By Daniel Dearwater, PAS’ Global Invensys Channel Manager

Welcome back to the 2nd edition of the Invensys technology blog. Today, I’d like to talk about what I call “The MOST competitive DCS migration”. I’m going to put out there right now that Integrity technology saves a minimum 5% (up to 15%) of the cost of a DCS migration, improves quality, and reduces risk for all parties! What this means for the end user is that you’re getting a better quality migration for less money than you could before Integrity. That’s pretty sweet!

But first a little background on Integrity and the Automation Genome…

Just to bring you up to speed and in case you have no idea what Integrity does, I thought I’d give a brief summary so we’re all speaking the same language. Integrity, at its core, is a documentation tool that is scoped for every piece of automation (both software and hardware) that any operating facility could have. That’s inclusive of DCSs, PLCs, SISs, APCs/MVCs, Historians and Instrumentation databases (everything on level 1, 2, and 3 networks). It uncovers all data interdependency between systems, tracks changes, identifies configuration defects, maps data flow, and exports all information to common formats (PDF, XLS, Visio). Integrity does all of this automatically from the systems as built and will support all versions of all automation vendors’ technology forever! Bold vision huh?

This also seems to be an appropriate time to explain why the PAS website looks like a surgical company or genetic research institute right now. Our marketing folks came up with a very good metaphor for just what we do, the Automation Genome and how Integrity maps it! First extend yourselves to look at a control system like an organism with genetic code. Let’s say a Foxboro I/A Series DCS system is a living breathing creature, like a Frog. Now this particular creature is not alone, there is thousands of its kind. However, each one is similar, and each one is unique. So let’s say we have a particular frog that lives here in Houston named Steve. So Steve the frog has a heart, lungs, eyes, just like all the other frogs but there are variations that make Steve unique, like how big his feet are or how long his tongue can reach. So frogs, like Foxboro I/A systems, are both similar and unique. All I/A systems have controllers, graphics, trends, hardware, HMIs and gateways, but as DCS systems are programmed, hardware is added, and the system is continuously improved, their structure changes! So Just like Steve, the I/A systems evolve, but unlike Steve their generation time is in the order of minutes not years. OK, so I think you all get it now…

So sometimes the Frogs out there get old and there are newer higher jumping creatures that come onto the scene and sites wants to do a migration. So now we have to turn Steve the Frog into Jane the Rabbit! Integrity can help with that but for today we’re out of time…


So I’ll be back next time to continue the story of “The MOST competitive DCS migration” and walk you through step by step how Integrity can be used at various migration stages to lower cost, improve quality, and reduce risk.

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