Plant Services - November 2007 - (Page 37)

ManageMent Personnel obile computing is a technology that most plant managers, maintenance supervisors and technicians see as nice – maybe too nice – and unnecessary for their work. You’ve done alright for many years without it, so you must not really need it, and besides, it looks fragile, complicated and expensive. Don’t try talking that way at San Francisco Water’s West Bay Facilities, where Wonderware tablet PCs have been saving time on PMs for three years now (Figure 1). Along with transmitting maintenance and calibration information, the mobiles function as operator interfaces for the control system. “With two operators on a shift, we used to always have to keep one in the control room,” says Dee Cutino, superintendent. The primary operator is responsible for instrument calibration, while the secondary operator is devoted to routine maintenance. The secondary operator would have to stop working and take over monitoring the control room when the primary operator needed to leave, for example, to calibrate turbidity meters. “Now the primary operator can take a tablet with him so he can start and stop equipment, acknowledge alarms, etc.,” says Cutineo, and the secondary operator can stay on his rounds. The operators perform 300 to 400 PMs per month, plus plant rounds, quality sampling, and more. “In the past, we had trouble getting all the PMs done,” Cutino says. “The mobile system saves us two hours to three hours per day, which has allowed us to be more efficient and get more work done – more preventive maintenance gets done without interruption.” The tablets also let them write CMMS work orders in the field, “which is helping us capture better records,” he adds, “and our CMMS is tied into Purchasing, which helps expedite repair parts.” Much like the car phones of the 1980s that let salespeople make a call without stopping at a pay phone, mobiles have excelled for years at streamlining existing tasks, such as making rounds, entering data into a CMMS and tracking work orders. Now, with novel features like full PC capabilities, Web access and multimedia communication, mobiles are beginning to offer new ways to get a job done. When you see what mobile systems are doing, understand how they work and start to imagine the possibilities, you may decide your operations are worthy. After all, if Cutino, the UPS deliveryman and the cable guy get to play, why not you and your maintenance team? capabilities, and specialized covers to provide protected access to antenna signals. “It uses Ethernet to connect to a main network, then to a PC and the control system,” says David Gardner, product manager, Wonderware (www.wonderware.com). Access through a VPN provides security. The company’s InTouch software leverages tablet PC features such as inking (users can write values into data links in their own handwriting) and annotation (users can mark up a graphical display with pens and highlighters). Operators can mark up displays and e-mail, print or save the screen capture to facilitate troubleshooting and explanations (Figure 2). “Three years ago, the devices were seen as expensive,” Gardner says. “That was partly due to their ruggedized construction – they’re IP67, rated to three feet underwater and a four-foot drop onto concrete.” As prices come down and paybacks become clear, the cost of the tablets is less of an issue. “Then there was also the fear of wireless – that it wouldn’t work in industrial environments, that it lacked security,” Gard- Standards in the nick of time “This is the Wild West of wireless, with everyone running to market with their shiny new wireless widget,” says Mike Bedell, vice president, worldwide sales, Apprion (www.apprion.com). Thus far, lack of standardization in wireless communications has led to a plethora of single-vendor, proprietary systems, and users are buying them. “Why?” Bedell says, “Because the applications they enable are terrific.” According to a recent report by ON World, the wireless sensor networking market is expected to reach $4.6 billion by 2011, up from approximately $500 million today. Organizations are scrambling to agree on how existing wired sensor protocols will be adapted to wireless applications. The HART Communication Foundation (www.hartcomm.org) released its standard in June, 2007. WirelessHART builds on established international standards including the HART protocol (IEC 61158), EDDL (IEC 61804-3), IEEE 802.15.4 radio and frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum and mesh-networking technologies. WirelessHART also gives users an alternative method for extracting condition-monitoring and diagnostic information from an existing installed base of HART instrumentation. Due to be finalized soon, ISA SP100.11a is based on IEEE 802.15.4 and supports multiple protocols on a single wireless infrastructure for condition monitoring, asset management and process automation applications. “ISA100 is the umbrella under which wireless protocols and standards will coalesce in order for wireless sensor networks to reach critical mass,” says Jay Werb, CTO of Sensicast (www.sensicast.com) and DLL technical editor (for meshlayer) of the ISA100.11a standard. If your sensors aren’t committed to a conventional fieldbus protocol, it might be practical to stick with Ethernet. “In a WiFi infrastructure, maintenance condition monitoring sensors can work without SP100, WirelessHART, etc.,” says Hesh Kagan, director, wireless programs, Invensys (www.invensys.com). “SP100 has an important quality specification for signal-to-noise ratio, but if the quality is there, there’s no reason not to use commercial wireless access protocol (WAP).” Power in your palms West Bay Facilities’ application runs on a Microsoft tablet PC with Windows Mobile and Wonderware InTouch. The tablet has WiFi, Bluetooth and PCMCIA slots for other devices, such as cellular communications or proprietary November 2007 www.PLANTSERVICES.com 37 http://www.wonderware.com http://www.apprion.com http://www.hartcomm.org http://www.sensicast.com http://www.invensys.com http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Plant Services - November 2007

Plant Services - November 2007 Contents New Tools Letters Let Us Know Where to Put the Gas Up and Running How are you Fighting Crisis? What Works Why is the Best Practice Transfer so Hard? Who are you Going to Call? Chained to Power Mobile Mindset Making Money in the Lube Lab Grabbing a Moving Target Bagging the BTUs Keeping Mellow Preserving Health and Safety The Power of Reliability Excellence

Plant Services - November 2007

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