OREANDA-NEWS. Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces the February 29 release of version R3.30 of its Plant Resource Manager (PRM®) software tool for the centralized management of large amounts of data from plant monitoring and control devices and manufacturing equipment. PRM R3.30 is an upgrade to R3.20 and includes an improved management function for HART®* and enhancements to the navigation function. With this new PRM version, Yokogawa aims to capture a larger share of the plant maintenance market.

* A field network communications protocol developed by the HART Communication Foundation. While the latest version of this protocol is HART7, HART5 and 6 are still in wide use.

Development Background

Manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to improve maintenance efficiency by using software tools like PRM that can centrally manage large amounts of maintenance and other types of data from plant monitoring and control devices and manufacturing equipment. Maintenance personnel use such data to reduce plant downtime and enhance safety by proactively spotting and responding to device failures.

To optimize plant operations, it is essential not only to keep devices in good working order but also to have up-to-date information on device status and maintain records on all maintenance work that is performed. Such information is most useful if operators of control and safety instrumented systems can view it on screen at their human interface stations (HIS).

With such needs in mind, Yokogawa has developed new functions for its PRM tool that facilitate the collection of information from field devices for use in optimizing device maintenance and plant operations.

Enhancements

  1. 1. Quick access to HART device status information
    PRM can now obtain start-up, stop, failure, and other status information from Yokogawa HART7 compliant devices in almost real time via the N-IO (Network-IO) field input/output (IO) device that was developed for use with the latest version (R4.01) of the ProSafe®-RS safety instrumented system, which was released to the market in November 2015. For other companies' HART5, 6, and 7 compliant devices, PRM can collect information at 1 minute intervals. With PRM R3.20, data collection at intervals of 10 to 60 minutes was supported.
  2. Intuitive display of device information
    Icons indicating the importance of individual devices are now displayed in the device status window of the navigation screen. If a problem occurs somewhere in the plant, operators can use this information and the self-diagnostic information displayed for the devices to make a quick, priority-based response.
  3. Targeted issuance of alarms
    PRM has a maintenance alarm function that issues alarms for display at CENTUM® series integrated production control system HISs. Previously, alarms were issued to all HISs. With this latest version of PRM, it is now possible to specify which HIS should receive alarms from a specific device. Individual operators now only receive alarms from those devices that they are responsible for.

About Plant Resource Manager (PRM)

PRM is a software package that centrally manages large amounts of status and maintenance information from plant monitoring and control devices and manufacturing equipment. With PRM, users can monitor the status of their devices and perform online diagnosis via a network. In addition, PRM centrally manages maintenance information, including device ledgers, in a database, and supplies maintenance information for plant field devices and equipment to maintenance personnel.

About Yokogawa

Yokogawa's global network of 88 companies spans 56 countries. Founded in 1915, the US$3.5 billion company engages in cutting-edge research and innovation. Yokogawa is active in the industrial automation and control (IA), test and measurement, and aviation and other businesses 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.