Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces FAST/TOOLS® R9.05, the latest release of our web-based real-time management and visualization software. The FAST/TOOLS® SCADA suite delivers a comprehensive solution that brings together our process management infrastructure, expertise, and ecosystem support for greater efficiency and improved operational agility.
This latest release has many new features and an intuitive design that works with all Yokogawa solutions, allowing it to serve as a corporate-wide automation environment.
Development Background
The SCADA market continues to grow, and a number of market research reports have identified the need for increased integration of disciplines and functions to drive down operating costs. This requires a transparent environment that can be integrated both vertically and horizontally with a variety of sources that can be accessed and shared globally.
This latest release offers enhanced data acquisition, system integration, and remote operations, and allows the deployment of information to subscribers through a secure cloud service that is always up to date, thereby increasing overall efficiency and eliminating the need for the exchange of paper documents.
Main Features
1. Collaboration/Decision Support Solution (CDSS)
With this new release, it is now possible to easily create an environment for the real-time capture of key operational, maintenance, and business information, allowing improved visualization of information and, showing with a single view, its impact on performance. This facilitates better communication between stakeholders, both inside and outside the organization.
This software can be utilized to monitor main production facilities, such as petrochemical complexes and power plants, as well as sub-processes, such as utilities, reactors, tank farms, and loading and offloading facilities. Dashboards deliver cross-referenced information on business performance factors, along with data on energy efficiency, carbon emissions, and direct cost savings that can be used to determine the effectiveness of efforts to reduce energy consumption and waste and monitor compliance with environmental standards. A single, easy-to-use user interface allows for the integration of the document management, video/CCTV, maintenance, and other software environments required for your communication and collaboration needs.
2. Alarm System Performance Analysis (ASPA)
The variety and number of alarms have increased with the introduction of more intelligent functions in process installations and the integration of asset management, business, and planning data from other systems into the SCADA environment. Without the proper implementation of a good alarm philosophy, operators will be flooded with more alarms than they can handle, i.e. exceeding the recommended number of 10 alarms in a 10 minute period of time.
ASPA adds a significant new dimension to the alarm management capabilities of this software. It eases the process of defining key performance measurements, analyzing alarm system behavior, and presenting this from different angles. This delivers a holistic and informative overview, providing guidance on improvements that can be made to create a sophisticated alarm management and analysis environment that is compliant with the EEMUA 191 and ISA/ANSI 18.2 standards, enhancing your process management system investment.
3. Mobile device support
Besides the currently supported web-based clients for PC platforms, an HTML5 web environment is now available that provides diagnostics, alarms, and process graphics over the cloud to tablets and smart phones. While the functions are slightly limited in comparison to full-blown web-based clients, rich functionality is provided for mobile devices, allowing anytime/anywhere access with all appropriate authorization and security through browsers such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. This allows for quick data analysis and decision making.
4. Remote gateway station
With the introduction of a remote gateway station (RGS), FAST/TOOLS® delivers an integrated automation solution that addresses one of the final barriers to achieving a corporate-wide automation strategy across multiple domains and geographies. This adds a new dimension to the Yokogawa Universal Gateway Station (UGS) environment, connecting your CENTUM VP DCS and STARDOM RTU environment with FAST/TOOLS®.
5. OPC Unified Architecture client function
This release includes an OPC Unified Architecture (UA) client. OPC UA is a next-generation standard that provides a cohesive, secure, and reliable cross-platform framework for access to real-time and historical data and events. Yokogawa’s FAST/TOOLS® OPC UA client is the first SCADA software that meets the requirements of the OPC certification program for interoperability and robust performance.
6. IEC61850
From the profitability and regulatory compliance perspectives, power efficiency management and CO2 emissions reduction are of paramount importance in today’s industrial processes and in the oil and gas energy supply chain. The relationship between process control and power consumption is so strongly interwoven that, for optimal efficiency management, both should be integrated into one supervisory system. To enable sophisticated integration of information from intelligent electronic devices (IED) into FAST/TOOLS®, this new release delivers full support for the IEC61850 MMS specification. IEC61850 is an emerging open standard for the design of electrical substation automation.
Main Target Markets
The main target markets are oil and gas upstream/midstream, petrochemicals, chemicals, renewable energy, power, pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, food, iron and steel, waste, and water supply and wastewater treatment.
Applications
Applications include remote process management, asset management, data collection, and storage in widely distributed applications.
About Yokogawa
Yokogawa’s global network of 90 companies spans over a total of 55 countries. Founded in 1915, the US$4 billion corporation conducts cutting-edge research and innovation. Yokogawa is engaged in industrial automation and control (IA), test and measurement, and other business segments. The IA segment plays a vital role in a wide range of industries including oil, chemicals, natural gas, power, iron and steel, pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, and food. For more information about Yokogawa, please visit our websitewww.yokogawa.com.
About Yokogawa Corporation of America
Yokogawa Corporation of America is the North American division of Yokogawa Electric Corporation and a key part of Yokogawa’s global network of 25 manufacturing facilities and 80 companies spanning 55 countries. Since its founding in 1915, the US$4 billion company has been engaged in cutting-edge research and innovation, securing more than 7,200 patents and registrations, including the world’s first digital sensors for flow and pressure measurement. Industrial automation and control, test and measurement, information systems and industry support are the core businesses of Yokogawa. For more information about Yokogawa, please visit our website www.yokogawa.com/us.