Yokogawa CENTUM VP Evolves to Meet New Challenges

When distributed control systems (DCS) first appeared on the industrial automation scene in the mid-1970s, the focus was on control and operator interface. While control and human machine interface (HMI) are still im-portant, todays DCSs have evolved to place increased emphasis on integrating plantwide asset and operational information to enable opera-tional excellence. Furthermore, automation suppliers have moved away from the proprietary hardware, software, and communications of the past, incorporating commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies where practical and appropriate to do so. At the same time, plant engineering and opera-tions groups have adopted many of the same standards already in place at the enterprise IT level, and todays DCSs reflect this.