Rockwell Automation releases PlantPAx 5.0

Rockwell Automation has released the PlantPAx 5.0 distributed control system (DCS). According to Rockwell, this latest DCS version is designed to help industrial producers positively impact the lifecycle of their plant operations with scalable systems to help drive digital transformation.

The company says that new system capabilities in PlantPAx 5.0 help digitally transform operations by introducing process functionality native to the controller, improving the availability of system assets driving compliance in regulated industries, while enabling the adoption of analytics at all levels of the enterprise. Intuitive workflows and the use of industry-leading cybersecurity standards will help teams design, deploy and support a DCS infrastructure which reduces time to market and helps plants realise profit at a faster rate.

“We’re excited to bring PlantPAx DCS 5.0 to our customers,” said Jim Winter, Global Process Director, Rockwell Automation. “New system features are step changes in helping our customers lower the overall costs to design and commission. The functionality improves the overall effort to integrate the process control layer to the enterprise.”

The company says process end users desire a system that offers the benefits of a modern experience without the burdens that come with a traditional DCS. The new 5.0 release improves on previous versions in the following areas:

• Reduced footprint: The 5.0 release introduces new process controllers and extends the Logix family with higher processing power and capacity to reduce the complexity of PlantPAx architectures, reducing cost of ownership.
• Project consistency: With native process instructions embedded in the controller firmware, project teams can adopt approaches to control strategies that drive consistency for individual projects or multi-site deployments. Consistency simplifies the lifecycle management of deployed systems as teams modernise their automation infrastructure.
• Streamlined workflows: PlantPAx 5.0 is said to provide improved design and operational user experience. Development teams will realise savings in the configuration of instrumentation, alarms and diagnostic system elements. Operators will have the extended ability to view underlying control logic in a safe and secured manner. Maintenance will have controlled view access for troubleshooting.
• TÜV-certified for cybersecurity: PlantPAx 5.0 system architectures are TÜV certified to the international standard ISA-99/IEC 62443-3-3, which provides guidance on the implementation of an electronically secured system.
   

The new platform is also analytics enabled. Purpose-built frameworks have been included that help to connect live and historical data from the DCS into reporting and analytical tools. Extended user interface capabilities, such as augmented reality, are available, using workflows aligned with process strategies controlling plant operations. It also allows extensible scalable analytic packages leveraging predictive and prescriptive models for process applications such as soft sensors, anomaly detection or model predictive control.