the digital domain.

The first industrial control computer system was built 1959 at the Texaco Port

Arthur, Texas, refinery with an RW-300 of the Ramo-Wooldridge Company [1].

The DCS was introduced in 1975. Both Honeywell and Japanese electrical

engineering firm Yokogawa introduced their own independently produced DCSs at

roughly the same time, with the TDC 2000 and CENTUM systems, respectively.

US-based Bristol also introduced their UCS 3000 universal controller in 1975. In

1980, Bailey (now part of ABB) introduced the NETWORK 90 system. Also in

1980, Fischer & Porter Company (now also part of ABB) introduced DCI-4000

(DCI stands for Distributed Control Instrumentation).

The DCS largely came about due to the increased availability of microcomputers

and the proliferation of microprocessors in the world of process control.

form of both Direct Digital Control (DDC) and Set Point Control. In the early

1970s Taylor Instrument Company, (now part of ABB) developed the 1010

system, Foxboro the FOX1 system and Bailey Controls the 1055 systems. All of

these were DDC applications implemented within mini-computers (DEC PDP 11,

Varian Data Machines, MODCOMP etc) and connected to proprietary

Input/Output hardware. Sophisticated (for the time) continuous as well as batch

control was implemented in this way. A more conservative approach was Set Point

Control , where process computers supervised clusters of analog process

controllers. A CRT-based workstation provided visibility into the process using

text and crude character graphics. Availability of a fully functional graphical user

interface was a way away.

Central to the DCS model was the inclusion of control function blocks. Function

blocks evolved from early, more primitive DDC concepts of “Table Driven”

software. One of the first embodiments of object-oriented software, function

blocks were self contained “blocks” of code that emulated analog hardware control

components and performed tasks that were essential to process control, such as

execution of PID algorithms. Function blocks continue to endure as the

predominant method of control for DCS suppliers, and are supported by key

technologies such as Foundation Fieldbus today.

computing elements (peer to peer access) was one of the primary advantages of the

DCS. Attention was duly focused on the networks, which provided the all-

important lines of communication that, for process applications, had to incorporate

specific functions such as determinism and redundancy. As a result, many

suppliers embraced the IEEE 802.4 networking standard. This decision set the

stage for the wave of migrations necessary when information technology moved

into process automation and IEEE 802.3 rather than IEEE 802.4 prevailed as the

control LAN.

The Network Centric Era of the 1980s

The DCS brought distributed intelligence to the plant and established the presence

of computers and microprocessors in process control, but it still did not provide the

reach and openness necessary to unify plant resource requirements. In many cases,

the DCS was merely a digital replacement of the same functionality provided by

analog controllers and a panelboard display. This was embodied in The Purdue

Reference Model (PRM) that was developed to define Manufacturing Operations

Management relationships. PRM later formed the basis for ISA95 standards

activities today.

In the 1980s, users began to look at DCSs as more than just basic process control.
A very early example of a Direct Digital Control DCS was completed by the

Australian business Midac in 1981-1982 using R-Tec Australian designed

hardware. The system installed at the University of Melbourne used a serial

communications network, connecting campus buildings back to a control room

“front end”. Each remote unit ran 2 Z80 microprocessors whilst the front end ran

11 in a Parallel Processing configuration with paged common memory to share

tasks and could run up to 20,000 concurrent controls objects.

It was believed that if openness could be achieved and greater amounts of data

could be shared throughout the enterprise that even greater things could be

achieved. The first attempts to increase the openness of DCSs resulted in the

adoption of the predominant operating system of the day: UNIX. UNIX and its

companion networking technology TCP-IP were developed by the Department of

Defense for openness, which was precisely the issue the process industries were

looking to resolve.

As a result suppliers also began to adopt Ethernet-based networks with their own

proprietary protocol layers. The full TCP/IP standard was not implemented, but the

use of Ethernet made it possible to implement the first instances of object

management and global data access technology. The 1980s also witnessed the first

PLCs integrated into the DCS infrastructure. Plant-wide historians also emerged to

capitalize on the extended reach of automation systems.

Foxboro, who introduced the I/A Series system in 1987.

The Application Centric Era of the 1990s

The drive toward openness in the 1980s gained momentum through the 1990s with

the increased adoption of Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and IT

standards. Probably the biggest transition undertaken during this time was the

move from the UNIX operating system to the Windows environment. While the

realm of the real time operating system (RTOS) for control applications remains

dominated by real time commercial variants of UNIX or proprietary operating

systems, everything above real-time control has made the transition to Windows.

The introduction of Microsoft at the desktop and server layers resulted in the

development of technologies such as OLE for Process Control (OPC), which is

now a de facto industry connectivity standard. Internet technology also began to

make its mark in automation and the DCS world, with most DCS HMI supporting

Internet connectivity. The ’90s were also known for the “Fieldbus Wars”, where

rival organizations competed to define what would become the IEC fieldbus

standard for digital communication with field instrumentation instead of 4-20

milliamp analog communications. The first fieldbus installations occurred in the

1990s.
Towards the end of the decade, the technology began to develop significant

momentum, with the market consolidated around Foundation Fieldbus and

Profibus PA for process automation applications. Some suppliers built new

systems from the ground up to maximize functionality with fieldbus, such as

Honeywell with Experion & Plantscape SCADA systems, ABB with System

800xA, Emerson Process Management with the DeltaV control system, Siemens

with the Simatic PCS7 and azbil from Yamatake with the Harmonas-DEO system.

The impact of COTS, however, was most pronounced at the hardware layer. For

years, the primary business of DCS suppliers had been the supply of large amounts

of hardware, particularly I/O and controllers. The initial proliferation of DCSs

required the installation of prodigious amounts of this hardware, most of it

manufactured from the bottom up by DCS suppliers. Standard computer

components from manufacturers such as Intel and Motorola, however, made it cost

prohibitive for DCS suppliers to continue making their own components,

workstations, and networking hardware.

As the suppliers made the transition to COTS components, they also discovered

that the hardware market was shrinking fast. COTS not only resulted in lower

manufacturing costs for the supplier, but also steadily decreasing prices for the end

users, who were also becoming increasingly vocal over what they perceived to be

unduly high hardware costs.

Rockwell Automation, Siemens, were able to leverage their expertise in

manufacturing control hardware to enter the DCS marketplace with cost effective

offerings, while the stability/scalability/reliability and functionality of these

emerging systems are still improving. The traditional DCS suppliers introduced

new generation DCS System based on the latest Communication and IEC

Standards, which resulting in a trend of combining the traditional

concepts/functionalities for PLC and DCS into a one for all solution—named

“Process Automation System”. The gaps among the various systems remain at the

areas such as: the database integrity, pre-engineering functionality, system

maturity, communication transparency and reliability. While it is expected the cost

ratio is relatively the same (the more powerful the systems are, the more expensive

they will be), the reality of the automation business is often operating strategically

case by case. The current next evolution step is called Collaborative Process

Automation Systems.

To compound the issue, suppliers were also realizing that the hardware market was

becoming saturated. The lifecycle of hardware components such as I/O and wiring

is also typically in the range of 15 to over 20 years, making for a challenging

replacement market.
Many of the older systems that were installed in the 1970s and 1980s are still in

use today, and there is a considerable installed base of systems in the market that

are approaching the end of their useful life. Developed industrial economies in

North America, Europe, and Japan already had many thousands of DCSs installed,

and with few if any new plants being built, the market for new hardware was

shifting rapidly to smaller, albeit faster growing regions such as China, Latin

America, and Eastern Europe.

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