Industrial Manufacturers Checklist to Smarter Safety & Control Systems

在高,连续生产操作s, safety and distributed control systems (DCS) are vital. They automate control and provide intelligent uptime, helping to optimize productivity and boost safety. In this article, I share proof and provide a quick summary and link to a Safety System and DCS checklist to help guide your decision process for Safety System and DCS adoption for your industrial production and operations.

Reactive manufacturing and production approaches are often fraught with risk – and unnecessarily so. Proactive, intelligent control and protection is available today. It helps minimize downtime, increase asset longevity and elevate visibility to provide smarter uptime and reduce operational risks.

Leading industrial manufacturing companies have seen significant upticks in performance metrics after adopting next generation Safety System and DCS solutions. Here’s some specific, real-world proof from one of our customers.

AL-BAHA Company for Caustic Chlorine Industries, realized tangible and significant benefits from a DCS upgrade. They replaced their legacy control system that had become outdated, difficult to use and expensive to maintain, thereby creating security concerns, as well as, escalating costs. A next generation control system implementation was designed as an upgrade and to be the “brains” of AL-BAHA’s production operation.

• Up to 60% reduction in after-hours engineering call-outs ==>expensive and akin to double time pay
• Up to $85K cost avoidance over 3 years of support services ==>a cost factor typically overlooked
• Up to 66% fewer spare parts required to have on-hand ==>a significant cost burden, often overlooked

Via customers like AL-BAHA, and countless others, I have seen firsthand that next generation DCS solutions hold transformative power and potential for industrial manufacturers. All DCS solutions, however, are not created equal, often clouding and confounding the selection process. Further, next generation solutions, available today, have replaced legacy solutions, inserting additional criteria to the selection process.

To help navigate and vet potential DCS solutions, my team and I have created achecklist of next generation and critical featuresthat are most effective at enhancing operations and improving outcomes. Whether you are replacing a legacy DCS or implementing one for the first time, I hope this checklist is a helpful guide to better informing your decision.

If your perspective is based on legacy Safety System and DCS solutions, then ourchecklistwill help update you on what’s possible with next generation innovations. It’s important to know which Safety System and DCS features and benefits are available as they can influence variances in implementation time and ease, initial investment and total cost of ownership. Understanding the underlying benefits of certain features is helpful in assessing their potential ROI in your operations.

For example, high reliability sounds great, but what does it mean and what does it do? High reliability can be quantified via low meantime to repair; it can be facilitated by a redundant architecture and the availability of troubleshooting tools.

Another example is on-going operating expense, something you need to vet before you select your Safety System and DCS solution. You want to ensure that your Safety System and DCS solution doesn’t draw tremendous power, doesn’t need heavy wires or special cooling / raised floor configuration, can operate in a wide range of environmental conditions and is rugged enough for harsh environments.

At Nexus Controls, a Baker Hughes business, industrial operational control is our focus and passion. With over a century of proven experience in control system solutions, we’ve earned the chops to help you on your DCS and Safety System journey. If you’d like to learn more about choosing the right Safety System and DCS solutions for your operations, please reach out.