Distributed Control Systems Vendors Respond to PAC Questions
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Distributed Control Systems Vendors Respond to PAC Questions
Automation World recently invited five major vendors of distributed control systems (DCS) to comment on the competitive impact of programmable automation controllers on their businesses.
We received four responses, from executives at ABB, Emerson Process Management, Honeywell Process Solutions and Yokogawa Electric Corp.
Below is a portion of the text of an e-mail message sent by Automation World Managing Editor Wes Iversen to each of the companies, followed by the responses we received:
"I am looking for some input for a feature story I am putting together for the February issue of Automation World on programmable automation controllers, or PACs. The PAC term, as originally defined by ARC Advisory Group in 2002, described a new kind of controller that would eventually replace PLCs. ARC defined various characteristics for PACs, including multi-domain functionality—the ability to handle logic, motion and process control, among other functions—all on a single control platform.
"I am looking for some input for a feature story I am putting together for the February issue of Automation World on programmable automation controllers, or PACs. The PAC term, as originally defined by ARC Advisory Group in 2002, described a new kind of controller that would eventually replace PLCs. ARC defined various characteristics for PACs, including multi-domain functionality—the ability to handle logic, motion and process control, among other functions—all on a single control platform.
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1) As a major process controls vendor, are you more often competing against traditional PLC vendors touting PAC solutions for hybrid applications involving both discrete and process control needs?
2) How does your product line stack up against the PAC technology offered by the traditional PLC vendors?
3) Have you enhanced your product line or added new controller products to more effectively go after the “hybrid” marketplace for integrated control? If so, please describe.
4) How would you characterize your product line’s ability to handle logic or discrete control, together with process control, on a single platform? What about motion control? Other control domains?
5) Where do you see the controls market headed in the future vis-à-vis these kinds of multi-domain controls applications?"
Following are the responses received:
Response from Jonathan Bretzius, P.E., East Regional Channel Manager, ABB Inc.
1) As a major process controls vendor, are you more often competing against traditional PLC vendors touting PAC solutions for hybrid applications involving both discrete and process control needs?
Bretzius: Certainly, many customers today are employing smaller, more agile, and more distributed systems than in decades past, which opens the door to PLC vendors with hybrid capabilities. Vendors that have traditionally sold PLC's have definitely been making a push into Process Automation with Hybrid Systems, just as classic large DCS vendors have pushed into the PLC and Factory/Discrete Automation areas by repacking the controller portion of the DCS System. At the control level, the differentiators or gaps on both sides have closed, Heavy Process Automation users still seem to have a preference for strong Advanced Process Control features (and related support expertise) which are still easier to implement in a DCS Controller.
PLC’s and DCS’s were competing and hybrid controllers were in use before ARC’s "PAC" term was coined. Many DCS’s and PLC’s have a number of advanced and "PAC-like" capabilities without necessarily calling themselves PAC’s. Not everyone has been motivated to adopt the new PAC term amidst advances in technology. The term that we are using today is just controller or a hybrid controller. The term "Hybrid" sufficed as a new term for the PLC/DCS convergence, until Motion was newly included as a 3rd domain to consider by ARC. Motion has typically applied more to the PLC domain.
The main differentiator between Classic PLC Vendors and the Classic DCS Vendors appears to be the tight integration of information across the overall Hybrid Control System. For example, an engineer should be able to search for a variable across not only the control logic, but also the Graphics, Historian, Batch, Asset optimization and Fieldbus, Field Device configuration. Today, integrated information is most ...
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