Improving resiliency and efficiency

Issue 3 2022 Industrial (Industry)

Energy-intensive industries, especially oil and gas and petrochemicals, have never been more under pressure to meet sustainability targets, boost uptime, maximise throughput and reduce total expenditures by lowering the end-to-end lifecycle costs of their assets.


Dwibin Thomas.

One way owner/operators and engineering professionals can identify strategies to reach these goals is to ask two questions:

• Is there an overlooked source of value in our operations?

• Can we take advantage of currently available technology to unlock it?

Thanks to advances in connectivity and digital analytics technology, the answer to both questions is an unequivocal yes.

Until recently, industrial enterprises’ power and process systems were designed and operated independently across a plant’s lifecycle. However, evidence confirms that uniting these two domains and managing them holistically can offer dramatic resiliency and efficiency benefits for industrial operations.

Whether organisations integrate during a plant’s design phase or unite existing power and process system management during a major infrastructure upgrade, the fusion of the two has real potential to accelerate business value and help build a long-term competitive advantage.

Traditionally, power management and process automation separation were primarily due to technical hurdles, with separated engineering domains connected by hardwired signals and localised digital information. Engineers are now realising how important it is to merge the two processes, benefiting from co-ordinated systems within an operational and maintenance framework.

There’s ample evidence to suggest that companies require new data-driven insights to support better, faster decision-making to thrive in today’s volatile economic environment. They need to respond faster to critical conditions that threaten uptime and become more agile to make their operations more resilient, safe and profitable, which is much easier to achieve with converged power and process systems.

Protecting today’s critical production infrastructure means rethinking traditional methods. For example, original high-speed load management systems matured with the advent of super-fast networking and the use of the IEC61850 information models and signalling.

The reality is that for virtually every onsite power generation situation, the power and process physical systems are already intrinsically connected electro-dynamically, so why not monitor and manage them as a unified system at a higher level of close loop, cascade loop and analytic behaviour?

The best of both worlds

Converged power and process solutions with predictive analytics, such as Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Process and Power, are engineered to help boost profitability by:

• Improving operational efficiency and saving energy.

• Increasing electro-dynamic protection for more uptime.

• Enhancing asset reliability to prevent downtime.

Converged digitised systems offer additional benefits, including faster commissioning, less cabling, simpler maintenance, and a reduced footprint. With the outstanding potential to improve process and energy efficiency while lowering risks to operational continuity, digitised process and power control solutions make good business sense in an unpredictable business environment.




Share this article:
Share via emailShare via LinkedInPrint this page



Further reading:

210 million industrial endpoints secured by 2028
News & Events Information Security Industrial (Industry)
A new study by Juniper Research has found that there will be growth of 107% over the next five years in the number of industrial endpoints featuring cybersecurity protection.

Read more...
Growing cyber threats to SA’s critical infrastructure
News & Events Information Security Industrial (Industry)
The increasing reliance on digital infrastructure makes critical sectors like utilities more susceptible to cyber threats. This concern has been highlighted by Kaspersky's recent discovery of a new SystemBC variant that has targeted a South African nation's critical infrastructure.

Read more...
Smart manufacturing redefined
Hikvision South Africa Surveillance Industrial (Industry)
AI and intuitive visualisation technology allows managers to monitor manufacturing sites, production, and operational processes, and to respond in real time in the event of an issue – helping to drive efficiency and productivity.

Read more...
CHI selects NEC XON as trusted cybersecurity partner
News & Events Information Security Industrial (Industry)
CHI Limited, Nigeria's leading market player in fruit juices and dairy products, has engaged in a strategic cybersecurity partnership with NEC XON, a pan-African ICT systems integrator.

Read more...
Edge technology can transform manufacturing in South Africa
Axis Communications SA Surveillance Integrated Solutions Industrial (Industry)
Aligning South African manufacturing more closely with this global shift to edge technologies could take manufacturing in the country to a new level, says Axis Communications’ Rudie Opperman.

Read more...
Edge AI and managing risk in the cloud
Industrial (Industry) Infrastructure
As organisations see greater volumes of data generated from their operations. It is understandable and imperative that this data is leveraged to generate more value and increase insight that help operations and asset integrity managers ‘do more, better’.

Read more...
Supporting local manufacturing
Industrial (Industry) Infrastructure
Smart Security asked Esenthren Govender, Solutions Executive at Technodyn for insight into how the company supports local manufacturing organisations to optimise their business.

Read more...
New algorithm for OT cybersecurity risk management
Industrial (Industry) Information Security News & Events Commercial (Industry)
OTORIO’s new risk management model and attack graph analysis algorithm technology, calculates OT cybersecurity threats and provides risk mitigation actions, prioritised according to actual exposure and potential impact on operations.

Read more...
The role of AI in industrial plants
Industrial (Industry)
The average modern industrial plant uses less than 27% of the data it generates, but industrial AI can play a major role in identifying patterns and making process predictions through new software platforms that simplify convergence and analysis of OT/IT/ET data.

Read more...
Addressing the SCADA in the room
Industrial (Industry) Information Security IoT & Automation
Few other sectors command the breadth of purpose-built and custom devices necessary to function, as the industrial and manufacturing industries. These unique devices create an uncommon risk that must be assessed and understood to fully protect against incoming attacks.

Read more...