Remote control to the rescue

London - With the potential to reduce costs and improve plant efficiency, remote automation and monitoring technologies are an increasingly attractive option for process operators dealing with today's economic downturn and on-going skills shortages.

Remote technologies perhaps offer most potential in sectors such as oil & gas and utilities, where operators require wide area coverage. In the former industry, for example, remote and real-time monitoring at the wellhead are helping to maximise output from diminishing oil fields in the North Sea.

Communication of data from remote oil & gas sites is providing production increases of 5-10% and overall efficiency increase of anywhere between 5% to 15%, estimates Frost & Sullivan. The market research firm adds that operators can achieve a return on investments in this area within a matter of months.

The move to remote is being further helped by IT advances such as higher computer processing speeds and software capabilities, improved network, wireless and sensor technologies, as well as open communication protocols that facilitate remote monitoring.

As many new technologies, such as Web services and mobile devices for monitoring and controlling processes, have yet to gather pace, F&S research analyst Amreetha Vijayakumar believes operators could use a bit more education on the potential of these technologies.

"Vendors need to emphasise the value of collecting, acquiring, presenting and analysing the data, which is crucial for monitoring quality and fixed costs in a manufacturing organisation," said Vijayakum

In this regard, David Rushforth, business development manager at Emerson Process Management's Remote Automation Solutions, highlights how remote automation takes the power of the latest control systems beyond the walls of the physical plant to remote sites covering hundreds or thousands of square miles.

"Just to think," he noted, "in many cases it was not that long ago that data was captured on circular chart recorders with mechanical wind up clocks."

As an extension to plant control systems, remote automation technologies allow predictive intelligence that enables personnel throughout the organisation to see what's happening, not only in their process but also in the equipment running it - and use that insight to identify and correct potential problems before they impact your operation, notes Rushforth.

However, he added, the introduction of remote automation of SCADA and remote device technologies "are demanding on communication networks and this has seen IT departmental involvement emerge into these types of solutions. The introduction of IT skills initiates a new emergence of integrated skills related to what was typically a process control environment."

Exploring the IT theme, Shawn Gold, global solution leader, open systems services at Honeywell Process Solutions, believes that open automation systems employing MS Windows, Intel processors and standard communication technologies have opened the door to greater interoperability and the ability for vendors to provide better remote support.

"New standards and increased awareness of security, along with identified benefits of faster resolution times and better and lower cost services, have created a change in attitude in the process industries about utilising remote technologies in plant environments," said Gold

While standard remote services are usually focused on remote troubleshooting, Gold said these have now moved into system management, such as patching and virus signature updates.

"What is new is the more advanced analytics that can be provided with smart monitoring, automated system repair at the site and remote application hosting," said Gold. "These services take the load off of the customer who has more important things to do than manage these added tasks of system administration and management.

Honeywell operates global remote support centres that interconnect and can share databases to provide global protection against disasters. The company has also upgraded its remote capability to enable local site automated analytics for lesser remedial tasks.

"We are also seeing more demand for remote application hosting," said Gold, who went on to highlight a range of capabilities now being applied and/or expanded at Honeywell customer sites globally:

- Smart monitoring/analytics - Predictive and proactive event management

- Automated repair - Restart failed services such as backups, initiate disk repair, etc.

- Remote hosting - Eliminate system management tasks

- Remote troubleshooting - Secure access to view what the site is seeing, resulting in faster resolution

l Patch/AV management - Reduce and redirect some of the day-to-day system administration tasks

At Yokogawa Electric Corp. recent projects that illustrate the possibilities of remote technology include: remote DCS monitoring of an on-shore wellhead distributed network in The Netherlands; remote DCS and asset management of a petrochemicals site in Singapore; and an RFID sensor system for a major petrochemicals installation in China.

Yokogawa is focused on a full, secure wireless solution including DCS and asset management, site design for access points and support of software. It also offers sensor networks for pressure, temperature gateway interfaces and asset management and PDA RFID systems.

The company cites emerging demand for remote technologies in areas such as offshore oil/gas (platforms, wellheads, pipelines), greenfield petrochemicals, chemicals, refineries (monitoring of remote DCS) and asset management for commissioning and startup. The key drivers are to reduce man-hours / costs for commissioning and maintenance, and improved safety and operation via higher visibility and better quality information, said a company spokesman.